"Well, I thank Heaven it is all as thou sayest!" replied the Countess, mildly; "but after all I have heard of the love passages between Mary and thee at Hermitage, I expected somewhat worse."
"Love passages? Woman, what hast thou dared to say?" asked the Earl, gravely.
"Only a hint of what I have heard."
"From whom?"
"The Earl of Sutherland."
"Babbler that he is!" exclaimed Bothwell, with a dark frown. "He hath foully lied, and so become guilty of lese-majesty."
"Oh! do not look on me thus, my dear lord—I can bear any thing but your frown. Thou wilt bring war, and death, and shame on the houses of Bothwell and Aboyne; but I mean not to upbraid thee. As thou sowest, so shalt thou reap; but for thy own sake, for the sake of thine ancestors, their name and fame and honour, the honour of me, whose peace thou hast destroyed, whose love thou hast scorned, whose ties thou hast forgotten, whose prospects thou hast blighted; I implore thee, by each and all of these, to pause, lest thou art crushed by the fall of the castle thine ambition is building."
"I thank thee, Lady Bothwell," replied the Earl, rising and putting on his bonnet, the lofty plumes of which he shook with ineffable hauteur; "I thank thee for these good intentions and kind regards, though, by the mass! I know not thine aim. And so thou art bound for Strathbolgie on the morrow, my gay Gordon? Who of my people accompany thee? Is it long Cockburn of Langton, with his lances of the Merse?"
"Nay; 'tis the Earl of Sutherland."
A cloud gathered on Bothwell's brow. The Earl of Sutherland had been a lover of the Countess from her girlhood, and had only given up his faithful suit on her accepting Bothwell; so there was a very unpleasant association of ideas in the mind of the latter, who was generally apt to view incidents through an evil medium.