embarrassment, for you ask me of things concerning which I am not as yet altogether determined what answer I may find it convenient to make. Let it suffice thee, kind juvenal, that thou hast the lord abbot's authority for treating me to the best of that power of thine, which, indeed, may not always so well suffice for my accommodation as either of us would desire.'
'I must have a more precise answer than this, sir knight,' said the young Glendinning.
'Friend,' said the knight, 'be not outrageous. It may suit your northern manners thus to press harshly upon the secrets of thy betters; but believe me, that even as the lute, struck by an unskilful hand, doth produce discords, so ' At this moment the door of the apartment opened, and Mary Avenel presented herself. 'But who can talk of discords,' said the knight, assuming his complimentary vein and humour, 'when the soul of harmony descends upon us in the presence of surpassing beauty! For even as foxes, wolves, and other animals void of sense and reason, do fly from the presence of the resplendent sun of heaven when he arises in his glory, so do strife, wrath, and all ireful passions retreat, and, as it were, scud away from the face which now beams upon us, with power to compose our angry passions, illuminate our errors and difficulties, soothe our wounded minds, and lull to rest our disorderly apprehensions; for as the heat and warmth of the eye of day is to the material and physical world, so is the eye which I now bow down before to that of the intellectual microcosm.'
He concluded with a profound bow; and Mary Avenel, gazing from one to the other, and plainly seeing that something w'as amiss, could only say, 'For Heaven's sake, what is the meaning of this?'
The newly-acquired tact and intelligence of her foster-brother was as yet insufficient to enable him to give an answer. He was quite uncertain how he ought to deal with a guest, who, preserving a singularly high tone of assumed superiority and importance, seemed nevertheless so little serious in what he said, that it was quite impossible to discern with accuracy whether he was in jest or earnest.
Forming, however, the internal resolution to bring Sir Piercie Shafton to a reckoning at a more fit place and season,
