"Does not our Scottish law ordain that he who slays another shall be dragged to trial?" asked Florence.
"Law again! Oh, I shall go mad!" exclaimed Lady Alison, dashing her spindle from her, and pressing her hands over her grey temples, while her eyes flashed with fire. "When your father had a doubt in law, he consulted neither statute nor scrivener, but put his sword to the grindstone in the yard. Would you call it murder if we slew every man in yonder tower upon the lea to-night? I trow not. 'Twould be a righteous act in the eyes of Heaven; and it would be styled by men—even by those loons whose laws ye quote—a misfortune—a slaughter committed in chaud-melle—even as thy father was slain by the Hamiltons; and Willie—my brave, my true, my winsome Willie—how died he?"
"In upholding that which the lord regent justly terms a curse to Scotland—an hereditary feud."
"Oh, can it be God's desire that I should be driven mad!" exclaimed Lady Alison, lifting up her voice, her eyes, and hands, with mingled rage and pity.
"Mother, hear me," urged Florence, as the gentleness and beauty of Madeline, with the open, honest advances of Claude Hamilton, and those proffers of peace which were repulsed in an evil moment, and under the influence of her who now spoke, all came vividly before him.
"Never did one of this house or race talk thus, like a lurdane monk, like a mouthing abbot, or a craven wretch, but thee! He who slays by the sword, as Preston slew thy father, shall by the sword be slain; for so in Holy Writ the blessed hand of God inscribed it. Even Mass John of Tranent admitteth that!"
Florence felt the truth of what she urged, and something of the old traditionary hate made his cheek glow with red shame for a moment, while his heart was heavy with sadness.
"Then, if I slay this man with my sword, mother," said he gently, "am I in turn to perish by the steel of some one else?"
"Slave!" cried Lady Alison in a voice like a shriek; "did the brave father to whom, for our shame, I bore thee—did thy brother, who died in the feud like a true Scottish gentleman—reckon thus—how they lived or when they died? whom they slew or by whom they were slain? I trow not! Thou hast become white-livered in France. Anne of Albany hath deceived me, and made thee a maudlin fool! Out upon thee—fie! fie! Begone, lest I stain my old hands in blood by dinging my bodkin into thee!"
With these fierce words, and seeming to concentrate the whole energies of her wild spirit in a glance of combined scorn and fury, she struck her right hand upon her busk, swept up the long black skirt of her dooleweed with the left, and retired from the hall with the bearing of a tragedy queen.