"Destroy thee!" reiterated Ormiston. "Nay; but thy faintness of heart will now, at the eleventh hour, destroy all those who follow thy banner by knight's service and captainrie; by fear of Chatelherault and hatred of Lennox. Let Mary once be thine, and she dare not punish, but rather, for the reparation of her own honour, will be compelled to wed thee. Think of her alluring loveliness; and to be so near thee—so completely in thy power. Hah! art thou a child—a love-sick frightened boy—to sit there with that lackadaisy visage, when the woman thou lovest so madly is almost within arm's length? Go to! What a miserable thing is this! to see a strong and proud man the slave of a passion such as thine—a love so wild, so daring, so misdirected; his heart and soul absorbed by a wayward woman, who perhaps secretly prizes, though she outwardly affects to despise, the acquisition."
"Silence, I tell thee!" replied the Earl through his clenched teeth; but Ormiston saw, by the deep flush in his cheek—by the light that sparkled in his eye, and the tremour that passed over his frame, how deep was the impression his words had made.
"Dost thou recoil? By St. Paul! the safety of thine own house, and that of many a gallant baron, depends on the measures of this night; for to-morrow she will leave Dunbar only to return with the royal banner and all the crown vassals at her back. Take another maizer of the Rochelle, while I leave thee to ponder over what I have said, for the night wears apace."
"Begone, in God's name! and take Bolton with thee, for I would be alone."
The powerful Ormiston bore away the lieutenant of the archers as if he had been a child, and the Earl was left to his own reflections.
"He is right—he is right! To hesitate is to fall—delay is fraught with danger; and to pause, is to be immediately overwhelmed by the recoil of that fatality of which I have taken the lead. But—but—curse thee, Ormiston! why did I listen to thee?"
He drank—again and again—to deaden alike the stings of conscience and the whispers of honour—to fire yet farther his insane passion, and to make, as it were, a tool of himself.
"Revenge!" he mused; "revenge and ambition spur me on, till the dread of death and the ties of honour are alike forgotten. How irresistible has been the fatality that has led me on, from what I was to what I am to-night—a regicide! a traitor! Let me not think of it; still—still, on this hand I glut my revenge on Morton and on Mar; on the other, I grasp love and power like a kingly orb. It shall be so!" he exclaimed, after a pause; "this night I am not myself—the hand of Destiny is upon me."
He leaped from his chair, and threw off his ermined manteau; exchanged his boots for soft taffeta slippers; he laid aside the sword and belt that girt his powerful figure; he took his sheathed poniard in one hand, a lighted cresset in the other, and, leaving his apartment by a private stair which the arras concealed, rapidly traversed the corridors and staircases that led to the queen's apartment.
His face was haggard—his hands trembled—his eyes were full of fire.