While muttering thus, slowly and in a manner peculiar to all who live much alone, or are in the habit of communing with themselves, she glanced twice or thrice impatiently towards her son but he still read on. Finding her audible remarks produced no response, she addressed him.
"Wit ye now, my son, that Preston's niece, the daughter of that foul Earl of Yarrow, who drew his sword in the fray in which your father fell, is even now in Preston tower."
"Madeline!" faltered Florence, closing his book.
"Yea, Madeline Home; ye know her name it seems. So, when will there be a better time than now to form a plan for destroying the whole brood, root and branch?"
"A worse you mean, mother," said Florence, as the dark story of Aileen MacNab occurred to him.
"A better—I mean what I say; for in the war and tumult of an invasion, what matter a few lives more or less?"
"Mother, I dare not urge the feud at present," sighed poor Florence.
"Dare not—did I hear you aright? have two acts of common charity—it may be of merest courtesy that passed between ye in the Torwood, so blunted the keen resentment which hath lived for so many generations?"
"The regent——"
"Prate not to me of regents—nay, nor of kings," she persisted, whirling her spindle like lightning.