Waverley sat down almost in silence, and with an air of absence and abstraction which could not give Miss Bradwardine a favourable opinion of his talents for conversation.  He answered at random one or two observations which she ventured to make upon ordinary topics; so that, feeling herself almost repulsed in her efforts at entertaining him, and secretly wondering that a scarlet coat should cover no better breeding, she left him to his mental amusement of cursing Doctor Doubleit’s favourite constellation of Ursa Major as the cause of all the mischief which had already happened and was likely to ensue.  At once he started, and his colour heightened, as, looking toward the window, he beheld the Baron and young Balmawhapple pass arm in arm, apparently in deep conversation; and he hastily asked, ’Did Mr. Falconer sleep here last night?’ Rose, not much pleased with the abruptness of the first question which the young stranger had addressed to her, answered drily in the negative, and the conversation again sunk into silence.

At this moment Mr. Saunderson appeared, with a message from his master, requesting to speak with Captain Waverley in another apartment.  With a heart which beat a little quicker, not indeed from fear, but from uncertainty and anxiety, Edward obeyed the summons.  He found the two gentlemen standing together, an air of complacent dignity on the brow of the Baron, while something like sullenness or shame, or both, blanked the bold visage of Balmawhapple.  The former slipped his arm through that of the latter, and thus seeming to walk with him, while in reality he led him, advanced to meet Waverley, and, stopping in the midst of the apartment, made in great state the following oration:  ’Captain Waverley—­my young and esteemed friend, Mr. Falconer of Balmawhapple, has craved of my age and experience, as of one not wholly unskilled in the dependencies and punctilios of the duello or monomachia, to be his interlocutor in expressing to you the regret with which he calls to remembrance certain passages of our symposion last night, which could not but be highly displeasing to you, as serving for the time under this present existing government.  He craves you, sir, to drown in oblivion the memory of such solecisms against the laws of politeness, as being what his better reason disavows, and to receive the hand which he offers you in amity; and I must needs assure you that nothing less than a sense of being dans son tort, as a gallant French chevalier, Mons. Le Bretailleur, once said to me on such an occasion, and an opinion also of your peculiar merit, could have extorted such concessions; for he and all his family are, and have been, time out of mind, Mavortia pectora, as Buchanan saith, a bold and warlike sept, or people.’

Edward immediately, and with natural politeness, accepted the hand which Balmawhapple, or rather the Baron in his character of mediator, extended towards him.  ‘It was impossible,’ he said, ’for him to remember what a gentleman expressed his wish he had not uttered; and he willingly imputed what had passed to the exuberant festivity of the day.’