“This is indeed passing strange.  There is no hound within the castle nor has there been for years.  Even the presence of a lap-dog will fret my mother, so in my father’s time they were every one removed to the kennels at the further end of the isle of Thrieve, whence even their howling cannot be heard.  But let us proceed to the Lady Margaret, and on our way examine the place where you saw the apparition.”

Sholto stood aside for the Earl to pass, but with a wave of his hand the latter said courteously, “Nay, but do you lead the way, captain of the guard.”

They passed the door of the chamber where lay the Lady Sybilla.  The niece of the ambassador must have been a heavy sleeper, for there was no sound within.  Opposite was the chamber of the Earl’s mother.  She also appeared to be undisturbed, but the increasing deafness of the Countess offered a complete explanation of her tranquillity.

Next the two young men came to the door of the marshal’s chamber.  As they were about to pass, it opened silently, and a man-servant with a closely cropped obsequious head appeared within.  He unclosed the door no further than would permit of his exit, and then he shut it again behind him, and stood holding the latch in his hand.

“His Excellency, being overfatigued, hath need of a little strong spirit,” he said, with a curious gobbling movement of his throat as if he himself had been either thirsty or in deadly and overmastering fear.

The Earl ordered Sholto to wake the cellarer and bid him bring the ambassador of France that which he required.  He himself would go onward to his sister’s chamber.  Sholto somewhat sullenly obeyed, for his heart was hot and angry within him.  He thought that he began to see clearly the motive of the Earl’s presence in the castle.  The youth was himself so deeply and hopelessly in love with Mistress Maud Lindesay that he could not understand any other of his sex being insensible to the charm of her beauty and myriad winsome graces.

As he went down the stairs he recalled a thousand circumstances to mind which now seemed capable of but one explanation.  It was evident that the Earl William came to visit some one by means of the private staircase under cloud of night.  Nay, more, Maud Lindesay and he might be already privately married, and the matter kept secret on account of the pride of his family, who devised another match for him.  For though the daughter of a knight, Maud Lindesay was assuredly no fit mate for the head of the more than regal house of Douglas.  He remembered how on Sundays and saints’ days Earl William always rode to and from the kirk with his sister on one side and Maud Lindesay on the other.  That the young Earl was by no means insensible to beauty, Sholto knew well, and he remembered his words to his own father, when he had asked to be allowed to accompany him on his Flanders mare, that such attendance was not seemly when a man was going a-courting.