CHAPTER XVIII.
THE BALCONY.
The nymph must lose her female friend,
If more admired than she;
But where will fierce contention end,
If flowers can disagree?—Cowper.
"Is it so with you?" said the countess, roughly grasping her arm; "is it so—still mourning for that scurvy captain of the king's morris-pikes?"
"Morris-pikes! Oh, sister, can you compare to mummers, the men who formed the van at Piperden?"
"Ay, where a Douglas routed Piercy—a service, like others, committed to oblivion now," was the bitter response.
Murielle wept in silence, while her haughty sister continued to regard her with an expression in her eyes very much akin to disdain.
The poor girl had frequently been fretted and galled by hearing a much-loved name—alas! it might only be a much-revered memory—reviled; yet she bore it meekly, hoping daily for a change. But weeks became months, and months became seasons, yet no change came in the bearing of her sister; which, always haughty, turned at times violent and tempestuous.
The proud Margaret felt that she had done a wrong action by her second espousal, which had raised doubts in her mind that even the papal dispensation might fail to dispel; and while she writhed under this conviction, and longed for vengeance on the slayers of that handsome lover and boy-husband—whom she secretly mourned, even when in the arms of the subtle Earl James, she felt—she knew not why—irritated, and at times exasperated, by the meek, quiet, and passive tenor of Murielle's existence.
"Tears still," she resumed, "always tears; but beware how the earl finds you thus."
"Oh, Margaret, I have studied to conceal my living sorrow from him—from you—from all."