CHAPTER XII.
Their breakfast so warm to be sure they did eat, A custom in travellers mighty discreet.
Prior.
The breakfast of Lady Margaret Bellenden no more resembled a modern _dejune_, than the great stone-hall at Tillietudlem could brook comparison with a modern drawing-room.

No tea, no coffee, no variety of rolls, but solid and substantial viands,--the priestly ham, the knightly sirloin, the noble baron of beef, the princely venison pasty; while silver flagons, saved with difficulty from the claws of the Covenanters, now mantled, some with ale, some with mead, and some with generous wine of various qualities and descriptions.

The appetites of the guests were in correspondence to the magnificence and solidity of the preparation--no piddling--no boy's-play, but that steady and persevering exercise of the jaws which is best learned by early morning hours, and by occasional hard commons.
Lady Margaret beheld with delight the cates which she had provided descending with such alacrity into the persons of her honoured guests, and had little occasion to exercise, with respect to any of the company saving Claverhouse himself, the compulsory urgency of pressing to eat, to which, as to the peine forte et dure, the ladies of that period were in the custom of subjecting their guests.
But the leader himself, more anxious to pay courtesy to Miss Bellenden, next whom he was placed, than to gratify his appetite, appeared somewhat negligent of the good cheer set before him.

Edith heard, without reply, many courtly speeches addressed to her, in a tone of voice of that happy modulation which could alike melt in the low tones of interesting conversation, and rise amid the din of battle, "loud as a trumpet with a silver sound." The sense that she was in the presence of the dreadful chief upon whose fiat the fate of Henry Morton must depend--the recollection of the terror and awe which were attached to the very name of the commander, deprived her for some time, not only of the courage to answer, but even of the power of looking upon him.

But when, emboldened by the soothing tones of his voice, she lifted her eyes to frame some reply, the person on whom she looked bore, in his appearance at least, none of the terrible attributes in which her apprehensions had arrayed him.
Grahame of Claverhouse was in the prime of life, rather low of stature, and slightly, though elegantly, formed; his gesture, language, and manners, were those of one whose life had been spent among the noble and the gay.