Her lips were a cloven honey cherrie,
So tempting to the sight;
Her locks owre alabaster brows
Fell like the morning light.
And, oh! the breeze it lifted her locks,
As through the dance she flew;
While love laugh'd in her bonny blue ee,
And dwell'd in her comely mou'.
The Lords' Marie.
A long train of nearly two thousand mounted spearmen, drawn from the Douglas estates in Lanarkshire and Galloway made up this splendid "following," as such a retinue was then termed; and as they wound up the long vista of the crowded street, Gray contrived to place his horse close to the bay palfrey of Murielle, and in a moment they exchanged a deep glance and a pressure of the hand, which explained what—in that age of little writing and no post offices—they had hitherto been unable to tell, that both were steadfast and true to the troth they had plighted at the three thorn trees of the Carlinwark on a moonlit St. John's Eve, when the countess thought her little sister was asleep in her lofty turret at Thrave.
"Do you pass forward to the castle to-night?" he asked Lord David, while fixing his glance on Murielle, for the question related to her.
"No!" replied the little lord, with haughty reserve.
"Whither then?" asked Gray, while a shade of annoyance crossed his handsome face.
"To the house of our kinsman, the abbot of Tongland; does that please you?"
"Good, my lord, I shall there pay my respects to the earl—and make all speed."
"Oh pray Sir Patrick, do not hurry yourself," was the jibing reply.
"Till then, God be wi' you," said Sir Patrick, checking his horse.
"Adieu," added Murielle, with another of her quiet glances; but the lord, her cousin, turned bluntly away, as the king's soldier wheeled his horse round, and with mingled love and anger in his heart remained aloof till the brilliant train passed on.