She would retire and send him a guide.
"Countess of Selkirk," said Paul, advancing a step, "I call to see the Earl.

On business of urgent importance, I call." "The Earl is in Edinburgh," uneasily responded the lady, again about to retire.
"Do you give me your honor as a lady that it is as you say ?" The lady looked at him in dubious resentment.
"Pardon, Madame, I would not lightly impugn a lady's lightest word, but I surmised that, possibly, you might suspect the object of my call, in which case it would be the most excusable thing in the world for you to seek to shelter from my knowledge the presence of the Earl on the isle." "I do not dream what you mean by all this," said the lady with a decided alarm, yet even in her panic courageously maintaining her dignity, as she retired, rather than retreated, nearer the door.
"Madame," said Paul, hereupon waving his hand imploringly, and then tenderly playing with his bonnet with the golden band, while an expression poetically sad and sentimental stole over his tawny face; "it cannot be too poignantly lamented that, in the profession of arms, the officer of fine feelings and genuine sensibility should be sometimes necessitated to public actions which his own private heart cannot approve.

This hard case is mine.

The Earl, Madame, you say is absent.

I believe those words.