"My name first came from holy Hubert's race; Souyllard my sire, a hound of singular grace."
The reckless Ludwig, as he gazed on the beauty of Murielle, began to conceive some very daring schemes on his own account, as his armed Brabanciones, to the number of some hundreds, lurked in the Peel morass and woods on the other side of the Waal. He allowed his imagination to run riot, and while affecting to caress the powerful hound on the one hand, and converse with the abbot of Tongland on the other, he saw before him only the sweet girl's gentle eyes, which drooped, and her little coral mouth, which paled, whenever his bold glance fell on her.
The abbot and she exchanged smiles from time to time. He was full of commiseration and alarm for Sir Patrick Gray, whose preceptor he had been, and he was thinking of that peaceful and pleasant time in Tongland Abbey, when he was wont to take him once daily to read the works of St. Augustine, or a page of the Gospels in old monkish Latin. Each of these stood under an iron grating in the church, where a leaf of them was turned daily for the behoof of the learned or the pious; but Gray and MacLellan, like wayward boys, to get rid of the task which bored them, stole the key of the grille, and threw it into the Dee.
The poor old abbot had very little idea of the real character of the personage with whom he was conversing; and the reader may imagine the astonishment with which the robber count listened to him, and the undisguised merriment with which he treated his great project regarding the restoration of the Man of Sin. In short, Count Ludwig deemed our worthy abbot neither a well-deserving divine nor eccentric pedant, but a veritable madman, and so often muttering several times, "Der Teufel hole dich!" or "Sangdieu!" and so forth, he ceased to listen, and continued to gaze covertly at Murielle.
The recent interview with her lover gave a brilliance to her beauty, and a radiance to her expression; her slight but finely rounded form, being clad in cloth of silver under a robe of white gauze, seemed to stand forth in brilliant relief from the dark tapestry of the room. A silver caul confined her hair; her ornaments were all Scottish pearls, and everything about her appeared pure, girlish, and angelic--and so thought both the _roué_ duke and the ruffian count.