 were
I permitted to peep into that Elizabeth chamber, and see the persons you have
sketched conversing in flesh and blood, I should not be a jot nearer guessing
the nature of their business, than I am at this moment while looking at your
sketch. Only generally, from the languishing look of the young lady, and the
care you have taken to present a very handsome leg on the 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 farm-house 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
