"Oh, Father of mercy and of justice!" said the priest, beating himself upon the breast; "how dreadful is thy vengeance, when thou permittest the sinner to mete out the meed of his own sin!"
"A voice! a voice—who spoke?" said the Earl, struck by the unusual sound. "Hah! was it thee?"
His tone was low and husky, and the sounds seemed to come with labour from his furry throat.
"Was it thee—oh, say it was thee!" he continued, as he paused, and seemed to wrestle mentally with his madness, till he overcame it, and, by obtaining one further revelation of the past, became more and more cognizant of the present, and alive to the real horrors of his situation. "Memory," said he, passing a hand thoughtfully over his brow—"Oh, memory! what a curse art thou; and, when united to remorse, how doubly so! Hah! those eyes," he groaned; "those weeping eyes again! ... But that voice—it was hers! so soft—so gentle! it came back to me like a strain of old music on the wind of memory—as it has often come in the slow hours of many a cheerless day, and the dead calm silence of many a changeless night—through the long dark vista of many monotonous years. Years—how many! oh, how many! Dost thou smile with thine unearthly features? ha! ha!" ...
Like sunshine emerging from a mist, the past was coming gradually back; and suddenly, like a flash of light, one bright gleam of thought brought all the long-forgotten days of other years before him.
The visionary saw her—Mary—the bright, the beautiful, the innocent, as she had shone in the buoyancy of youth and loveliness, when surrounded by the chivalry of France, and the splendour of the house of Bourbon.
The scene changed—she was standing timidly, irresolute, and pale, on the shores of her half-barbarized native land; again she appeared—it was with the diadem of the Bruces on her brow, and the orb of the Alexanders on her sceptre, as she presided over the first of her factious parliaments, in the ancient hall of the Scottish estates. He saw her standing with the triumphant Darnley at the altar of Sancte Crucis, with more in her air and eye of the timid bride than the stately queen, blushing and abashed by the side of her handsome and exulting vassal.
Then came the memory of that terrible hour in the Kirk-of-Field—the night in the towers of Dunbar, and that fruitless cry for mercy—the sad low wail that chilled the ruffian heart of Ormiston.
He saw to what he had reduced that bright and happy being, who, like a butterfly or an Indian bird, was born alone for the sunshine and the most flowery paths of life! He saw her robbed of her purity and sweetness—crushed like a rose beneath the coil of a snake; and fancy painted her in a prison like his own, sad, solitary, and desolate—broken in heart, and crushed in spirit—blighted in name and fame and honour—withered in hope, and faded in form—a household word of scorn to the cruel and the factious, and all by him—by him, who had loved her so madly and so wickedly.
These thoughts poured like a current through the floodgate of memory; each and all came back with returning consciousness; and gradually his career arose before him, like one stupendous curse.