Meanwhile Mr Foggo sat in his armchair steadily regarding the candle before him. He loved conversation, but he was not talkative, especially in his own house. Sometimes the old man’s acute eyes glanced from under his shaggy brow with a momentary keenness towards Harry--sometimes they shot across the table a momentary sparkle of grim contempt; but to make out from Mr Foggo’s face what Mr Foggo was thinking, was about the vainest enterprise in the world. It was different with his sister: Miss Willsie’s well-complexioned countenance changed and varied like the sky. You could pursue her sudden flashes of satisfaction, resentment, compassion, and injury into all her dimples, as easily as you could follow the clouds over the heavens. Nor was it by her looks alone that you could discover the fluctuating sympathies of Miss Willsie. Short, abrupt, hasty exclamations, broke from her perpetually. “The vagabond!--to think of that!” “Ay, that’s right now; I thought there was something in _him_.” “Bless me--such a story!” After this manner ran on her unconscious comments. She was a considerable politician, and this was an interesting debate; and you could very soon make out by her continual observations the political opinions of the mistress of Killiecrankie. She was a desperate Tory, and at the same moment the most direful and unconstitutional of Radicals. With a hereditary respect she applauded the sentiments of the old country-party, and clung to every institution with the pertinacity of a martyr; yet with the same breath, and the most delightful inconsistency, was vehement and enthusiastic in favour of the wildest schemes of reform; which, we suppose, is as much as to say that Miss Willsie was a very feminine politician, the most unreasonable of optimists, and had the sublimest contempt for all practical considerations when she had convinced herself that anything was _right_. “I knew it!” cried Miss Willsie, with a burst of triumph; “he’s out, and every one disowning him--a mean crew, big and little! If there’s one thing I hate, it’s setting a man forward to tell an untruth, and then letting him bear all the blame!” “He’s got his lawful deserts,” said Mr Foggo. This gentleman, more learned than his sister, took a very philosophical view of public matters, and acknowledged no particular leaning to any “party” in his general interest in the affairs of state. “I never can find out now,” said Miss Willsie suddenly, “what the like of Mr Atheling can have to do with this man--a lord and a great person, and an officer of state--but his eye kindles up at the name of him, as if it was the name of a friend. There cannot be ill-will unless there is acquaintance, that’s my opinion; and an ill-will at this lord I am sure Mr Atheling has.” “They come from the same countryside,” said Mr Foggo; “when they were lads they knew each other.”