seemed to have wakened to
regret for Margaret. She had been open-handed and kindly, and the
attendants had loved her, while the ladies who had gossiped about her
habits now found occupation for their tongues in indignation against
whosoever had aspersed her discretion. The King himself, who had always
been lazily fond of the belle fille who could amuse him, was stirred,
perhaps by Rene, into an inquiry into the scandalous reports, the result
of which was that Jamet de Tillay was ignominiously banished from the
Court, and Margaret's fair fame vindicated, all too late to save her
heart from breaking. The displeasure that Charles expressed to his son
in private on the score of poor Margaret's wrongs, is, in fact, believed
to have been the beginning of the breach which widened continually, till
finally the unhappy father starved himself to death in a morbid dread of
being poisoned by his son.

However, for the present, the two Scottish princesses reaped the full
benefit of all the feeling for their sister. The King and Queen called
them their dearest daughters, and made all sorts of promises of marrying
and endowing them, and Louis himself went outwardly through all the
forms of mourning and devotion, and treated his two fair sisters with
extreme civility, such as they privately declared they could hardly
bear, when they recollected how he had behaved before Margaret.

Jean in especial flouted him with all the sharpness and pertness of
which she was capable; but do what she would, he received it all with a
smiling indifference and civility which exasperated her all the more.

The Laird and Lady of Glenuskie were in some difficulty. They could not
well be much longer absent from Scotland, and yet Lilias had promised
the poor Dauphiness not to leave her sisters except in some security.
Eleanor's fate was plain enough, Sigismund followed her about as her
betrothed, and the only question was whether, during the period of
mourning, he should go back to his dominions to collect a train
worthy of his marriage with a king's daughter; but this he was plainly
reluctant to do. Besides the unwillingness of a lover to lose sight of
his lady, the catastrophe that had befallen the sisters might well
leave a sense that they needed protection. Perhaps, too, he might expect
murmurs at his choice of a dowerless princess from his vassals of the
Tirol.

At any rate, he lingered and accompanied the Court to Tours, where in
the noble old cas