"Gallant Vipont, thou art indeed my other son!" said the countess, as she kissed his cheek and became quite pacified, while Jane's bright face became radiant with pleasure.
The countess and her niece, Sybil, with Alison Home and Marian Logan, knowing that they could now be spared, retired to prepare for that early supper of which our late dinners have now usurped the place, and the lovers were left alone, seated together hand in hand, for the first time during nine long months.
They were all eye and ear for each other, as they conversed in voices that were soft and low, and love carried them back to those days of gaiety and simplicity before the cold hand of etiquette had interposed between them. Little Sybil closed the arras as she went out, and we have no wish, by raising it, to break the spell that love and pleasure threw around them.
CHAPTER IV.
REDHALL.
"The will is free; why must it then be curbed
I would be happy, gain what I desire,
Or feel each pulse throb pleasure in the chase—
Yet this new teacher tells such pleasure is
A fruit I must untasted shun."—Nimrod. Act III.
The apartment, which was half darkened, was partly tapestried and partly wainscoted. A stone fireplace, on grotesque columns covered with carved roses, destitute of grate (for grates were not then in fashion) and of fire, for the season was summer, by its emptiness lent a somewhat dreary aspect to the chamber. The floor was without carpet, for carpets were almost unknown in Scotland till 1560 (three and twenty years after); the furniture was of massive oak. The well-grated windows, which looked to the Friar Wynd, were concealed by thick curtains, and gaudily-flowered tapestries, framed in richly-carved oak, covered most part of the walls. A brilliant suit of armour, hanging upon a nail or steel hook, and a few shelves of gigantic folios bound in vellum, edged with red, and clasped with brass, were the leading features in this chamber. A sandglass stood upon the table, for one was usually carried by fellows of colleges and other learned men about this period in lieu of a watch, as we may read in Aubrey's Memoirs.
A folio lay on the black oak table, and on its closely-written leaves the light fell from a great iron lamp of grotesque form, covered by a circular shade. With his head reclined on one hand, and the other thrust into the breast of his black velvet doublet, the King's Advocate sat dreamily and moodily immersed in deep thought. His grave and classic face was of a clear olive complexion. His nose was perfectly straight, his eyes large, black, and sparkling, and his knit eyebrows now formed one complete arch above them. His smooth and lofty brow was expressive of deep thought, of watching and study, and even of tranquillity, though there were times when, it could assume a terrible expression, and his keen dark orbs would fill with fire, and every hair of his short moustaches bristle with passion. His mouth was decidedly his worst feature; but his short beard concealed those thin lips which Lavater considered the infallible sign of a mind pregnant with evil. His aspect was lofty and severe, and his eye was so penetrating that few could sustain the fire and inquiry of its glance.
The pages of the Forest Laws, written by King William the Lion, lay before him, but his eyes were fixed on his jewelled poniard that lay on the table close by, showing how his mind wandered from the subject he had sat down to study to the irate promptings of jealousy and revenge.
For Jane Seton, Sir Adam Otterburn and Ronald Vipont had long been rivals; at least so the former had viewed the latter, who had neither dreaded him nor feared his attentions, for such was his confidence in the love and truth of Jane; yet he had nothing to rely on but his sword and the somewhat precarious favour of James V., while Redhall was the proprietor of a strong baronial fortalice, a noble domain situated a few miles south of the city, and as lord advocate of Scotland was a powerful officer of state, then armed with more powers and terrors than any ten inquisitors of the Holy Office. His position was most honourable, and in virtue of it he was always addressed "My Lord." His knowledge of law was little, but his privileges were great; he was permitted to sit covered within the bar of the Court of Session like a peer of the realm, and he had the power of issuing warrants for searching, apprehending, imprisoning and putting to the torture any person in Scotland—his warrants being valid as those of the king. Such was Roland's formidable competitor for the hand of Jane Seton, to whom the young cavalier would have been wedded fully two years before the time in which this history opens, but for the fear of forfeiting king James's favour, and the implacable hostility of that prince to the house of Douglas, which formed an insuperable barrier to any of the court favourites who might be disposed (which few of them were) to form alliances with any noble family of that obnoxious surname.