"After a six years' absence, come you here, Lord Harold, instead of visiting your lady at Braal?" asked the bishop, with an air of surprise that was not unmingled with alarm.
"The countess?—you speak not of my daughters."
"Alas! they are here no longer," said the bishop, evasively.
"Dead?" asked the earl, with a cold smile.
"To you and all of us."
"'Tis well," said Harold, grinding his teeth; "but I came not hither to speak of them!"
"Of what then?" asked Bishop Adam, with anxiety.
"Of thyself, who hast dared to pour empty anathemas on me, for merely drinking a bowl of wine in my own town of Kirkwall."
"Silence, thou blasphemous lord, who desecrated the altar of God by the praises of a heathen idol! I think of the coming time when thou shalt die!"
"And what then?" asked Morrar, with a fierce and mocking laugh.