"True, you are an old man, and were my father's friend," resumed the lady, whose black eyes flashed with dusky fire through their tears; "thus it is the more culpable in you to be in my husband's wicked secrets, and endeavouring thus to blind and to deceive a loving and devoted wife. But woe to Comyn and to you in that hour when I prove the falsehood of you both!"
And gathering up her long silk kirtle, which was worn without sleeves, but was so long in the skirt as constantly to require upholding by one hand, she swept away with the air of an offended queen, and with her long and magnificent hair floating over her shoulders from under a band of burnished gold.
"Alas!" thought the old chamberlain, shrugging his shoulders, "how true it is, that love being jealous, maketh a good eye look asquint."
In those days maidens of good family were received into the houses of ladies of high rank to be delicately nurtured and well educated; for which, strange as it may now seem, a befitting fee or pension was paid. Now, among the ladies of the tabourette, or dames d'honneur of the Lady of Badenoch, were the daughters of many noble houses of the Baliol faction, and who were consequently false to their country. Thus she had Margaret, daughter of that Lord Abernethy who basely accepted from the English King a commission as Captain-General of the Scottish rebels; Muriel, daughter of Sir Gilbert de Umphreville, the forfeited Earl of Angus; Isabel, daughter of David Lord Brechin, who was accused of a design to betray Berwick to the English; Rosamond and Alice, the daughters of John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, and Lord High Constable of Scotland, another prime traitor of the Baliol faction; and Yolande, daughter of William de Gifford, Lord of Yester, in East Lothian. All these were beautiful girls, and, save the last, were proud, haughty, and reserved; for their manners and bearing were all modelled exactly after those of Lady Comyn. Yolande de Gifford, whose father, though a lord, had, strange to say, been true to Scotland, was an orphan, and had been taken into the Castle of Kirkintulloch at the request of Bernard, Abbot of Arbroath, the Lord Chancellor, and almost in pity, as all her father's lands in the shire of Haddington had been seized by John Baliol. She was the most beautiful of Gwendoleyne's attendants, and perhaps the most reserved and gentle, for she felt herself friendless and alone among the selfish courtiers of the Scottish King. Blue eyed, golden haired, and softly skinned, Yolande, who had been so named after her godmother, the late queen (Yolande, Countess de Dreux), was, indeed, the most gentle and loveable of all gentle creatures, and she shrank under the bold black eyes of Lady Gwendoleyne, as a sensitive plant might shrink beneath a hot sun, or before the keen north wind.
Yolande, when the tresses of her rich hair were gathered in the golden crespinette then worn by ladies of the Scottish Court, to show the contour of the neck and shoulders; when her blue kirtle, with its tight sleeves, displayed her beautiful form, over which floated her surquayne or velvet mantle, tied with tassels at each shoulder, looked only second in beauty to Lady Comyn herself, for they were nearly of a height; and her pretty white fingers were the most expert of all the ladies there at the weaving of those endless waves of tapestry at which all noble demoiselles then worked daily for the comfort and decoration of their dwellings and churches. Such was then the industrious custom; and we are told that Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror of England, sewed with her own fair hands sixty-seven yards representing the history of the Conquest of South Britain, beginning with Harold's embassy to the Norman Court, and ending with his death at Hastings.
After a long absence at King Edward's Court in London, Red Comyn returned to Scotland, which was then groaning under the yoke of the infamous King John Baliol, the tool of the English, and a faction of traitorous Scottish nobles. On arriving at his home, he gave presents to all the ladies of his household—to one a necklace, to another a bracelet, a crespinette, a brooch, and so forth; but to Yolande de Gifford he gave a golden ring.
A ring!
The restless suspicions of his lady had now discovered a clue to something real and tangible; and now she had an object on which her vague jealousies could settle with security. Yolande de Gifford, the playmate of her absent son—the viper whom she had taken into her bosom at the entreaty of the cunning Abbot Bernard, was doubtless involved with her husband in one of those intrigues which had embittered her whole life, although she had never been able to detect them or discover solid proofs.
"Let me be wary and watch well," said she to herself; "should it be so, by the cross that stood on Calvary, my Lord of Badenoch shall pay dear for his fair-haired toy!"
Iago's words have been quoted a thousand times, and none are more true; for