She felt an universal trepidation; not so much from the awe which majesty inspires, as from the fear of seeing her king in a condition so unbecoming his dignity. A noble mind shrinks from seeing nobility degraded; and she felt more abashed at the poor attendance around the king, and at the want of state in his appointments, than others do at all the pomp and ceremony of the most gorgeous and splendid court. The Chevalier received the Countess of Nithsdale with what he meant to be marked attention; but his manner was subdued, his bearing dejected; partly through his late illness, and partly from that consciousness of being marked out for misfortune, which pervaded his every look, his every action. There was a melancholy majesty in his thin person, and his handsome but pale features, which (although united with a certain stiffness and reserve, little calculated to find favour in the sight of the adventurous and the desperate who alone adhered to his cause,) interested Lady Nithsdale, while it saddened her. The Earl of Mar presented her to the Chevalier, whom, upon her entrance, she found engaged in conversation with the Earl Marischal in one of the windows that overlooked the flat country between the palace and the Tay. She dropped upon both her knees, overcome with emotion at finding herself in the actual presence of her king, and with grief at the desolate appearance of all around him, of all without and all within his residence. He quickly raised her, and imprinting on her marble forehead a royal kiss, he professed his satisfaction at becoming personally acquainted with one, whose family had ever been faithful servants to his own. The measured expressions chilled her; she had never before looked upon the sacrifices made either by the Herberts or the Maxwells but as the performance of a bounden duty, in which they had not failed; but when these sacrifices seemed to be considered in the same light by him for whom they had been made, their magnitude and their extent increased in her eyes. The Chevalier then inquired whether she had received news lately from the earl her husband. Her eyes filled with tears; the inquiry was made in so cold, so formal a tone: "But once, sire, since he has been a prisoner;" and had she at that moment attempted a longer sentence, her voice would have failed her altogether. "We hope that the worthy lord's health continued unimpaired by confinement?" She struggled with her feelings, and replied, "My lord complained not of any personal privation or hardship. His thoughts were all, as they have ever been, for his king, his country, and his faith!"