"Fatal!" she reiterated tremulously—her voice had a musical chord in it, which made every word she uttered singularly sweet and pleasing—"did you really say fatal?"
"Can the word excite your surprise?" he asked with a sadness amounting to bitterness; "when you knew that I was Florence Fawside, and the sworn enemy of your race—hating it and all its upholders—hating your blood and all who inherit it—even as the house of Preston have hated me and mine—with a rancour akin to that of devils; for in this faith my mother reared me.
"Yet, while knowing all that, I ministered unto you in your perilous illness, even as a sister—as a wife would have done," said the countess, in a low voice.
"And by that most gentle ministry—by your dazzling beauty and adorable manner, lured me to love you."
"Lured!"
"Oh, Lady Madeline! my heart is swollen to bursting. You said you loved me."
"And I love you still, dear, dear Florence!" she replied, in a voice broken by agitation.
"Alas! but yesternight I repelled the proffered friendship of your kinsman—repelled it as my dead father, as my dead brother would have done—with antipathy and scorn; and woe is me! the blood of both is on his sword and on his soul!"
The countess bowed her face upon her hands, and wept bitterly; her shoulders shook with emotion, and her bosom heaved with sobs. For a moment the heart of Fawside was wrung.
"Countess—Lady Yarrow—dearest Madeline—do not weep! Pardon me if I am rough of speech; your tears fall like molten lead upon my heart. My love—my dear love—look up and listen to me," he continued, taking her hands in his; while the hawk flew to the end of the cord which retained it, and screamed and fluttered its wings. "Oh, what shall I say to unsay the bitterness of words that should never have escaped me, and least of all to one so gentle and so tender as you!"