He tortured himself with the thought that Maud would
listen to others as she had listened to him; that she would practise
on others that heart-breaking slow droop and quick uplift of the
eyelashes which he knew so well. Who might not be at hand to aid her
to blow out her lamp when the guards were set of new in the corridors
of Thrieve?
"Mother," the Earl answered, "David speaks good sense. He will never
make a man or a Douglas if he is to bide here within this warded isle.
He must venture forth into the world of men and women, and taste a
man's pleasures and chance a man's dangers like the rest."
"But are you certain that you will bring him safe back again to me?"
said his mother, wistfully. "Remember, he is so young and eke so
reckless."
"Nay," cried David, eagerly, "I am no younger than my cousin James was
when he fought the strongest man in Scotland, and I warrant I could
ride a course as well as Hughie Douglas of Avondale, though William
chose him for the tourney and left me to bite my thumbs at home."
The lady sighed and looked at her sons, one of them but a youth and
the other no more than a boy.
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