The Heart of Mid-Lothian - Penn State University

will be much more ready to give my advice, and whether
you or he tell me about it, cannot much signify after all,
my dear. So you may just say whatever you like, only
mind I ask you no questions about it.”
Jeanie was a little embarrassed. She thought that the
communication she had to make was perhaps the only
means she might have in her power to gratify her friendly
and hospitable kinswoman. But her prudence instantly
suggested that her secret interview with Queen Caroline,
which seemed to pass under a certain sort of mystery,
was not a proper subject for the gossip of a woman like
Mrs. Glass, of whose heart she had a much better opinion
than of her prudence. She, therefore, answered in
general, that the Duke had had the extraordinary kindness
to make very particular inquiries into her sister’s
bad affair, and that he thought he had found the means
of putting it a’ straight again, but that he proposed to
tell all that he thought about the matter to Mrs. Glass
herself.
This did not quite satisfy the penetrating mistress of
the Thistle. Searching as her own small rappee, she, in
Sir Walter Scott
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spite of her promise, urged Jeanie with still farther questions.
“Had she been a’ that time at Argyle House? Was
the Duke with her the whole time? and had she seen the
Duchess? and had she seen the young ladies—and specially
Lady Caroline Campbell?”—To these questions
Jeanie gave the general reply, that she knew so little of
the town that she could not tell exactly where she had
been; that she had not seen the Duchess to her knowledge;
that she had seen two ladies, one of whom, she
understood, bore the name of Caroline; and more, she
said, she could not tell about the matter.
“It would be the Duke’s eldest daughter, Lady Caroline
Campbell, there is no doubt of that,” said Mrs. Glass;
“but doubtless, I shall know more particularly through
his Grace.—And so, as the cloth is laid in the little
parlour above stairs, and it is past three o’clock, for I
have been waiting this hour for you, and I have had a
snack myself; and, as they used to say in Scotland in my
time—I do not ken if the word be used now—there is ill
talking between a full body and a fasting.”