"Has been pleased——"
"Deluded, you mean."
"To create the chancellor Lord Crichton of Crichton in Lothian. Rumour added that his youngest son, George, would soon be made earl of Caithness, in place of the forfeited Earl Alan, who was killed ten years ago at the battle of Inverlochie."
"Anything more?" asked Margaret, beating the floor with her foot.
"The regent is to be Lord Livingstone of Callendar."
"Did the heralds not add that he granted them a coat of augmentation to their arms?" said Margaret, with hate in her eye, and the smile of a devil on her lovely lip;—"a headsman's axe and block, all bloody and proper! Well, well; so be it. We'll powder these new-fangled coronets with tears and the dust of death ere another yule be past—please Heaven, we shall!"
"'Tis said, too, that the king is about to be married to a fair lady of Flanders."
"This child!—who—who?" asked the ladies together.
"I wot not," said Maud; and the girls laughed loudly.
"Little Maggie Lauder of the Bass would suit him better, in years at least," said the countess, as she caressed the lint white locks of Sir Alan's youngest daughter, a girl of some nine years or so. "In sooth, cousin, you have a rare stock of news."