"Anna, dearest, why so sad?" said the Earl, pressing his dark mustaches against her white forehead. "Do you regret the step you have taken for my sake?"
"Oh no!" she whispered in a soft low tone; "but I sorrow when I think of the knight Rosenkrantz, my poor old uncle, who since infancy has been so kind to me; my dear and only kinsman, when worn out by years and their infirmities, to be left alone by me in his old age—by me whom he loves so well! Who now will soothe him in sickness as I have done, and cheer him in the long nights of winter when I am far away? My place will be vacant at the board to-day, my chair by the fire to-night. My harp stands there beside it, but he will hear my voice no more. Oh! he will be very lonely—desolate!" Her tears fell fast and bitterly.
"Speak not thus, dear Anna!" said the Earl, kissing her again; and, glad to say any thing that might soothe her, he added, "We will return to him again, and together will we cheer his declining years."
"But he never will forgive me, nor love me as of old."
"He will! We shall kneel at his feet and implore his forgiveness, (Ormiston whistled very loud); and, if he loves you so well, he could never resist your supplications."
He kissed her with ardour, and the girl was soothed.
Fondly and trustfully she looked in his face. There was a light in her clear eyes, a flush on her soft cheek, and an infantile smile on her cherry lips, that made her quite bewitching, as she lay half fainting on Bothwell's breast and half embraced by him, listening to his oft-repeated, and perhaps too voluble, vows of constancy and love.
"Farewell, dear Norway—a long farewell!" she exclaimed, kissing her hand with playful sadness to the distant stripe of blue that shewed where her native hills were fading far astern. "I may no more hear the rush of thy waterfalls, or see thy pine-clad hills, and deep salt fiords, overhung by the sweetbrier and purple lilac that scent their waters in summer, or the silver birch and dark-green pine that shadow them in autumn and in whiter; but oh! Gammle Norgé, I never will forget thee!"
"Anna," said the Earl, "from the ramparts of my castle of Bothwell, I will shew thee a valley of the Clyde, and such a territory as no lord in all Scandinavia could shew his bride; and bethink thee, that hold of Bothwell is thrice more magnificent than Frederick's castle of Elsineur. I have eight stately fortresses, the least of which would make four of yonder castle of Bergen; I have four lordships, each of which is richer than your native province of Aggerhuis; and I have four sheriffdoms, each of which is worth three of it—and thou shalt be lady of them all! When I wind this horn from Bothwell castle gate, it finds so ready an echo at the tower of Lawhope, the house of Clelland, the keep of Orbiestoun, and the place of Calder, that five thousand men, all dight for battle, are in their stirrups, and a hundred knights, the best in Scotland, are proud to unfurl their pennons beneath the banner of James Hepburn of Hailes!"
The Earl's eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, and those of Anna lit up with delight and pride; while Ormiston, who considered himself the representative of these hundred good palladia, adjusted his ruff complacently, and drew himself to the full extent of his six feet odd inches.