inwardly deprecated the remorseless and protracted accuracy with which the worthy Sir Everard rehearsed the various degrees of propinquity between the house of Waverley-Honour and the doughty barons, knights, and squires to whom they stood allied; if (notwithstanding his obligations to the three ermines passant) he sometimes cursed in his heart the jargon of heraldry, its griffins, its moldwarps, its wyverns, and its dragons, with all the bitterness of Hotspur himself, there were moments when these communications interested his fancy and rewarded his attention.

The deeds of Wilibert of Waverley in the Holy Land, his long absence and perilous adventures, his supposed death, and his return on the evening when the betrothed of his heart had wedded the hero who had protected her from insult and oppression during his absence; the generosity with which the Crusader relinquished his claims, and sought in a neighbouring cloister that peace which passeth not away; [Footnote:  See Note 2.]—­to these and similar tales he would hearken till his heart glowed and his eye glistened.  Nor was he less affected when his aunt, Mrs. Rachel, narrated the sufferings and fortitude of Lady Alice Waverley during the Great Civil War.  The benevolent features of the venerable spinster kindled into more majestic expression as she told how Charles had, after the field of Worcester, found a day’s refuge at Waverley-Honour, and how, when a troop of cavalry were approaching to search the mansion, Lady Alice dismissed her youngest son with a handful of domestics, charging them to make good with their lives an hour’s diversion, that the king might have that space for escape.  ‘And, God help her,’ would Mrs. Rachel continue, fixing her eyes upon the heroine’s portrait as she spoke, ’full dearly did she purchase the safety of her prince with the life of her darling child.  They brought him here a prisoner, mortally wounded; and you may trace the drops of his blood from the great hall door along the little gallery, and up to the saloon, where they laid him down to die at his mother’s feet.  But there was comfort exchanged between them; for he knew, from the glance of his mother’s eye, that the purpose of his desperate defence was attained.  Ah!  I remember,’ she continued, ’I remember well to have seen one that knew and loved him.  Miss Lucy Saint Aubin lived and died a maid for his sake, though one of the most beautiful and wealthy matches in this country; all the world ran after her, but she wore widow’s mourning all her life for poor William, for they were betrothed though not married, and died in—­ I cannot think of the date; but I remember, in the November of that very year, when she found herself sinking, she desired to be brought to Waverley-Honour once more, and visited all the places where she had been with my grand-uncle, and caused the carpets to be raised that she might trace the impression of his blood, and if tears could have washed it out, it had not been there now; for there was not a dry eye in the house.  You would have thought, Edward, that the very trees mourned for her, for their leaves dropt around her without a gust of wind, and, indeed, she looked like one that would never see them green again.’