Trevor had placed a few enamelled snuff-boxes of the eighteenth century among the other costly bibelots in the rooms, and, by an unusual chance, one of them actually did contain what the marquis wanted.  Merton opened it and handed it to the peer, who, after trying a pinch on his nostrils, poured a quantity into his hand and thence into a little black mull made of horn, which he took from his breast pocket.  ‘It’s good,’ he said.  ‘Better than I get at Kirkburn.  You’ll know who I am?’ His accent was nearly as broad as that of one of his own hinds, and he sometimes used Scottish words, to Merton’s perplexity.

‘Every one has heard of the Marquis of Restalrig,’ said Merton.

‘Ay, and little to his good, I’ll be bound?’

‘I do not listen to gossip,’ said Merton.  ’I presume, though you have not addressed me by letter, that your visit is not unconnected with business?’

’No, no, no letters!  I never was wasteful in postage stamps.  But as I was in London, to see the doctor, for the Edinburgh ones can make nothing of the case—­a kind of dwawming—­I looked in at auld Nicky Maxwell’s.  She gave me a good character of you, and she is one to lippen to.  And you make no charge for a first interview.’

Merton vaguely conjectured that to ‘lippen’ implied some sort of caress; however, he only said that he was obliged to Miss Maxwell for her kind estimate of his firm.

’Gray and Graham, good Scots names.  You’ll not be one of the Grahams of Netherby, though?’

‘The name of the firm is merely conventional, a trading title,’ said Merton; ‘if you want to know my name, there it is,’ and he handed his card to the marquis, who stared at it, and (apparently from motiveless acquisitiveness) put it into his pocket.

‘I don’t like an alias,’ he said.  ‘But it seems you are to lippen to.’

From the context Merton now understood that the marquis probably wished to signify that he was to be trusted.  So he bowed, and expressed a hope that he was ‘all that could be desired in the lippening way.’

‘You’re laughing at my Doric?’ asked the nobleman.  ’Well, in the only important way, it’s not at my expense.  Ha!  Ha!’ He shook a lumbering laugh out of himself.

Merton smiled—­and was bored.

‘I’m come about stopping a marriage,’ said the marquis, at last arriving at business.

‘My experience is at your service,’ said Merton.

‘Well,’ went on the marquis, ‘ours is an old name.’

Merton remarked that, in the course of historical study, he had made himself acquainted with the achievements of the house.

’Auld warld tales!  But I wish I could tell where the treasure is that wily auld Logan quarrelled over with the wizard Laird of Merchistoun.  Logan would not implement the contract—­half profits.  But my wits are wool gathering.’

He began to wander round the room, looking at the mezzotints.  He stopped in front of one portrait, and said ‘My Aunt!’ Merton took this for an exclamation of astonishment, but later found that the lady (after Lawrence) really had been the great aunt of the marquis.