"I am called 'the Little Marie!'" she smiled; "I have been wellnigh a week in the Hostel of the Coronation, and not yet have I seen any to compare with you, my lord captain of the fair locks."
With a certain childish abandon, and a freedom still more than half innocent, Marie seated herself upon the arm of the great chair into which Wat had thrown himself upon his entrance. Her dainty foot dangled over the carven finial, almost touching the ribbons at Walter's knee with its silver buckled slipper of the mode of Paris. Marie's hand rested lightly on the small curls at the back of his neck, till Walter grew vaguely restive under the caressing fingers. Yet because he was in a great and thronged room humming with company, where none took any notice of him or his companion, each being intent on playing out his own game, the uneasy feeling soon passed away.
Only now and again, as the Rhenish sank in the bottle and the hand of the Little Marie took wider sweeps and paused more caressingly among his blonde hair, a thought awoke not unpleasantly in Wat's bosom.
"They have cast me out of their home and friendship. They have preferred a traitor. But I will let them see that there is pleasure in the world yet."
And his arm went of its own accord about the waist of the Little Marie.
* * * * *
It seemed to be but a moment after (though it might have been an hour) that Wat looked up. A hush had fallen suddenly upon the briskly stirring din of the Hostel of the Coronation. Walter's eyes instantly caught those of a man attired in the uniform of the provost-marshal of the city. There was a cold smile of triumph on the face which met his. It was Barra, and he touched with his arm the man who stood beside him. Wat turned a little to look past the curtain which partly surrounded his table and alcove, and there, over the wide gauzy sleeves of the Little Marie, he encountered the grave and reproachful regard of his cousin, William Gordon of Earlstoun.
Wat started to his feet with a half-formed idea of going forward to explain something, he knew not what. But ere he had disengaged himself from the great chair, on the arm of which perched the Little Marie, an angry thought, born of pride and fostered by the heady antiquity of the cobwebbed Rhenish, drew him back again into his place. A kind of desperate defiance chilled him into a blank and sudden calmness, which boded no good either to himself or to any who should oppose him. Besides which, the circumstances were certainly difficult of explanation.
"They cast me out, and then immediately they follow after to spy upon me. Shall I utter a word of excuse only to be met with the sneer of unbelief? Am I not an officer of dragoons? Also, am I not of age, and able to choose my company as well as they? As Wat Gordon never was a prayer-monger, so neither will he now be a hypocrite."
He glanced not uncomplaisantly at the Little Marie, who hummed a careless tune and swung her pretty foot against his knee, happily unconscious of his trouble. Perhaps the Rhenish had taken her back again to the green slopes about her native village, and to her more innocent childhood.