‘What can I think,’ answered Waverley,’till I know what your requests were?’ ’Why, what signifies what they were, man?  I tell you it was I that made them—­I to whom he owes more than to any three who have joined the standard; for I negotiated the whole business, and brought in all the Perthshire men when not one would have stirred.  I am not likely, I think, to ask anything very unreasonable, and if I did, they might have stretched a point.  Well, but you shall know all, now that I can draw my breath again with some freedom.  You remember my earl’s patent; it is dated some years back, for services then rendered; and certainly my merit has not been diminished, to say the least, by my subsequent behaviour.  Now, sir, I value this bauble of a coronet as little as you can, or any philosopher on earth; for I hold that the chief of such a clan as the Sliochd nan Ivor is superior in rank to any earl in Scotland.  But I had a particular reason for assuming this cursed title at this time.  You must know that I learned accidentally that the Prince has been pressing that old foolish Baron of Bradwardine to disinherit his male heir, or nineteenth or twentieth cousin, who has taken a command in the Elector of Hanover’s militia, and to settle his estate upon your pretty little friend Rose; and this, as being the command of his king and overlord, who may alter the destination of a fief at pleasure, the old gentleman seems well reconciled to.’

‘And what becomes of the homage?’

’Curse the homage!  I believe Rose is to pull off the queen’s slipper on her coronation-day, or some such trash.  Well, sir, as Rose Bradwardine would always have made a suitable match for me but for this idiotical predilection of her father for the heir-male, it occurred to me there now remained no obstacle unless that the Baron might expect his daughter’s husband to take the name of Bradwardine (which you know would be impossible in my case), and that this might be evaded by my assuming the title to which I had so good a right, and which, of course, would supersede that difficulty.  If she was to be also Viscountess Bradwardine in her own right after her father’s demise, so much the better; I could have no objection.’

‘But, Fergus,’ said Waverley, ’I had no idea that you had any affection for Miss Bradwardine, and you are always sneering at her father.’

’I have as much affection for Miss Bradwardine, my good friend, as I think it necessary to have for the future mistress of my family and the mother of my children.  She is a very pretty, intelligent girl, and is certainly of one of the very first Lowland families; and, with a little of Flora’s instructions and forming, will make a very good figure.  As to her father, he is an original, it is true, and an absurd one enough; but he has given such severe lessons to Sir Hew Halbert, that dear defunct the Laird of Balmawhapple, and others, that nobody dare laugh at him, so his absurdity goes for nothing.  I tell you there could have been no earthly objection—­none.  I had settled the thing entirely in my own mind.’