behind him, and stood holding the latch in his hand.

"His Excellency, being overfatigued, hath need of a little strong
spirit," he said, with a curious gobbling movement of his throat as if
he himself had been either thirsty or in deadly and overmastering
fear.

The Earl ordered Sholto to wake the cellarer and bid him bring the
ambassador of France that which he required. He himself would go
onward to his sister's chamber. Sholto somewhat sullenly obeyed, for
his heart was hot and angry within him. He thought that he began to
see clearly the motive of the Earl's presence in the castle. The youth
was himself so deeply and hopelessly in love with Mistress Maud
Lindesay that he could not understand any other of his sex being
insensible to the charm of her beauty and myriad winsome graces.

As he went down the stairs he recalled a thousand circumstances to
mind which now seemed capable of but one explanation. It was evident
that the Earl William came to visit some one by means of the private
staircase under cloud of night. Nay, more, Maud Lindesay and he might
be already privately married, and the matter kept secret on account of
the pride of his family, who devised another match for him. For though
the daughter of a knight, Maud Lindesay was assuredly no fit mate for
the head of the more than regal house of Douglas. He remembered how on
Sundays and saints' days Earl William always rode to and from the kirk
with his sister on one side and Maud Lindesay on the other. That the
young Earl was by no means insensible to beauty, Sholto knew well,
and he remembered his words to his own father, when he had asked to be
allowed to accompany him on his Flanders mare, that such attendance
was not seemly when a man was going a-courting.