"To visit Sir Adam? I knew not that he ailed."
"A sword-thrust."
"From whom?"
"Sir Roland Vipont."
"Vipont again!" said James V., knitting his brows; "thus it is my friends are ever slaying each other. But he, my most valiant and true friend, has been quite besotted by those Setons of Ashkirk."
"He knew not of their arrest," said the cardinal; "it was a sudden rencontre—a quarrel."
"Oh, in that case, I have nothing to do with such little amusements. The Countess of Ashkirk?"
"Is in Barncleugh's ward at Inchkeith."
"Where I will keep her as long as James I. kept Euphemia of Ross on Inchcolin. An old intriguing limmer! And the Lady Jane?"
"Hath escaped to—no one knows where."