“And do you go with him?” cried Maud, her bright colour leaving her face.

“Not only I, but all that can be spared of the men-at-arms and of the archer guard,” answered Sholto.

Maud Lindesay turned about and took the little girl’s hand.

“Margaret,” she said, “let us go to my lady.  Perhaps she will be able to keep my Lord William at home.”

So they went back to the chamber of my Lady of Douglas.  Now the Countess had never been of great influence with her son, even during her husband’s lifetime, and had certainly none with him since.  Still it was possible that William Douglas might, for a time at least, listen to advice and delay his setting out till a suitable retinue could be brought together to protect him.  Maud and Margaret found the Lady of Douglas busily embroidering a vestment of silk and gold for the Abbot of Sweetheart.  She laid aside her work and listened with gentle patience to the hasty tale told by Maud Lindesay.

“I will speak with William,” she answered, with a certain hopelessness in her voice, “but I know well he will go his own gait for aught that his mother can say.  He is his father’s son, and the men of the house of Douglas, they come and they go, recking no will but their own.  And even so will my son William.”

“But he is taking David with him also!” cried Margaret.  “I met him even now on the stair, wild in haste to put on his shirt of mail and the sword with the golden hilt which the ambassador of France gave him.”

A quick flush coloured the pale countenance of the Lady Countess.

“Nay, but one is surely enough to meet the Chancellor.  David shall not go.  He is but a lad and knows nothing of these things.”

For this boy was ever his mother’s favourite, far more than either her elder son or her little daughter, whom indeed she left entirely to the care and companionship of Maud Lindesay.

My Lady of Douglas went slowly downstairs.  The Earl, with Sholto by his side, was ordering the accoutrement of the mounted men-at-arms in the courtyard.

“William,” she called, in a soft voice which would not have reached him, busied as he was with his work, but that little Margaret raised her childish treble and called out:  “William, our mother desires to speak with you.  Do you not hear her?”

The Earl turned about, and, seeing his mother, came quickly to her and stood bareheaded before her.

“You are not going to run into danger, William?” she said, still softly.

“Nay, mother mine,” he answered, smiling, “do not fear, I do but ride to visit the Chancellor Crichton in his castle, and also to bid farewell to the French ambassador, who abode here as our guest.”

A sudden light shone in upon the mind of Maud Lindesay.

“’Tis all that French minx!” she whispered in Sholto’s ear, “she hath bewitched him.  No one need try to stop him now.”

His mother went on, with an added anxiety in her voice.