 most intolerable formal pedant he had ever
had the misfortune to meet with, and the Chief of Glennaquoich as a Frenchified
Scotchman, possessing all the cunning and plausibility of the nation where he
was educated, with the proud, vindictive, and turbulent humour of that of his
birth. »If the devil,« he said, »had sought out an agent expressly for the
purpose of embroiling this miserable country, I do not think he could find a
better than such a fellow as this, whose temper seems equally active, supple,
and mischievous, and who is followed, and implicitly obeyed, by a gang of such
cut-throats as those whom you are pleased to admire so much.«
    The ladies of the party did not escape his censure. He allowed that Flora
Mac-Ivor was a fine woman, and Rose Bradwardine a pretty girl. But he alleged
that the former destroyed the effect of her beauty by an affectation of the
grand airs which she had probably seen practised at the mock court of St.
Germains. As for Rose Bradwardine, he said it was impossible for any mortal to
admire such a little uninformed thing, whose small portion of education was as
ill adapted to her sex or youth, as if she had appeared with one of her father's
old campaign-coats upon her person for her sole garment. Now much of this was
mere spleen and prejudice in the excellent Colonel, with whom the white cockade
on the breast, the white rose in the hair, and the Mac at the beginning of a
name, would have made a devil out of an angel; and indeed he himself jocularly
allowed that he could not have endured Venus herself, if she had been announced
in a drawing-room by the name of Miss Mac-Jupiter.
    Waverley, it may easily be believed, looked upon these young ladies with
very different eyes. During the period of the siege, he paid them almost daily
visits, although he observed with regret that his suit made as little progress
in the affections of the former as the arms of the Chevalier in subduing the
fortress. She maintained with rigour the rule she had laid down of treating him
with indifference, without either affecting to avoid him, or to shun intercourse
with him. Every word, every look was strictly regulated to accord with her
system, and neither the dejection of Waverley, nor the anger which Fergus
scarcely suppressed, could extend Flora's attention to Edward beyond that which
the most ordinary politeness demanded. On the other hand, Rose Bradwardine
gradually rose in Waverley's opinion. He had several opportunities of remarking
