"Lovelier than her wont. She improves as she grows older, like this wine of Alicant; but there is a pensiveness about her----" "A pensiveness?" "That must be very flattering to you." "Jesting again," said Gray, with annoyance. "Under favour, not in the least." "Then you really saw her, MacLellan?" "How could I have judged of her beauty or pensiveness else?" "Often?" "Once only, my friend." "At Thrave?" "No, faith!" replied Sir Thomas, laughing and shrugging his shoulders; "I have a wholesome dread of that ugly gallows knob above the castle gate. But I did see her, however, and so closely, that her cramasie skirts rustled against my leather gambadoes, as she passed me." "Where--where?" "In the Lady Chapel of Tongland. I would have helped her to holy water from the font, but it was frozen hard and fast; for it was Candlemas day, and the Dee below the abbey wall was a sheet of ice, from rock to rock." "You saw her," said Gray musingly, with a soft smile, as if he conjured up her face and form; "you saw, and yet did not speak with her?" "By St. Cuthbert, 'twere as much as my life is worth to have done so, begirt as she was by Earl James's surly swashbucklers and rusty helmetted moss-troopers; but, from all I can learn in Galloway, she believes you dead." "Oh--impossible!" "Why so? Did she not see you stricken to the earth by the swords and mauls of more than a hundred wild Galwegians, Douglases, and devils?" "True, she must have seen it--if, indeed, she could have looked upon it." "Be assured that curiosity will conquer alarm--even love, at times," responded the sceptical MacLellan. "A fatal mistake may result from all this." "What mean you by a fatal mistake--a marriage?" "Yes," said Gray, with a bitter sigh. "It is not unlikely," replied the lieutenant, carelessly, while polishing his cuirass with a leather glove. "How--why do you say so?" "Nay; I did but echo your own thoughts." "I have none; I am full of sorrow and bewilderment." "Earl James and his countess are leaving nothing undone to strengthen their hands for some great enterprise. All men in Galloway say so, from the Brig of Dumfries to the Point of Kirkcolm; for the _black dinner_ is yet fresh in their minds, and the marriage of Lady Murielle to a powerful lord might--might----" "Say on." "Add a few thousand men to their strength, should the Douglases make a Raid out of Galloway." "Oh, how many secret tears must all this have cost her! She believes me dead: dear Murielle! I could joyously die for her--" "Joyously to _live_ for her, would be to act the wiser part," said the other, with a loud laugh.