"It is over," replied Roland, avoiding the eye of the earl, who perceived a sword-thrust in his doublet, and a rent in his velvet mantle, where none had been visible the day before; "and to-morrow I am to show them all to the queen, and must, with my own hands, fire off the great gun Meg for her behoof. By Jove! I will carry off the cock from St. Anthony's spire at Leith!" "And what of this dainty dame," said the Countess, as they proceeded up the street; "hast heard how her health is this morning?" "I have not; but if I am to judge from the unwonted reserve of the king, I should deem her poorly enough." "His reserve?" said the earl, scornfully; "and thus he vents his petulance on a gallant knight, as he would upon his pimps of the house of Arran--those rascally Hamiltons," he added, with eyes flashing fire, "who, gorged to their full with the plunder of our kinsmen, and building unto themselves strengths from which even our valour can never drive them--castles and towers, to which the palaces of Lochmaben and Linlithgow are but huts and sheilings." "Oh! hush, ye unwise bairn," said the countess; "hush, and take your place among the serving-men, lest we be seen conversing, and so excite suspicion. Let us not talk harshly of this puir French stranger, whom, father St. Bernard tells me, hath a deadly disease, which preyeth upon her vitals, and will, ere long, bear her to the grave." "Disease!" exclaimed Jane and her companions, with surprise; "and what is this disease?" "'Tis a catarrh, which descendeth daily into her stomach, and must, sooner or later, cause death, for it hath defied the most skilful physicians and apothegars of France and Italy. Yet, were she mine ain bairn, or had I the place o' that fashionless body, Madame de Montreuil, I would soon make her whole and well." "How, how, Lady Ashkirk?" asked Sybil and the others, who put great faith in the countess's skill as a leech; and really, at salving a slash from a sword, or staunching a thrust from a poniard, few in Edinburgh equalled her; and it was a time when she found plenty of patients.