"Where—where?"
"In the Lady Chapel of Tongland. I would have helped her to holy water from the font, but it was frozen hard and fast; for it was Candlemas day, and the Dee below the abbey wall was a sheet of ice, from rock to rock."
"You saw her," said Gray musingly, with a soft smile, as if he conjured up her face and form; "you saw, and yet did not speak with her?"
"By St. Cuthbert, 'twere as much as my life is worth to have done so, begirt as she was by Earl James's surly swashbucklers and rusty helmetted moss-troopers; but, from all I can learn in Galloway, she believes you dead."
"Oh—impossible!"
"Why so? Did she not see you stricken to the earth by the swords and mauls of more than a hundred wild Galwegians, Douglases, and devils?"
"True, she must have seen it—if, indeed, she could have looked upon it."
"Be assured that curiosity will conquer alarm—even love, at times," responded the sceptical MacLellan.
"A fatal mistake may result from all this."
"What mean you by a fatal mistake—a marriage?"