He looked around with an air of painful recollection.
"I think," at length he observed, "I think, Mr.Oldbuck, that I have been in this apartment before." "Yes, my lord," answered Oldbuck, "upon occasion of an excursion hither from Knockwinnock--and since we are upon a subject so melancholy, you may perhaps remember whose taste supplied these lines from Chaucer, which now form the motto of the tapestry." "I guess", said the Earl, "though I cannot recollect.

She excelled me, indeed, in literary taste and information, as in everything else; and it is one of the mysterious dispensations of Providence, Mr.Oldbuck, that a creature so excellent in mind and body should have been cut off in so miserable a manner, merely from her having formed a fatal attachment to such a wretch as I am." Mr.Oldbuck did not attempt an answer to this burst of the grief which lay ever nearest to the heart of his guest, but, pressing Lord Glenallan's hand with one of his own, and drawing the other across his shaggy eyelashes, as if to brush away a mist that intercepted his sight, he left the Earl at liberty to arrange himself previous to dinner..