After an hour had passed like a moment in their expressions of mutual
affection, Lady Staunton observed the Captain walking with impatient
steps below the window. "That tiresome Highland fool has returned upon
our hands," she said. "I will pray him to grace us with his absence."
"Hout no! hout no!" said Mrs. Butler, in a tone of entreaty; "ye maunna
affront the Captain."
"Affront?" said Lady Staunton; "nobody is ever affronted at what I do or
say, my dear. However, I will endure him, since you think it proper."
The Captain was accordingly graciously requested by Lady Staunton to
remain during dinner. During this visit his studious and punctilious
complaisance towards the lady of rank was happily contrasted by the
cavalier air of civil familiarity in which he indulged towards the
minister's wife.
"I have not been able to persuade Mrs. Butler," said Lady Staunton to the
Captain, during the interval when Jeanie had left the parlour, "to let me
talk of making any recompense for storming her house, and garrisoning it
in the way I have done."
"Doubtless, matam," said the Captain, "it wad ill pecome Mrs. Putler, wha
is a very decent pody, to make any such sharge to a lady who comes from
my house, or his Grace's, which is the same thing.
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