"Go, then; and Bothwell's boorish warders and flippant pages will drive thee like some poor wanton from his gates; and think then—when with insult and opprobrium they are closed upon thee—what thy father, the brave old knight of Aggerhuis, who died with one hand on his sword and the other on the standard of the Lubeckers, would have felt, could he have thought that such an hour was reserved for the only daughter of that wife he loved so dearly."
"True—true!" replied Anna, giving way to a passionate burst of tears; for the mention of her parents subdued her. "O Mary! blessed mother of compassion, intercede for me! Inspire me with resignation and strength to endure my fate. Ah, pardon me, kind and good Konrad! for my heart is so torn by love and shame and indignation, that at times I know not what I say. From what I was in Frederick's court, to become what I am—a poor outcast on a foreign shore—an object of scorn to the proud, and pity to the good! Oh, how frightful! Be still kind to me, Konrad—and end my misery by putting thy poniard into the heart that so cruelly deceived thee."
Konrad was deeply moved by this passionate burst of grief; he leaned against a fragment of the ruin, and covered his face with his hands.
"Anna!" said he, after a pause; "bethink thee that Scotland hath a queen whose goodness of heart and gentleness of spirit are revered in every land save her own?"
"True! and at her feet will I pour forth my sorrow and my tears together. As a woman she will sympathize with me, and lend a kind ear to the story of my wrongs, Thou wilt go with me, Konrad?"
He kissed her hand again, and led her to the arch of the vault, and then they paused—for at that moment the blast of a bugle, clear and ringing, ascended from the bosky dell below the ruined Priory. Then the flash of steel was seen among the foliage, and a band of between forty and fifty men-at-arms on horseback, three abreast, having two swallow-tailed pennons displayed, and with their steel caps and tall uplifted lances glittering in the morning sun, swept at full gallop round the steep knoll on which the castle stood.
For a few minutes the reflection of their passing files was seen to glitter in the mirror-like bosom of the river, as horse and rider, spear and pennon, vanished among the apple bowers and birchen glades that clothed the braes of Bothwell.
Konrad felt instinctively that they were in pursuit of him; and, with a sadness and anxiety caused only by the reflection that, if he were slain, Anna would be friendless and desolate, he led her slowly from the ruins, and, hand in hand, the forlorn pair traversed the thickets of old and gnarled oak surrounding Blantyre Priory, and reached the rough and dusty highway which was to lead them—but how they knew not—to the court and palace of the Queen of Scotland.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE COUNTESS JANE.