I pointed in that direction with a smile, and presently Neil leaped into the garden.

His eyes burned, and he had a black knife (as they call it on the Highland side) naked in his hand; but, seeing me beside his mistress, stood like a man struck.
"He has come to your call," said I; "judge how near he was to Edinburgh, or what was the nature of your father's errands.

Ask himself.

If I am to lose my life, or the lives of those that hang by me, through the means of your clan, let me go where I have to go with my eyes open." She addressed him tremulously in the Gaelic.

Remembering Alan's anxious civility in that particular, I could have laughed out loud for bitterness; here, sure, in the midst of these suspicions, was the hour she should have stuck by English.
Twice or thrice they spoke together, and I could make out that Neil (for all his obsequiousness) was an angry man.
Then she turned to me.