George was never more at a loss than for an answer to parry this thrust; but, fortunately for him, Walter rose and left the room, and, as he had taken no dinner, his mother followed to remonstrate with him against the folly of his conduct. Her exhortations and her menaces were, however, equally ineffectual; the poor natural was not to be moved; he felt his own despised and humiliated state; and the expectation which he had formed of the pleasure he was to enjoy, in again being permitted to caress and fondle his Betty Bodle, was so bitterly disappointed, that it cut him to the heart. No persuasion, no promise, could entice him to return to the dining-room; but a settled and rivetted resolution to go back to Glasgow obliged his mother to desist, and allow him to take his own way. He accordingly quitted the house, and immediately on arriving at home went to bed. Overpowered by the calls of hunger, he was next day allured to take some food; and from day to day after, for several years, he was in the same manner tempted to eat; but all power of volition, from the period of the visit, appeared to have become extinct within him. His features suffered a melancholy change, and he never spoke--nor did he seem to recognize any one; but gradually, as it were, the whole of his mind and intellect ebbed away, leaving scarcely the merest instincts of life. But the woeful form which Nature assumes in the death-bed of fatuity admonishes us to draw the curtain over the last scene of poor Watty. CHAPTER LXIII In the foregoing chapter we were led, by our regard for the simple affections and harmless character of the second Laird, to overstep a period of several years. We must now, in consequence, return, and resume the narrative from the time that Walter retired from the company; but, without entering too minutely into the other occurrences of the day, we may be allowed to observe, in the sage words of the Leddy, that the party enjoyed themselves with as much insipidity as is commonly found at the formal feasts of near relations. Mrs. Charles Walkinshaw, put on her guard by the conjectures of the minister of Camrachle, soon perceived an evident partiality on the part of her brother-in-law towards her son, and that he took particular pains to make the boy attentive to Robina, as his daughter was called. Indeed, the design of George was so obvious, and the whole proceedings of the day so peculiarly marked, that even the Leddy could not but observe them.