By this time Maxwell and Heriot had raised the old nobleman, and placed him on a chair; while the king, observing that he began to recover himself, continued his consolations more methodically.
“Haud up your head—haud up your head, and listen to your ain kind native Prince. If there is shame, man, it comesna empty-handed—there is siller to gild it—a gude tocher, and no that bad a pedigree;—if she has been a loon, it was your son made her sae, and he can make her an honest woman again.”
These suggestions, however reasonable in the common case, gave no comfort to Lord Huntinglen, if indeed he fully comprehended them; but the blubbering of his good-natured old master, which began to accompany and interrupt his royal speech, produced more rapid effect. The large tear gushed reluctantly from his eye, as he kissed the withered hands, which the king, weeping with less dignity and restraint, abandoned to him, first alternately and then both together, until the feelings of the man getting entirely the better of the Sovereign's sense of dignity, he grasped and shook Lord Huntinglen's hands with the sympathy of an equal and a familiar friend.
“Compone lachrymas,” said the Monarch; “be patient, man, be patient; the council, and Baby Charles, and Steenie, may a' gang to the deevil—he shall not marry her since it moves you so deeply.”
“He shall marry her, by God!” answered the earl, drawing himself up, dashing the tear from his eyes, and endeavouring to recover his composure. “I pray your Majesty's pardon, but he shall marry her, with her dishonour for her dowry, were she the veriest courtezan in all Spain—If he gave his word, he shall make his word good, were it to the meanest creature that haunts the streets—he shall do it, or my own dagger shall take the life that I gave him. If he could stoop to use so base a fraud, though to deceive infamy, let him wed infamy.”
“No, no!” the Monarch continued to insinuate, “things are not so bad as that—Steenie himself never thought of her being a streetwalker, even when he thought the worst of her.”
“If it can at all console my Lord of Huntinglen,” said the citizen, “I can assure him of this lady's good birth, and most fair and unspotted fame.”
“I am sorry for it,” said Lord Huntinglen—then interrupting himself, he said—“Heaven forgive me for being ungrateful for such comfort!—but I am well-nigh sorry she should be as you represent her, so much better than the villain deserves. To be condemned to wed beauty and innocence and honest birth—”
“Ay, and wealth, my lord—wealth,” insinuated the king, “is a better sentence than his perfidy has deserved.”
“It is long,” said the embittered father, “since I saw he was selfish and hardhearted; but to be a perjured liar—I never dreaded that such a blot would have fallen on my race! I will never look on him again.”