"What know ye that is bad?"
She gave him a glance of scorn and fear.
"Say forth, old Barebones—I care not. I am one——"
"Who never spared a man in his hatred or a woman in his lust! A renegade covenanter!—a relentless persecutor of the pious and the holy!—a perjured lover!—a faithless husband!—a false friend!—one to whom Lord Solis of old, and the Marquis de Laval, were as saints in comparison. Randal Clermont, thou art a fiend in the form of a man!"
"With a heigh lillilu and a how lo lan! ha! ha!" laughed Clermistonlee, shaking back his feathers and long cavalier locks, while regarding Beatrix with a sardonic glance, for her words stung him deeply. "And I know thee for one whom the tar-barrels and thumb-screws await, if ye prove false to me. Ay, woman, I doubt not my learned gossip Mersington would soon find the devil's mark on that poor hide of thine. But I came to arrange, not to quarrel with thee—ha! ha! I want my fortune read."
Beatrix gave him a long steady glance; her bleared eyes were glaring with insanity, and a certain degree of intoxication; but she quailed before the dark basilisk eye of her former lover, for the ferocity of her expression relaxed, and she burst into a horrid laugh.
"Thy fortune? ho! ho! I tell thee, Randal, that the blade is forged and tempered that will drink thy heart's blood!"
"Gadzooks! likely enough; for I do not expect to die in bed," replied Clermistonlee, calmly, yet nevertheless exasperated by her reply, as he knew from old experience the value of her prophecies. "But I trifle. I know, good Beatrix, you can be faithful, and will serve me as of old. Here is my hand—shall I be fortunate in love?"
"How often these twenty years hath that question been asked of me; and where now are those anent whom ye asked it? Fortunate? I doubt not ye will be more so than she whose portrait is there;" and suddenly withdrawing a veil from a panel, she displayed the portrait of a pale young lady, in a rich dress and high ruff. Her features were soft and beautiful; her hair fair and in great profusion; and her parted lips appeared to smile with inexpressible sweetness. Clermistonlee turned pale, and averted his face, for the portrait seemed full of life and expression.
"Cover it!" said he, in a husky voice; "Cover it!—dost hear me? or must I blow the panel to pieces with my pistols, that these upbraiding eyes may look on me no more?"