"Hold, my lor'; please keep off your rough uncourtly hands till I deliver the credentials of my mistress."
"Did you say that you were page to the Princess Margaret? Yes, surely you are, I have erst seen that face, and heard that same flippant tongue. Pray, what word or token does my dear and sovereign lady send me?"
"She bade me say, that she does not approve of you at all, my lor':—that, for her sake, you ought to have taken this castle many days ago. And she bade me ask you why you don't enter the castle by the gate, or over the wall, or under the hill, which is only a sand one, and hang up all the Englishmen by the necks, and send the head of Philip Musgrave to his saucy dame?—She bade me ask you why you don't, my lor'?"
"Women will always be women," said Douglas surlily to himself: "I thought the princess superior to her sex, but—"
"But! but what, my lor'? Has she not good occasion for displeasure? She bade me tell you that you don't like her;—that you don't like her half so well as Musgrave does his mistress,—else why don't you do as much for her? He took the castle for the sake of his mistress, and for her sake he keeps it in spite of you. Therefore she bade me tell you, that you must go in and beat the English, and take the castle from them; for she will not suffer it that Lady Jane Howard shall triumph over her."
"Tell her in return," said Douglas, "that I will do what man can do; and when that is done, she shall find that I neither will be slack in requiring the fulfilment of her engagement, nor in performing my own. If that womanish tattling be all that you have to say,—begone: the rank of your employer protects you."
"Hold, my lor', she bade me look well, and tell her what you were like, and if I thought you changed since I waited on you at court. On my conscience you look very ill. These are hard ungainly features of yours. I'll tell her you look very shabby, and very surly, and that you have lost all heart. But oh, my lor', I forgot she bade me tell you, that if you found you were clearly beat, it would be as well to draw off your men and abandon the siege; and that she would, perhaps, in pity, give you a moiety of your lands again."
"I have no patience with the impertinence of a puppy, even though the messenger of her I love and esteem above all the world. Get you hence."
"Oh, my lor', I have not third done yet. But, stay, here is a letter I had almost forgot."
Douglas opened the letter. Well he knew the hand; there were but few in Scotland who could write, and none could write like the princess. It contained a gold ring set with rubies, and a lock of her hair. He kissed them both; and tried the ring first on the one little finger, and then on the other, but it would scarcely go over the nail; so he kissed them again, and put them in his bosom. He then read to himself as follows: