"I never thought ye either, Florence; but why has the just and natural bitterness of your heart for him who slew the nearest and dearest of your kinsmen turned all to peace and sweetness? Was it for this I brought ye hame frae France?—woe worth the day I ever sent thee there! There is magic in it; I tell thee, Florence, 'tis sorcery, and thou art under spell!"
"Perchance I am, mother," said he sadly, but with a fond smile, for he thought of Madeline.
"Perchance ye are?" she reiterated scornfully. "Art puling again like a yammering bairn, instead of acting like a bearded man—like the son of that brave father whom Preston and his people foully murdered in his harness, under tryst."
"Are you come again to taunt and to torment me?" said Florence, attempting to rise; but she clutched his right hand with fiery energy.
"Sit ye there and listen!" she exclaimed. "Ye are foully bewitched—I know it. Whence got ye that devilish bauble whilk ye were worshipping even just now as if it were a saint's bone or the true cross? 'Tis an opal; and know ye not the opal is a stone from the pillars of hell, and ever worketh the destruction of the wearer? Speak, ye witless one—speak!" she continued, raising her voice, while her grey eyes flashed with fire, and her wrinkled hand struck her cane again and again into the earth. "Some cursed witch of France hath wrought this mischief, and stolen alike thy manhood and thy heart. Give it me, that I may place it in the flames from whence it came, and so destroy the spell by which Preston is spared and thou art befooled. The ring, Florence—the ring, I say!"
"Nay, mother; in this you must hold me excused. But believe me, on the honour of a gentleman, no woman or witch of France gave this trinket to me."
His mother drew back a pace, and surveyed him with a singular combination of expressions in her dark-grey eyes: maternal love, rage, pity, and shame were there displayed by turns in all their strength.
"In our house, degenerate boy, have been ten knights created, where you will never kneel, under the king's banner, when its staff was planted in a foughten field where dead men lay thick as harvest sheaves; and of these ten, every man fell in battle with his belt and spurs on; but I trow, my silken page, thou wilt die comfortably in bed and with a whole skin."
Poor Florence felt the scorn of his mother deeply, and his anger at her determined injustice now began to kindle.
"I am under no spell, mother," said he calmly; "but I love a lady who is second to none in Scotland, save the queen herself."