"I can assure your majesty that you are in error there," said Gowrie. "Count Manucci lived in absolute poverty from the time he quitted Scotland, having been expelled from Florence, as your majesty probably knows, on account of his religious opinions. He received a small pension from the Earl of Angus up to the day of his death, which the earl would certainly not have paid if the count had obtained possession of all his uncle's wealth." "That looks like truth," cried James. "I should not wonder if Angus had got the money himself."[3] "Of that I know nought, sire," answered Gowrie; "but I can assure your majesty that the only wealth this dear girl brings with her to me is herself, and three thousand ducats which her grandfather had saved." "Sorry to hear it," said the king. "We could have wished you a wealthier bride, my lord;" and there he stopped. Gowrie remained also silent, anxious to hear what the king's consideration of the subject would lead him to, and at all events to get some definite answer upon which he might act. He thought that the next question might be, where he had left Julia, but he was prepared with an answer even for that, although he much wished to avoid being compelled to give it. James, however, notwithstanding his despotic principles and his anxiety to establish a complete absolutism in church and state, was constitutionally timid with those of whose resistance he had had any experience; and he did not like to drive the earl to refuse an answer. He therefore merely said that which precluded him afterwards from acting upon the information he had really obtained, giving the earl greatly the advantage. "And so the lady is in Italy?" he observed, after a somewhat lengthened pause. "No, sire, she is not," answered Gowrie. "Her present abode I have engaged to keep secret, till such time as I may be permitted to present her to your majesty as my wife. Immediately that such is the case, and that we can be married, I will go to seek her, with your majesty's leave." "As far as the court of London, I suppose?" said James, somewhat bitterly. "No, sir, not above one quarter as far," replied the earl. "I should have been very sorry to have given any foreign prince a hold upon me, even through my affections." James remained silent, and seemed to hesitate, for he played with the points of his doublet, and shuffled about the papers on the table. "Well, my lord," he said at length, "the question is one of some difficulty. We must consider of the subject fully. All those Douglasses, even to the second degree, are banished men--exiled from the land; and it cannot be decided just in a moment whether we shall open the door to any of them. Besides, it might make strife and contention. Here, you see, is a sort of claim set up to the lands of Whiteburn, long since bestowed upon our faithful servant, Andrew Stuart."