Sir Hugh mused ever by the hearth, or pondered over some huge tome of heraldry, or told old legends of his youth, sternly and briefly, and with none of the garrulity of complacent old age, to the dull ears of Sir Andrew, who, now almost a constant inmate of the Hall, listened unmoved and stolid to tales intended for the most part to urge him on to something of action or exertion; too indolent and listless for field sports, too dull and unintellectual to take delight in books or paintings, he would lounge away half the morning playing at shovel-board, his right hand against his left; or setting the terriers and mastiffs by the ears, or quaffing mighty tankards of toast and ale, until the dinner hour should subject poor Margaret to the petty persecution of his unmeaning speeches, his simpering smiles, and his impertinent assumptions, which she affected not to perceive, and treated with indifference, unless absolutely thrust upon her, and then with cool contempt. Meanwhile it was observed by the old servants, who worshiped the very ground on which she trod, that, although in the presence of her father and of that hated suitor she bore up with a brave front against those small, and mean, and irritating persecutions, which act on a high and noble spirit as the incessant drip of water on the intrenchant granite, that although she was calm and self-possessed, and dignified, nay, at times quick and high-spirited, and prompt at eloquent and cutting repartee, she was, when left alone, another creature. She, whose whole nature, in old days, was gentleness and woman mirthfulness, who never could walk across a room, or athwart a grassy lawn, but her gay soul would send her bounding like a happy fawn in some unpremeditated dance-steps; she, whose lips poured forth, not from the lack of thought, but from the very superfluity of fancy, one constant stream of blithe imaginative song, would now sit brooding for whole mornings in dark silence, with her hands folded in her lap, and her eyes, hard and tearless, and abstracted, riveted on those thin, wan, burning fingers; hearing no sounds from without, and if forced to lend her attention, starting with a wild stare from her revery, and gazing around her like one awakened suddenly from a deep sleep, and answering sullenly, querulously, and at times even harshly to addresses of the kindest meaning. Evening after evening, when she could escape, favored by the deep musings of her father, and the deeper potations of Sir Andrew, she would wander away into the deep, moist woods, heedless of the chill dews and loathsome mists, roaming the desolate paths like an unquiet ghost, and terminating still her melancholy walks at the margin of that deep, transparent tank, beside which she had parted from her lover.