Earl William and the Lady Sybilla talked together that which no one else could hear.

“So after all you have not become a churchman and gone off to drone masses with the monks of your good uncle?” she said, looking up at him with one of her lingering, drawing glances.

“Nay,” Earl William answered; “surely one Douglas at the time is gift enough to holy church.  At least, I can choose my own way in that, though in most things I am as straitly constrained as the King himself.”

“Speaking of the King,” she said, “my uncle the Marshal must perforce ride to Edinburgh to deliver his credentials.  Would it not be a most mirthful jest to ride with equipage such as this to that mongrel poverty-stricken Court, and let the poor little King and his starved guardian see what true greatness and splendour mean?”

“I have sworn never again to enter Edinburgh town,” said the Earl, slowly; “it was prophesied that there one of my race must meet a black bull which shall trample the house of Douglas into ruins.”

“Of course, if the Earl of Douglas is afraid—­” mused the lady.  The young man started as if he had been stung.

“Madame,” he said with a sudden chill hauteur, “you come from far and do not know.  No Douglas has ever been afraid throughout all their generations.”

The lady turned upon him with a sweet and moving smile.  She held out her fair hand.

“Pardon—­nay, a thousand pardons.  I knew not what I said.  I am not acquainted with your Scottish speech nor yet with your Scottish customs.  Do not be angry with me; I am a stranger, young, far from my own people and my own land.  Think me foolish for speaking thus freely if you like, but not wilfully unkind.”

And when the Earl looked at her, there were tears glittering in her beautiful eyes.

“I will go to Edinburgh,” he cried.  “I am the Douglas.  The Tutor and the Chancellor are but as two straws in my hand, a longer and a shorter.  I fling them from me—­thus!”

The Lady Sybilla clapped her hands joyously and turned towards the young man.  “Will you indeed go with me?” she cried.  “Will you truly?  I could kiss your hand, my Lord Douglas, you make me so glad.”

“Your kiss will keep,” said the Earl, with a quiet passion quivering in his voice.

“Nay, I meant it not thus—­not as you mean it.  I knew not what I said.  But it will indeed change all things for me if you do but come.  Then I shall have some one to speak with—­some one with whom to laugh at their pitiful Court mummery, their fiasco of dignity.  You are not like these other beggarly Scots, my Lord Duke of Touraine.”

“They are brave men and loyal gentlemen,” said the generous young Earl.  “They would die for me.”

“Nay, but so I declare would I,” gaily cried the lady, glancing at his handsome head with a quick admiring regard.  “So would I—­if I were a man.  Besides, there is so little worth living for in a country such as this.”