The stomacher of the countess-duchess was entirely covered with native pearls, for those found in the Scottish streams were held to be of great value. Among the costly jewels lost by Henry V., when his camp was plundered at Agincourt, Rymer mentions _una perula Scotiæ_; and only a few years before the date of our story, James I presented to Æneas Sylvius, the Roman legate, _one_, which is now in the papal crown. Before her sweet face, pretty Murielle was manoeuvring her fan, quite as skilfully as any of her countrywomen might do at the present day; and through the sticks of it, her merry and soft violet eyes peeped from time to time at a handsome and soldier-like man, who wore a crimson velvet pourpoint, with a steel gorget, a gold belt, and hanging sleeves of yellow silk. He was Sir Patrick Gray, the captain of the guard. While talking gravely of "the growing heresies of John Huss and Paul Crawer," he seemed to be entirely occupied with the countess of Ormond, before whom he knelt on one knee, and for whom he was winding and unwinding several balls of brightly coloured silk and golden thread, which she was using while embroidering a missal cover, for the ladies of those days were never idle; but in his abstraction, or pre-occupation with Murielle, he made many a provoking knot, which the little white fingers of the lovely countess required all their cunning to unravel. His love for Murielle had brought him hither uninvited; and he felt (like his kinsman, MacLellan) that he was among the enemies of the king his master, and of the government; while the coldness with which the boy-noble and the girl-countess treated him filled his heart with sorrow and anger. The scraps of conversation he heard all savoured of hostility to James and to his ministers, with dark hints of daring and ulterior political projects, as yet undeveloped and apparently obscure. He was aware that Earl James of Abercorn, Earl Hugh of Ormond, Sir Malcolm Fleming, Sir Alan Lauder, and other kinsmen of the Douglases viewed him with undisguised aversion; and while he continued to play with the balls of thread, and utter pleasant commonplaces to the ladies near, those four personages were standing aloof in a corner, leaning on their swords, which were somewhere about five feet long, "nursing their wrath to keep it warm," and wishing they had the captain of the king's guard on a solitary hill-side, or even in the street without. "And this Livingstone--I beg pardon, _Sir_ Alexander Livingstone, Laird of Callender--a mere baron," he heard the earl of Douglas say to the abbot; "by what warrant or right is such a man as _he_ regent of the realm?" "I have heard your noble father ask the same question often, with the same tone--ay, and with the same sombre gloom in his eye, my lord," replied the abbot evasively. "Well--know you by what right?" reiterated the young noble bitterly, giving vent to the hatred his dead father had carefully and unceasingly inspired and fostered.