‘I have left home so long,’ answered Walter, gravely, ‘I cannot count my kin; and yet I will take your word for it. I should think the better of myself,’ he added with a smile, ‘to have a right to call you cousin.’
The archer rarely smiled; when he did, his usually stern features softened and lighted up almost into beauty. The change was not unmarked by the maid-of-honour.
‘A Carmichael never failed a kinsman,’ said she, and her voice shook a little, while her soft eyes gleamed;—‘or the old tower would be looking down still upon Dumfries, and there would be more than a blackened arch, and a few mounds of grass standing by the hearth-stone, where my father once received King James. Well, Sir Archer, you have done a cousinly deed for me at least to-day.’
Perhaps she expected he would make some acknowledgment of his good fortune in the opportunity, but Maxwell rode on in silence. A French gallant would have overwhelmed her with eloquence, and few men but would have hazarded a few compliments, however trifling. She scarcely seemed offended, nevertheless. Her mute companion was absorbed in a brown study, thinking how well she looked in her riding-gear. It may be that her woman’s intuition told her as much.
Presently a burst of horns in the distance announced the direction of the chase. Mary Carmichael’s steed pricked his ears, and showed symptoms of insubordination once more. Walter’s grasp was on the bridle in an instant, and the rider thanked him with a grateful smile.
‘The ready hand!’ she said, laughing. ‘Was I not right in saying you inherited the gifts of your family?’
‘It must excuse the silent tongue,’ he answered. ‘I am no squire of dames, and you ladies of the court must needs look down on the unpolished soldier. And yet his silence may offer more of respect and regard in its humility than the loudest professions of admiration from those who have never been taught to say less than they think, and think less than they feel.’
‘And receive twice as much in return,’ she replied, in a very low voice, and averting her face from her companion as she spoke. Then she put her horse into a quicker pace, and ere long they met and joined a party of the courtiers returning from the chase.
After this, though they saw each other but seldom, and had no more rides together, there was a sort of tacit understanding between the two. Nobody remarked that if Walter Maxwell was on guard, Mary Carmichael’s manner displayed more animation, and her dress was, if possible, more becomingly arranged than usual. Nobody remarked that one of the archers, more than any of his comrades, displayed unusual readiness in volunteering for all duties that brought him near the Queen’s person, and never seemed so contented as when riding in her escort, or mounting guard at her door. Yet it was true, notwithstanding; and, although not a word had been exchanged by these young persons of a more explicit tendency than those we have related, there had yet sprung up between them one of those mysterious affinities, that in this world of ours lead to such troublesome results.
It was not till Mary Carmichael had sailed for Scotland in the suite of her royal mistress, that it occurred to Maxwell he was losing time and opportunities by remaining in his present service at the court of France. He wondered it had never before struck him so forcibly, that the Archer-guard no longer occupied its proud position in the land of its adoption—that its privates were no longer so well born, its drill so exact, nor its discipline so perfect as in the days of its old commander, Montgomery—that Arran was a weak-minded enthusiast, who would finish by disgusting both officers and men—and that Charles IX. was already beginning to look coldly upon them, and depriving them, one by one, of the privileges by which they set such store. Then his patron, Montmorency, was getting infirm and worn out; and with the constable’s demise, adieu to his hopes of advancement in the service of France!