anxiety by detaining your charge so late. But she is a wilful madam,
as you have doubtless good cause to know, and ill to advise."

"She is a Douglas," smiled the fair girl, who stood at the chamber
door refusing his invitation to enter, with a flash of the eye and a
quick shake of the head which betokened no small share of the same
qualities; "is not that enough to excuse her for being wayward and
headstrong?"

Earl William wasted no more words of entreaty upon his sister, but
seized her in his arms, and pulling the coverlet in which she had
huddled herself up with her pert chin on her knees, more closely about
her, he strode along the passage with her in his arms till he stopped
at an open door leading into a large chamber which looked to the
south.

"There," he said, smiling at the girl who had followed behind him, "I
will lock her in with you and take the key, that I may make sure of
two such uncertain charges."

But the girl had deftly extracted the key even as she passed in after
him, and as the bolts shot from within she cried: "I thank you right
courteously, Lord William, but mine apothecary, fearing that the air
of this isle of Thrieve might not agree with me, bade me ever to sleep
with the key of the door under my pillow. Against fevers and quinsies,
cold iron is a sovereign specific."

And for all his wounded heart, Earl William smiled at the girl's
sauciness as he went slowly back to his chamber, taking, in spite of
his earldom, pains to pass his mother's door on tiptoe.