miss allonby found my lord duke of ormskirk deep in an infinity of papers.

but at her entrance he rose and with a sign dismissed his secretary.

it appears appropriate here to afford you some notion of ormskirk's exterior. i pilfer from löwe's memoir of him, where horace calverley, who first saw ormskirk at about this time, is quoted:

"his grace was in blue-and-silver, which became him, though he is somewhat stomachy for such conspicuous colors. a handsome man, i would have said, honest but not particularly intelligent…. walpole, in a fit of spleen, once called him 'a porcelain sphinx,' and the phrase sticks; but, indeed, there is more of the china-doll about him. he possesses the same too-perfect complexion, his blue eyes have the same spick-and-span vacuity; and the fact that the right orb is a trifle larger than its fellow gives his countenance, in repose, much the same expression of placid astonishment…. very plump, very sleepy-looking, immaculate as a cat, you would never have accorded him a second glance: covert whisperings that the stout gentleman yonder is the great duke of ormskirk have, i think, taxed human belief more than once during these ten years past."

they said of ormskirk that he manifested a certain excitement on the day after culloden, when he had seventy-two prisoners shot en masse, [footnote: but for all that, when, near rossinish (see löwe), he captured flora macdonald and her ostensibly female companion, ormskirk flatly declined to recognize prince charles. "they may well call you the pretender, madam," he observed to "bettie burke,"—"since as concerns my party you are the most desirable pretender we could possibly imagine." and thereupon he gave the prince a pass out of scotland.] but this was doubted; and in any event, such battues being comparatively rare, he by ordinary appeared to regard the universe with a composed and feline indifference.