‘Geordie Douglas! You were all for flouting him a while ago,’ said Eleanor, puzzled.
‘Dinna be sae daft like, Elleen, that was but sport, and--and a maid may not hold herself too cheap! Geordie that followed me all the way from home, and was sair hurt for me, and freed me from yon awsome castle. Oh, could ye trow that I could love ony but he?’
It was not too easy to refrain from saying, ‘So that’s the end of all your airs,’ but the fear of making her fly off again withheld Lady Drummond, and even Eleanor.
George did not lodge in the castle, and Sir Patrick could not sound him till the morning; but for a long space after the two sisters had laid their heads on the pillow Jean was tossing, sometimes sobbing; and to her sister’s consolations she replied, ‘Oh, Elleen, he can never forgive me! Why did my hard, dour, ungrateful nature so sport with his leal loving heart? Will he spurn me the now? Geordie, Geordie, I shall never see your like! It would but be my desert if I were left behind to that treacherous spiteful prince,--I wad as soon be a mouse in a cat’s claw!’
But George of Angus made no doubt. He had won his ladylove at last, and the only further doubt remained as to how the matter was to be carried out. Jaques Coeur was consulted again. No priest at Tours would, he thought, dare to perform the ceremony, for fear of after-vengeance of the Dauphin; and Sir Patrick then suggested Father Romuald, who had been lingering in his train waiting to cross the Alps till his Scotch friends should have departed and winter be over; but the deed would hardly be safely done within the city.
The merchant’s advice was this: Sir Patrick, his Lady, and the Master of Angus had better openly take leave of the Court and start on the way to Brittany. No opposition would be made, though if Louis suspected Lady Jean’s presence in their party, he might close the gates and detain her; Jaques Coeur therefore thought she had better travel separately at first. For Eleanor, as the betrothed bride of Sigismund, there was no might therefore remain at Court with the Queen. Jaques Coeur, the greatest merchant of his day, had just received a large train of waggons loaded with stuffs and other wares from Bourges, on the way to Nantes, and he proposed that the Lady Jean should travel with one attendant female in one of these, passing as the wife and daughter of the foreman. These two personages had actually travelled to Tours, and were content to remain there, while their places were taken by Madame de Ste. Petronelle and Jean.