“Press not on her now,” said Lord Seyton, “if you would not lose her for ever. Many a time have we seen the sainted mother, and often at the most needful moment; but to press on her privacy, or to thwart her purpose, is a crime which she cannot pardon. I trust we shall yet see her at her need—a holy woman she is for certain, and dedicated wholly to prayer and penance; and hence the heretics hold her as one distracted, while true Catholics deem her a saint.”
“Let me then hope,” said the Queen, “that you, my lord, will aid me in the execution of her last request.”
“What! in the protection of my young second?—cheerfully—that is, in all that your majesty can think it fitting to ask of me.—Henry, give thy hand upon the instant to Roland Avenel, for so I presume he must now be called.”
“And shall be Lord of the Barony,” said the Queen, “if God prosper our rightful arms.”
“It can only be to restore it to my kind protectress, who now holds it,” said young Avenel. “I would rather be landless, all my life, than she lost a rood of ground by me.”
“Nay,” said the Queen, looking to Lord Seyton, “his mind matches his birth—Henry, thou hast not yet given thy hand.”
“It is his,” said Henry, giving it with some appearance of courtesy, but whispering Roland at the same time,—“For all this, thou hast not my sister's.”
“May it please your Grace,” said Lord Seyton, “now that these passages are over, to honour our poor meal. Time it were that our banners were reflected in the Clyde. We must to horse with as little delay as may be.”