The Earl having gone in pursuance of this resolution, returned, after a considerable absence, followed by the Lady Mariota and his son. Both seemed to have been effectually humbled. The lady’s face bore ample trace of the night of wretchedness she had spent. She curtseyed with an air, as if she hoped that the forced smile she wore would melt away all remembrance of what had passed; and then, without saying a word, sidled off to her apartment. Sir Alexander Stewart came forward manfully. His brow still bore the black mark of Hepborne’s fist that had prostrated him on the floor, “as butcher felleth ox,” yet the blow seemed to have been by this time effaced from his remembrance.
“Sir Patrick,” said he, stretching out his hand, “my father tells me that I owe my liberation to thee. Thou hast behaved [[240]]generously in this matter. The Earl hath given me to know such circumstances as sufficiently explain his seeming harshness to my mother. I now see that I was hasty, and I am sorry for it.”
Hepborne readily shook hands with the humbled knight.
“And now let us hunt,” cried the Wolfe. “Horses and hounds there, and the foresters, and gear for the chase!” and away went the whole party, to cross to the mainland.
They returned at night, after a successful day’s hunting, and the Wolfe of Badenoch was in peculiarly good spirits. The banquet was graced by the Lady Mariota, as usual, tricked out in all her finery, and wearing her accustomed dimpling smiles; and the Earl seemed to have forgotten that he had ever had any cause of displeasure against her. Instead of the marked attention she had formerly paid to Maurice de Grey, however, she now, much to his satisfaction, treated him with politeness, free from that disgusting and offensive doating which had heretofore so much tormented the poor youth. The Wolfe ate voraciously, and drank deeply; and his mirth rose with the wine he swallowed to so great a pitch of jollity, that he roared out loudly for music.
“Can no one sing me a roundelay?” cried he. “Mariota, thou knowest not a single warble, nor is there, I trow, one in the Castle that can touch even a citrial or a guittern, far less a harp. Would that our scoundrel, Allan Stewart, were here, but—a plague on him!—he hath gone to visit his friends in Badenoch. He could have given us romaunces, ballads, and virelays enow, I warrant thee.”
“My Lord Earl,” said the page modestly, “had I but a harp, in truth I should do my best to pleasure thee, though I can promise but little for my skill.”
“Well said, boy,” cried the Wolfe. “By the mass, but thou shalt have a harp. Ho, there!—bring hither Allan Stewart’s harp. The knave hath two, and it is to be hoped he hath not carried both with him.”
The harp was brought, and Maurice de Grey having tuned it, began to accompany himself in the following ballad:—
There was a damsel loved a knight,