"Patience yet awhile, my son," said the benevolent abbot, crossing to the young earl and caressing his curly black hair; "when I have the Master of Evil forgiven, and restored to the place from whence he fell, the lusts of the flesh will be effectually prevented from warring against the spirit of grace. _Sit nomen Domini benedictum!_" But the earl remained obstinately silent, with his dark eyes fixed on the fire, as if the gloomy future might be traced amid its glowing embers. His kinsman, John of Abercorn, smiled coldly, for by _his_ secret connivance many said this visit to the court had been planned; while the grim and turbulent lairds of Biggar and the Bass grasped their long swords with an air that seemed to say, the peaceful and holy days of the abbot's hopes were yet a long way off, and that the devil was likely, as he has ever done, to poke his nose for a long time in Scottish affairs; but a sad and sombre frown was in their eyes, for this journey of their chief to Edinburgh had been undertaken in direct opposition to all their entreaties, advice, and forebodings. CHAPTER VI. MURIELLE. Sweet love! sweet lines! sweet life! Here is her hand, the agent of her heart; Here is her oath for love, her honour's power: Oh that our fathers would applaud our loves, To seal our happiness with their consents. TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. An hour passed without Gray finding an opportunity for addressing more than the merest commonplaces to Murielle, yet his mind, even when conversing with others, was so full of her image, that the very rustle of her dress made his heart beat quicker; and he could see her form, face, and expression as distinctly as he heard her voice in fancy for ever, when she was absent; and the ribbon she had taken from her breast, and given him to wear in his bonnet, was a gift more prized than a royal crown. Their eyes were eloquent although their tongues were mute, for "their natures had so gradually blended into each other that, like two tints of the rainbow, the lines between them would soon become so extinct, that a separation would be the destruction of both." But the Countess Margaret had a secret grudge at our captain of the guard, and it arose from this circumstance. Prior to her marriage, and almost from her childhood, she had been a practised coquette, who had won many a brave and noble heart with a facility which her rank increased--but won only to cast them from her when tired of them, as she had done her dolls and toys when a girl, or her jewels, dresses, flowers, and baubles in riper years. They had served to beguile a day, a week, a month, those human playthings, and that was all she cared for.