“Only a few men-at-arms, besides Sholto my squire, and my brother David,” he made answer.  “I did not wait for more.  But let me bring the lad to you.  Sholto you did not like when he was a plain archer of the guard, and I fear that he will not have risen in your grace since I dubbed him knight.”

David Douglas willingly obeyed the summons of his brother, and came forward to kiss the hand of the Lady Sybilla.

“Here, Sholto,” cried his lord, “come hither, man.  It will do your pride good to see a lady who avers that conceit hath eaten you up.”

Sholto came at the word and bowed before the French damosel as he was commanded, meekly enough to all outward aspect.  But in his heart he was saying over and over to himself words that consoled him mightily:  “A murrain on her!  The cozening madam, she will never be worth naming on the same day as Maud Lindesay!”

“Nay,” cried the Lady Sybilla, laughing; “indeed, I said not that I disliked this your squire.  What woman thinks the worse of a lad of mettle that he does not walk with his head between his feet.  But ’tis pity that there is no fair cruel maid to bind his heart in chains, and make him fetch and carry to break his pride.  He thinks overmuch of his sword-play and arrow skill.”

“He must go to France for that humbling,” said the Earl, gaily, “or else mayhap some day a maid may come from France to break his heart for him.  The like hath been and may be again.”

“I would that I had known there were such gallant blades as you three, my Lords of Douglas and their knight, sighing here in Scotland to have your hearts broke for the good of your souls.  I had then brought with me a tierce of damsels fair as cruel, who had done it in the flashing of a swallow’s wing.  But ’tis a contract too great for one poor maid.”

“Yet you yourself ventured all alone into this realm of forlorn and desperate men,” answered the Earl, scarcely recking what he said, nor indeed caring so that her dark eyes should continue to rest on him with the look he had seen in them at his first coming.

“All alone—­yes, much, much alone,” she answered with a strange glance about her.  “My kinsman loves not womankind, and neither in his castles nor yet in his company does he permit any of the sex long to abide.”

The men now mounted again, and the three rode back in the midst of the cavalcade of Douglas spears, the Chancellor talking as freely and confidently to the Earl as if he had been his friend for years, while the Earl of Douglas kept up the converse right willingly so long as, looking past the Chancellor, his eyes could rest also upon the delicately poised head and graceful form of the Lady Sybilla.

And behind them a horse’s length the Marshal de Retz rode, smiling in the depths of his blue-black beard, and looking at them out of the wicks of his triangular eyes.

Presently the towers of the Castle of Crichton rose before them on its green jutting spur.  The Tyne Valley sank beneath into level meads and rich pastures, while behind the Moorfoots spread brown and bare without prominent peaks or distinguished glens, but nevertheless with a certain large vagueness and solemnity peculiarly their own.