In extreme alarm and indignation, Margaret repaired to her husband. He was kneeling before the shrine of the Lady in the Chapel of Surry, telling his beads, and he did not stir, or look round, or relax one murmur of his Aves, while she paced about, wrung her hands, and vainly tried to control her agitation. At last he rose, and coldly said, ‘I knew it could be no other who thus interrupted my devotions.’
‘My sisters!’ she gasped.
‘Well, what of them?’
‘Do you know what wicked things are said of them—the dear maids? Ah!’—as she saw his strange smile—‘you have heard! You will silence the fellows, who deserve to have their tongues torn out for defaming a king’s daughters.’
‘Verily, ma mie,’ said Louis, ‘I see no such great improbability in the tale. They have been bred up to the like, no doubt a mountain kite of the Vosges is a more congenial companion than a chevalier bien courtois.’
‘You speak thus simply to tease your poor Margot,’ she said, pleading yet trembling; ‘but I know better than to think you mean it.’
‘As my lady pleases,’ he said.
‘Then will I send Sir Patrick with an escort to seek them at Nanci and bring them hither?’
‘Where is this same troop to come from?’ demanded Louis.
‘Our own Scottish archers, who will see no harm befall my blessed father’s daughters.’