"I want not thanks; but your signature to the contract, and the benediction of the old vicar of Tranent on the marriage."
"Madam, who has done me all this kindness—all this most undeserved honour?"
"Say not so—but your good angel has been your dearest friend—Mary of Lorraine—from the first, my poor boy, I loved and valued your worth."
"I knew it—I knew it!" he exclaimed, kissing her hands with ardour; "but your grace must show me some mode by which I may requite this."
"In France be faithful to my daughter, be tender and be true," said the queen in an imploring voice, that seemed full of soul.
"True to death,—true as I would be to Madeline Home!"
"Come, then, for the countess has arrived; she is now with the Abbot of Inchmahoma, and awaits you in the priory," said the queen with a winning smile, as she presented her hand to the bewildered young man.
* * * * * *
And thus our story, like a good old-fashioned comedy, ends by one marriage, and opens the way to another. After this, we have but little more to add.
On a bright morning in July, 1548, when the hot sun exhaled a silver mist from the broad blue bosom of the Clyde; when its fertile and beautiful shores lay steeped in golden haze that mellowed each grey rock, green wood, and purple hill, bay, beach, and headland that stretched in distance, far, far away; and when the sunbeams played gaily upon the long, swelling ripples that seemed to vibrate in the heat, and churned the waves into little lines of foam as they rolled on the pebbled shore, the thunder of brass cannon from "Balclutha's walls of towers," the double peak of Dunbarton, boomed in the still air, while the bells rang their farewell peal in the spire of many a village church, as the fleet of the Sieur Nicholas de Villegaignon, Knight of Malta, and Grand-admiral of France, got under weigh.