And she affected to heave a deep sigh.

“Ah, Maudie,” said the little girl, reproachfully, “now you are being bad.  I know it by your voice.  Do not be unkind to my Sholto, for his hair is so pleasant to touch.  I wish you could feel it.  And, besides, when you are wicked to him, you make him jerk, and if he does it often I shall have to send him away.”

The Maid of Galloway was indeed entirely correct.  For Maud Lindesay, accustomed all her life to the homage of many men, and having been brought up in a great castle in an age when chivalrous respect to women had not yet given place to the licence of the Revival of Letters, practised irritation like a fine art.  She was brimful of the superfluity of naughtiness, yet withal as innocent and playful as a kitten.

But Sholto, both from a feeling that he belonged to an inferior rank, and also being exceedingly conscious of his youth, chose to be bitterly offended.

“You mistake me greatly, Mistress Lindesay,” he said in an uneven schoolboy’s voice, to which he tried in vain to add a touch of worldly coldness; “I do not make love to every girl I meet, nor yet do I love them and leave them as you say.  You have been most gravely misinformed.”

“Nay,” tripped the maid of honour, with arch quickness of reply, “I said not that you were naturally equipped for such amorous quests.  I meant to designate your brother Laurence.  ’Tis pity he is to be a clerk.  Though one day doubtless he will make a very proper and consolatory father confessor—­”

Sholto walked on in silence, his eyes fixed before him, and in such high dudgeon that he pretended to be unconscious of what the girl had been saying.  Then the little Margaret began to prattle in her pretty way, and the youth answered “yes” and “no” sulkily and at random, his thoughts being alternately on the doing of some great deed to make his mistress repent her cruelty, and on a leap into the castle pool, in whose unsunned deeps he might find oblivion from all the flouts of hard-hearted beauty.

Maud kept her eyes upon him, a smile of satisfaction on her lips so long as he was not looking at her.  She liked to play her fish as satisfactorily as she could before grassing it at her feet.

“Besides, it will do him good,” she said to herself.  “He hath lately won the gold badge of archery, and, like all men, is apt to think overmuch of himself at such times.  Moreover, I can always make it up to him after—­if I like, that is.”

But as often as Sholto dropped a little behind, keeping pace with Maid Margaret’s slower palfrey so that Maud was sure he looked at her, the pretty coquette cast down her eyes in affected humility and sorrow.  Whereupon immediately Sholto felt his resentment begin to melt like snow off a dike top when the sun of April is shining.

But neither of them uttered another word till they reached the drawbridge which crossed the nether moat and conducted to the noble gateway of Thrieve.  Then, at the foot of the stairway to the hall, Sholto, having swung the little maid from her pony, after a moment of sullen hesitation went across to assist Mistress Maud Lindesay out of her saddle.