“Nay, wait,” she cried, “for I must see all the show out, and here come the Scots Guard, thy friends, and I need time to take counsel with my wisdom on this weighty matter.  See, they know you”; and, indeed, many a man in that gallant array waved his hand to me merrily, as they filed past under their banners—­the Douglas’s bloody heart, the Crescent moon of Harden, the Napier’s sheaf of spears, the blazons of Lindsays and Leslies, Homes, and Hepburns, and Stuarts.  It was a sight to put life into the dying breast of a Scot in a strange country, and all were strong men and young, ruddy and brown of cheek, high of heart and heavy of hand.  And most beckoned to me, and pointed onwards to that way whither they were bound, in chase of fame and fortune.  All this might have made a sick man whole, but my spirit was dead within me, so that I could scarce beckon back to them, or even remember their faces.

“Would I forgive you,” said Charlotte, after she had thrown the remnant of her roses to her friends among the Scots, “if you hurried to me, pale, and borne in a litter?  Nay, methinks not, or not for long; and then I should lay it on you never to see her face again;—­she is I, you know, for the nonce.  But if you waited and did not come, then my pride might yield at length, and I send for you.  But then, if so, methinks I would hate her (that is, me) more than ever.  Oh, it is a hard case when maids are angry!”

“You speak of yourself, how you would do this or that; but my lady is other than you, and pitiful.  Did she not come all these leagues at a word from me, hearing that I was sick?”

“At a word from you, good youth!  Nay, at a word from me!  Did you speak of me in your letter to her father?”

“Nay!” said I.

“You did well.  And therefore it was that I wrote, for I knew she would move heaven and earth and the Maid or she would come when she heard of another lass being in your company.  Nay, trust me, we women understand each other, and she would ask the Maid, who lodged here with us, what manner of lass I was to look upon, and the Maid’s answer would bring her.”

“You have been kind,” I said.  “And to you and the saints I owe it that I yet live to carry a sore heart and be tormented with your ill tongue.”

“And had you heard that a fair young knight, and renowned in arms, lay sick at your lady’s house, she nursing him, would you not have cast about for ways of coming to her?”

To this I answered nothing, but, with a very sour countenance, was rising to go, when my name was called in the street.

Looking down, I saw my master, who doffed his cap to the daughter of the house, and begging leave to come up, fastened his horse’s bridle to the ring in the wall, by the door.

Up he came, whom Charlotte welcomed very demurely, and so left us, saying that she must go about her household business; but as she departed she cast a look back at me, making a “moue,” as the French say, with her red lips.