‘Ha! say you so? I had heard a different story from Buchan, from the Grahams, the Halls. Revenge is sweet—as your mother found it.’
‘The murderers had only their deserts.’
Louis shrugged his shoulders, ‘That is as their sons may think.’
‘No one would be so dastardly as to wreak vengeance on two young helpless maids,’ cried Margaret. ‘Oh! sir, help me; what think you?’
‘Madame knows better than I do the spirit alike of her sisters and of her own countrymen.’
‘Nay, nay, Monsieur, husband, do but help me! My poor sisters in this strange land! You, who are wiser than all, tell me what can have become of them?’
‘What can I say, Madame? Love—love of the minstrel kind seems to run in the family. You all have supped full thereof at Nanci. If report said true, there was a secret lover in their suite. What so likely as that the May game should have become earnest?’
‘But, sir, we are accountable. My sisters were entrusted to us.’
‘Not to me,’ said Louis. ‘If the boy, your brother, expected me to find husbands and dowers for a couple of wild, penniless, feather-pated damsels-errant, he expected far too much. I know far too well what are Scotch manners and ideas of decorum to charge myself with the like.’
‘Sir, do you mean to insult me?’ demanded Margaret, rising to the full height of her tall stature.