After riding about three leagues, they saw the castle, and a goodly one it seemed; for before it ran a river, and it had a drawbridge, whereon was a fair tower at the end.—Amadis de Gaul.
Florence now recognized the face of Edward Shelly.
"We have met before—to-day, I think, in the streets of Stirling?" said he.
"Exactly—and what then?" asked Shelly, bluntly and uneasily.
"Nothing, save that I am pleased to see in this solitary place a face that is in any way familiar to me."
Shelly bowed, and smiled pleasantly; for the errand which brought him into Scotland, and the dangerous papers with which he was entrusted—papers bearing signatures involving war, and death, and treason—kept him ever anxious, restless, and suspicious of all who approached him.
The chatelaine or mistress of the mansion—-the Lady Torwood, as she was named, though but the widow of a landed gentleman, whose possessions lay principally amid the wilds of that once extensive forest, now approached. She wore a black silk dooleweed, with a cross of white velvet sewn on the left shoulder, in memory of her deceased husband (a mark of mourning which was introduced into Scotland by the late king, on the death of his first queen Magdalene of Valois); she was young, for her years were under six-and-twenty, pale and saddened in expression. Three little children, the eldest of whom was not over three years, all clad in black dresses, each with a little white cross on the shoulder, nestled among the ample skirts of her dooleweed, and peeped in mingled alarm and wonder at the strangers, whom the lady received courteously: for in those days the halls of the landholders and the refectories of the monasteries were the halting-places of all travellers, when, neither inns nor taverns could be found; and, indeed, prejudices against the latter ran so high that acts were passed by parliament, to enforce the patronage of hostelries.
Lady Torwood's manner of receiving her visitors was singularly soft and polite; yet it was not unmixed with anxiety, for her little tower stood in a lonely place, and six well-armed strangers were not quite the kind of people a widowed mother might wish to see in that lawless time. The extreme paleness of her complexion contrasted strongly with the blackness of her smooth shining hair and the darkness of her eyes and lashes, while her figure and bearing had all that fawn-like grace which is (or was) peculiar to the women of certain northern clans in Scotland.
"We crave your pardon for this untimely intrusion, madame," said Florence, courteously, "but we have been belated and astray in the forest; and as I have had a quarrel—one of those unpleasant things that will ensue at times among armed men,—a crossing of swords, in fact, with a Livingstone, you will readily understand that my vicinity to the Callender——"
"Sirs, you are welcome here, apologies are unnecessary," replied the lady, whose accent sounded somewhat like that of a foreigner, for she belonged to a Celtic tribe, and had acquired the Lowland language as that of another people. "You have had a quarrel with a Livingstone," she continued, while her quiet dark eyes were filled by a momentary light; "that name has cost me dear indeed! but let me not think of it now. Here you are safe, sir—your names——"