"There is but one day now, and I beseech your majesty to consider well."
"I have considered well. The Countess of Arran and I talked over the matter for three hours yesterday."
"The Countess of Arran!" muttered the cardinal; "women—women! there is ever mischief where they are concerned. It would have been well had they been altogether omitted in the great plan of human society."
"And to lessen this evil to the public thou keepest a dozen of them shut up in the tower at Creich, all fair and jolly damosels," said the king, with something of his old raillery; "truly, lord cardinal, my subjects of Fife are much indebted to thee."
"I assure your majesty," said the cardinal, with increasing pique, "that to the best of my knowledge the whole trial and accusation hath been the prompting of revenge in Sir Adam Otterburn of Redhall."
"Of my lord advocate? Impossible! why, the man is virtuous as Scipio, and upright as Brutus."
"But in their excessive zeal, the judges have wrongly construed the depositions. I implore you to reflect; her death will make an irreparable breach between the races of Stuart and Douglas. War alone will not make a monarch illustrious. The splendour of valour and chivalry dazzles for a time; but a noble action lives in the memory of the people for ever."
"True; but beware, lest I deem thee a follower of Angus."
"I follow a Master who is greater than all the princes of the earth," replied the stately prelate, warming; "and the opinions of the poor worms that crawl on its surface are nothing to me."
"Is this the fag-end of some old sermon?"