The monastery; The abbot.

464 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
absence, and we never needed more some symbol of peace and reconciliation."
"I grieve I should have been detained, madam," answered the page;
"but from the delay of the person intrusted with the matters for which I
was sent, I did not receive them till late in the day."
" See you there now," said the Queen to the Lady Lochleven; "we could
not persuade you, our dearest hostess, that your household goods were in
all safe keeping and surety. True it is, that we can excuse your anxiety,
considering that these august apartments are so scantily furnished, that fw.o.
have not been able to offer you even the relief of a stool during the long
time you have afforded us the pleasure of your society."
" The will, madam," said the lady, " the will to offer such accommodation
was more wanting than the means."
"What!" said the Queen, looking round, and affecting surprise, " there
are then stools in this apartment - one, two - no less than four, including
the broken one-a royal garniture!-We observed them not-will it please
your ladyship to sit?"
"No, madam, I will soon relieve you of my presence," replied the Lady
Lochleven; "and while with you, my aged limbs can still better brook
fatigue, than my mind stoop to accept of constrained courtesy."
"Nay, Lady of Lochleven, if you take it so deeply," said the Queen,
rising and motioning to her own vacant chair, " I would rather you assumed
my seat-you are not the first of your family who has done so."
The Lady of Lochleven curtsied a negative, but seemed with much difficulty to suppress the angry answer which rose to her lips.
During this sharp conversation, the page's attention had been almost entirely occupied by the entrance of Catherine Seyton, who came from the
inner apartment, in the usual dress in which she attended upon the Queen,
and with nothing in her manner which marked either the hurry or confusion incident to a hasty change of disguise, or the conscious fear of detection
in a perilous enterprise. Roland Groame ventured to make her an obeisance
as she entered, but she returned it with an air of the utmost indifference,
which, in his opinion, was extremely inconsistent with the circumstances in
which they stood towards each other.-" Surely," he thought, " she cannot
in reason expect to bully me out of the belief due to mine own eyes, as she
tried to do concerning the apparition in the hostelry of Saint Michael's-I
will try if I cannot make her feel that this will be but a vain task, and that
confidence in me is the wiser and safer course to pursue."
These thoughts had passed rapidly through his mind, when the Queen,
having finished her altercation with the Lady of the castle, again addressed
him - " What of the revels at Kinross, Roland Grenme? Methought they
were gay, if I may judge from some faint sounds of mirth and distant
music, which found their way so far as these grated windows, and. died
when they entered them, as all that is mirthful must -But thou lookest as
sad as if thou hadst come from a conventicle of the Huguenots!"
"And so perchance he hath, madam," replied the Lady of Lochleven, at
whom this side-shaft was lanched. "I trust, amid yonder idle fooleries,
there wanted not some pouring forth of doctrine to a better purpose than
that vain mirth, which, blazing and vanishing like the crackling of dry
thorns, leaves to the fools who love it nothing but dust and ashes."
" Mary Fleming," said the Queen, turning round and drawing her mantle
about her, "I would that we had the chimney-grate supplied with a fagot
or two of these same thorns which the Lady of Lochleven describes so well.
Methinks the damp air from the lake, which stagnates in these vaulted
rooms, renders them deadly cold."
"Your Grace's pleasure shall be obeyed," said the Lady of Lochleven;
"yet may I presume to remind you that we are now in summer?"
" I thank you for the information, my good lady," said the Queen; "for