"Alas! madam," cried Yolande, sinking on her knees in an agony of terror, "you have discovered us."
"At last—yes, at last!" exclaimed the fierce, exulting woman, in hoarse accents, as she savagely wreathed her slender fingers, which rage had endued with triple strength, in the golden hair of Yolande, and proceeded to drag her several times across the oak floor; "beggar! viper! outcast!—ha, ha, ha! thou shalt die now!" and she laughed as she tore out those beautiful tresses in handfuls, till the poor girl's shrieks died away, and she sank senseless at her feet. Then Gwendoleyne locked her up, and after tying the key of the chamber to her silver girdle, retired to her own apartment to still the fierce tumult that swelled her fiery heart, and to lay her plans of deeper and surer vengeance. Alas! they were but too soon formed and matured for pity or remorse to arrest them.
The night passed away, and though she had alternate fits of tenderness and tears, with gusts of jealous rage and passion, the morning found her cold, calm, inexorable, and resolved to have a terrible retribution on the Red Comyn for this attempt to deceive her; and the arrival of a hasty message from him, stating that he was compelled to depart with a slender train on public business to the town of Dumfries, only made her smile the more bitterly, as she thought she saw the game her truant husband meant to play; but she resolved to checkmate him.
"Dumfries, my Lord Chamberlain!" she said, with a scornful smile upon her lovely lip; "now what fool's errand takes him there?"
"To hold a conference with Sir Robert Bruce, the young Earl of Annandale," replied the other, in a low voice; "the Bruces have some bold project now in hand."
"A project."
"Ay, to root the English faction and all Baliol's people out of Scotland. Comyn hath known of this project long, and duly gives King John and King Edward notice of its progress; thus Bruce ere long must perish amid his own plots and follies."
"And without waiting for our boy's arrival from Perth, without even bidding me adieu, Comyn has gone to confer with him? 'Tis well—I wish him speed on his journey. But there is a prophecy concerning him; so let him beware lest he perish by a violent death like his kinsman who died at Craigie, and who had no other grave than his own girdle."
"Now, grace me guide, lady, talk not thus," replied Sir Alexander, growing pale at her words, which referred to a terrible tale; for it came to pass in the days of King Alexander III., that it was foretold by Thomas the Rhymer, that Comyn Earl of Buchan, who was ranger of the royal hunting forests of Plater, would die by a violent death; so he mocked the seer, saying—
"Thou art Sir Thomas the Liar, rather than the Rhymer."