t unwounded. He had overreached himself, and stumbled,
it seemed, over the root of a tree, in making too eager a blow at his
antagonist. The despair he felt at his daughter's disappearance, was, in
Dixon's phrase, such as would have melted the heart of a whin stane, and
he was so much exhausted by his feelings, and the vain researches which
he made to discover the track of the ravishers, that a considerable
time elapsed ere he reached home, and communicated the alarm to his
domestics.
All his conduct and gestures were those of a desperate man.
"Speak not to me, Sir Frederick," he said impatiently; "You are no
father--she was my child, an ungrateful one! I fear, but still my
child--my only child. Where is Miss Ilderton? she must know something of
this. It corresponds with what I was informed of her schemes. Go, Dixon,
call Ratcliffe here Let him come without a minute's delay." The person
he had named at this moment entered the room.
"I say, Dixon," continued Mr. Vere, in an altered tone, "let Mr.
Ratcliffe know, I beg the favour of his company on particular
business.--Ah! my dear sir," he proceeded, as if noticing him for the
first time, "you are the very man whose advice can be of the utmost
service to me in this cruel extremity."
"What has happened, Mr. Vere, to discompose you?" said Mr, Ratcliffe,
gravely; and while the Laird of Ellieslaw details to him, with the most
animated gestures of grief and indignation, the singular adventure of
the morning, we shall take the opportunity to inform our readers of the
relative circumstances in which these gentlemen stood to each other.
In early youth, Mr. Vere of Ellieslaw had been remarkable for a career
of dissipation, which, in advanced life, he had exchanged for the no
less destructive career of dark and turbulent ambition. In both
cases, he had gratified the predominant passion without respect to the
diminution of his private fortune, although, where such inducements
were wanting, he was deemed close, avaricious, and grasping.
Notka biograficzna
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