part of the gentleman, I presume
there is some reference to a love affair between them."

"Do you really presume to form such a bold conjecture?" said Tinto. "And
the indignant earnestness with which you see the man urge his suit, the
unresisting and passive despair of the younger female, the stern air of
inflexible determination in the elder woman, whose looks express at
once consciousness that she is acting wrong and a firm determination to
persist in the course she has adopted----"

"If her looks express all this, my dear Tinto," replied I, interrupting
him, "your pencil rivals the dramatic art of Mr. Puff in The Critic, who
crammed a whole complicated sentence into the expressive shake of Lord
Burleigh's head."

"My good friend, Peter," replied Tinto, "I observe you are perfectly
incorrigible; however, I have compassion on your dulness, and am
unwilling you should be deprived of the pleasure of understanding my
picture, and of gaining, at the same time, a subject for your own pen.
You must know then, last summer, while I was taking sketches on the
coast of East Lothian and Berwickshire, I was seduced into the mountains
of Lammermoor by the account I received of some remains of antiquity in
that district. Those with which I was most struck were the ruins of an
ancient castle in which that Elizabeth-chamber, as you call it,
once existed. I resided for two or three days at a farmhouse in the
neighbourhood, where the aged goodwife was well acquainted with the
history of the castle, and the events which had taken place in it. One
of these was of a nature so interesting and singular, that my attention
was divided between my wish to draw the old ruins in landscape, and
to represent, in a history-piece, the singular events which have taken
place in it. Here are my notes of the tale," said poor Dick, handing a
parcel of loose scraps, partly scratched over with his pencil, partly
with his pen, where outlines of caricatures, sketches of turrets,
mills, old gables, and dovecots, disputed the ground with his written
memoranda.

I proceeded, however, to decipher the substance of the manuscript
as well as I could, and move it into the following Tale, in which,
following in part, though not entirely, my friend Tinto's advice, I
endeavoured to render my narrative rather descriptive than dramatic. My
favourite propensity, however, has at times overcome me, and my persons,
like many others in this talking world, speak now what the