The lace on Mary Beton’s collar vibrated with pleasure as she bowed a gracious affirmative. In truth the stately lady was insensibly beginning to take no small pleasure in the attentions of her diplomatic admirer.
Mary Seton, in the meantime, had been inspecting with sarcastic scrutiny the persons and accoutrements of all the competitors. With a stinging jest or biting retort she had refused to accept the homage of one after another, and finally took as her knight one John Sempill, an Englishman, who had sought refuge at the Court of Holyrood, a plain, silent man, who appeared somewhat surprised to find himself in a scene of merry-making, and whose only recommendation in the eyes of the maid-of-honour must have been that he was the direct opposite of herself.
There was yet one of the Maries who had not chosen her champion. All unconscious that there could have been a witness to her _rendezvous_ in the Abbey garden, Mary Carmichael rejected candidate after candidate, in hopes the right one would apply at last. With a brighter eye and a deeper colour than usual she followed in the train of her mistress, and more than one gallant observed that he had never seen Mistress Carmichael to such advantage, and were it not for the Queen, she would carry off the palm of beauty from all upon the ground.
But the eye grew dim by degrees and the colour faded, as Walter Maxwell, habited like a savage, remained aloof, standing apart, busy with the caparison of his horse, and obviously anxious to avoid notice and conversation. A sleepless night had somewhat paled his cheek, but otherwise his look was as composed and reserved as usual. A manly nature is as much ashamed of disclosing mental suffering as physical pain.
The girl was puzzled; she could not understand him: yesterday, so kind and loyal and frank; to-day, so distant and calm and cold. Had he been the most experienced carpet-knight that ever made war upon the sex, instead of an honest, true-hearted soldier, he could not have adopted a better method of aggression. She had never felt so much engrossed with him in her life. It is hardly fair to fight a woman with her own weapons; but we imagine it discomfits them exceedingly, the more so that they are well aware a man’s coldness, unlike their own, is the result of real displeasure, and the forerunner of a rupture.