The young Lord Tudor looked about as if he meditated an escape to another part of the table; but, after a touch that his page gave him on the sleeve, he sat still, and mustered up courage for a reply.
"And pray, sir prince, what would you do with her if you had her in your power to-night?"
"Something very different from what I would do with you, my lord. But please describe her to me, for my very heart is yearning to behold her,—describe every point of her form, and lineament of her features."
"She is esteemed as very beautiful; for my part I think her but so so," said Tudor: "She has fair hair, light full blue eyes, and ruddy cheeks; and her brow, I believe, is as fine and as white as any brow can be."
"O frightful! what a description! what an ugly minx it must be! Fair hair! red, I suppose, or dirty dull yellow! Light blue eyes! mostly white I fancy? Ah, what a frightful immodest ape it must be! I could spit upon the huzzy!"
"Mary shield us!" exclaimed young Tudor, moving farther away from the prince, and striking lightly with his hand on his doublet as if something unclean had been squirted on it. "Mary shield us! What does the saucy Scot mean?"
Every one of the troopers put his hand to his sword, and watched the eye of his master. The prince beckoned to the Scots to be quiet; but Lord Tudor did no such thing, for he was flustered and wroth.
"Pardon me, my lord," said the prince, "I may perhaps suffer enough from the beauty and perfections of your fair cousin after I see her; you may surely allow me to deride them now. I am trying to depreciate the charms I dread. But I do not like the description of her. Tell me seriously do you not think her very intolerable?"