The poor old abbot had very little idea of the real character of the personage with whom he was conversing; and the reader may imagine the astonishment with which the robber count listened to him, and the undisguised merriment with which he treated his great project regarding the restoration of the Man of Sin. In short, Count Ludwig deemed our worthy abbot neither a well-deserving divine nor eccentric pedant, but a veritable madman, and so often muttering several times, "Der Teufel hole dich!" or "Sangdieu!" and so forth, he ceased to listen, and continued to gaze covertly at Murielle. The recent interview with her lover gave a brilliance to her beauty, and a radiance to her expression; her slight but finely rounded form, being clad in cloth of silver under a robe of white gauze, seemed to stand forth in brilliant relief from the dark tapestry of the room. A silver caul confined her hair; her ornaments were all Scottish pearls, and everything about her appeared pure, girlish, and angelic--and so thought both the _roué_ duke and the ruffian count. Her eyes wandered frequently to the latter, though he terrified her, and she knew not why; but she pitied him for having such a terrible scar on his face, and it made her think of Patrick Gray. Little dreaming that _his_ sword had inflicted it, she timidly inquired of the duke where that wound was received. "In a battle with the Burgundians," replied the others readily, "a desperate one, when he slew all their men-at-arms." "But is not he of Burgundy?" said Murielle with surprise. "Ah, true; I meant to say with the French--but they fight so many," added the unabashed duke. After this Murielle relapsed into silence, for she listened to Albany rather than conversed with him. Hitherto she had steadily refused to meet him; but she was too little in stature and too gentle in spirit to be a _heroine_ either in romance or history; and perceived now the futility of resisting further to receive him, as it had been arranged that the duke was to accompany the earl to Rome, to the end that during the journey he might ingratiate himself with her, and that _there_ the marriage would be performed, after his betrothal to Mademoiselle of France had been cancelled by the Vatican--a measure which the French king, since Albany's change of fortune and position, most earnestly desired. And now James Achanna entered, with a smile spreading over his cat-like visage, when he saw how this goodly company were grouped. He wished to gain the ear of the earl, but that formidable personage was conversing with the Dyck Graf. When approaching he passed close to Murielle, who, while seeming to listen to Albany, was lost in reverie, and was unconsciously drawing from her pretty finger a pearl ring which Gray in happier times had given her. At that moment it suddenly slipped from her hand, and rolled among the rushes of the floor.