"Nay, I had no letters," he replied gloomily and briefly; "but tell me, pray, your names, your rank, ladies—in pity tell me!"
"Pardon us, sir," said the elder, patting his forehead kindly with her soft white hand; "in that you must hold us excused. We tell not our names lightly to a stranger—a wild fellow who fights with every armed man, and, for aught we know, makes love to every pretty woman, and who, moreover, shrouds in such provoking mystery his own name and purpose. So adieu, sir—a little time and we shall be with you again."
"Stay, madame—stay, and pardon me," he exclaimed, as they retired through the parted arras, and disappeared when its heavy fold closed behind them. Then he sank upon his pillow, exhausted even by this short interview.
"I am right," he muttered, as he lay with his eyes closed, in a species of half-stupor, or waking dream; "my name shall never pass my lips until I have the barbican gate of Fawside Tower behind me. And yet—and yet—how hard to mistrust that lovely girl with the dark-blue eyes and deep-brown hair!"
Rendered cautious by his late adventure, he tore off and defaced the armorial bearings, which, in the French fashion, he wore on the breast of his beautiful doublet, and resolved studiously to conceal alike his name, his purpose, and his letters, to say no more of whence he had come or whither he was bound, lest those two charming women, who so kindly watched and tended his sick couch, and who so sedulously concealed their names and titles, might be the wives, the loves, or kindred of his enemies.
Such were his resolves. But how weak are the resolves even of the brave and wary, when in the hands of a beautiful woman!
CHAPTER X.
IN WHICH THE PATIENT PROGRESSES FAVOURABLY.
His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;
Yet, if men moved him, he was such a storm
As oft twixt May and April we may see.
A Lover's Complaint.
Aided by his youth and strength, and doubtless by his native air, which blew upon his pale face through the northern windows of his chamber, when the breeze waved the ripening corn and wafted the perfume of the heather and the yellow broom-bells across the North Loch, Florence recovered rapidly. His wounds soon healed, under the soothing influence of the medicinal balsams applied to them, and of the subtle opiates which he received from the hands of his two fair attendants, and from those of the white-bearded physician, who, with a pardonable vanity, cared not to conceal his name, but soon announced himself to be Master Peter Posset, chirurgeon to the late King James V. of blessed memory (whose deathbed he had soothed at Falkland Palace), and deacon of the chirurgeon-barbers of Edinburgh—a body who, in virtue of their office, were exempted by their charter from serving on juries, and from the duties of keeping watch and ward within the city.