By this kiss I make you even as my son." She bent and laid her lips on the young man's brow.

They were hot as iron uncooled from the smithy anvil.
"Come with me," she added, and with a vehemence strangely at odds with her calm of the night before, she took Sholto by the hand and drew him after her into the room that had been Earl William's.
From the bundle of keys at her side she took a small one of French design.

With this she unlocked a tall cabinet which stood in a corner.
She threw the folding doors open, and there in the recess hung a wonderful suit of armour, of the sort called at that time "secret." "This," said the Lady of Douglas, "I had designed for my son.

Ten years was it in the making.

His father trysted it from a cunning artificer in Italy.