“It shall serve thy turn now,” said the Regent; “and falsehood shall be thy destruction. How much hast thou heard or understood of what we two have spoken together?”
“But little, my lord,” replied Roland Graeme boldly, “which met my apprehension, saving that it seemed to me as if in something you doubted the faith of the Knight of Avenel, under whose roof I was nurtured.”
“And what hast thou to say on that point, young man?” continued the Regent, bending his eyes upon him with a keen and strong expression of observation.
“That,” said the page, “depends on the quality of those who speak against his honour whose bread I have long eaten. If they be my inferiors, I say they lie, and will maintain what I say with my baton; if my equals, still I say they lie, and will do battle in the quarrel, if they list, with my sword; if my superiors”—he paused.
“Proceed boldly,” said the Regent—“What if thy superiors said aught that nearly touched your master's honour?”
“I would say,” replied Graeme, “that he did ill to slander the absent, and that my master was a man who could render an account of his actions to any one who should manfully demand it of him to his face.”
“And it were manfully said,” replied the Regent—“what thinkest thou, my Lord of Morton?”
“I think,” replied Morton, “that if the young galliard resemble a certain ancient friend of ours, as much in the craft of his disposition as he does in eye and in brow, there may be a wide difference betwixt what he means and what he speaks.”
“And whom meanest thou that he resembles so closely?” said Murray.
“Even the true and trusty Julian Avenel,” replied Morton.