While Isabella and he were sitting together conversing on the subject, the old Leddy Plealands came in, anxious to hear what had been done, having previously been informed of the intended settlements, but not of their nature and objects. In her character, as we have already intimated, there was a considerable vein, if not of romantic sentiment, unquestionably of morbid sensibility. She disliked her son-in-law from the first moment in which she saw him; and this dislike had made her so averse to his company, that, although their connexion was now nearly of four-and-twenty years’ standing, she had still but a very imperfect notion of his character. She regarded him as one of the most sordid of men, without being aware that avarice with him was but an agent in the pursuit of that ancestral phantom which he worshipped as the chief, almost the only, good in life; and, therefore, could neither imagine any possible ground for supposing, that, after being reconciled, he could intend his first-born any injury, nor sympathize with the anxieties which her young friends freely confessed both felt, while she could not but deplore the unsatisfactory state of their immediate situation. In the meantime, Walter and his father were walking homeward. The old man held no communion with his son; but now and then he rebuked him for halloing at birds in the hedges, or chasing butterflies, a sport so unbecoming his years. In their way they had occasion to pass the end of the path which led to Kilmarkeckle, where Miss Bodle, the heiress, resided with her father. ‘Watty,’ said Grippy to his son, ‘gae thy ways hame by thysel, and tell thy mither that am gaun up to the Kilmarkeckle to hae some discourse wi’ Mr. Bodle, so that she need na weary if I dinna come hame to my dinner.’ ‘Ye had better come hame,’ said Watty, ‘for there’s a sheep’s head in the pat, wi’ a cuff o’ the neck like ony Glasgow bailie’s.--Ye’ll no get the like o’t at Kilmarkeckle, where the kail’s sae thin that every pile o’ barley runs roun’ the dish, bobbing and bidding gude day to its neighbour.’ Claud had turned into the footpath from the main road, but there was something in this speech which did more than provoke his displeasure; and he said aloud, and with an accent of profound dread,--‘I hope the Lord can forgi’e me for what I hae done to this fool!’ Walter was not so void of sense as to be incapable of comprehending the substance of this contrite exclamation; and instantly recollecting his mother’s admonition, and having some idea, imperfect as it was, of the peril of parchments with seals on them, he began, with obstreperous sobs and wails, to weep and cry, because, as he said, ‘My father and our Charlie had fastened on me the black bargain o’ a law plea to wrang me o’ auld daddy’s mailing.’