"You are too subtle a casuist for a woman, Sir Alexander of Cavers," replied the lady, cresting up her beautiful head; "but you must be aware that the disposition and manners of Comyn, your kinsman, are at least but too well calculated to excite my suspicion and distrust. To wit: his passionate and unconcealed admiration for female beauty; this is known over the whole country, and thrice, on vague suspicion, I have had to discard certain ladies of my household, and thus make their families deadly enemies of ours. And say, my good Lord Chamberlain, are these wandering sallies not shameful, when perpetrated by one who has a son now in his eighteenth year, and tall and handsome as himself?"
Sir Alexander thought of Comyn's gigantic red beard, and smiled when remembering the handsome youth, who had all his mother's beauty, without his father's ferocity of aspect and bearing.
"You smile, Sir Alexander!" said the fiery dame. "You smile—'tis very well, sir! You know more of the Red Comyn and his secrets than you care to tell me, and that courtier's smile assures me that I am an injured wife——"
"I beg to assure you, Lady of Badenoch——"
"Assure me of nothing, Lord of Cavers, if you cannot assure me of your kinsman's faith and purity."
"Madam," said the old Lord Chamberlain, testily, "there are two kinds of jealousy—a pure fear by which the young and restless lover is animated—and a grovelling suspicion, which is jealousy in the worst sense of the term. Your suspicion wounds your self-esteem—it piques your honour—and is but a new phase of selfishness, for you suspect yourself an injured woman."
"And justly too, for Comyn's coldness to me during the last month cannot be accounted for but by some new fancy."
"Your husband is never jealous of you, madam."
"That only proves his indifference. 'Tis shamel, false, and unknightly; and I only trust that the presence of our boy, the young Sir John, whom the King has just knighted, will in some degree recal my wandering husband to a sense of his own honour and the honour of his wife and daughters."
"Madam, how often shall I assure you that the husband of one so beautiful as you could never prove false—I am an old man, your father's friend, and may well say this."