With fixed eyes and clasped hands Lilian watched it; and so intense was her fear for her favourite, that, in the imminence of its danger, she quite forgot her own. The stern eyes of Clermistonlee were alternately fixed on the soaring birds and on Lilian's pallid face; and he grasped her tender arm with the force of a vice with one hand, while pointing upward to the dove with the other.
"Behold! thou foolish vixen," said he—"thou art the dove, and I am the hawk; and thus shall I conquer in the end!" Even as he spoke, the hawk soused down upon its quarry, and both sank to the earth.
The pigeon was dead!
Lilian never spoke; but bent upon her tormentor a glance of horror, scorn, and contempt, so intense that he even quailed before it, while darting past him, she rushed towards the house.
The intruder then leaped the garden wall; and, followed by his stout henchman, hurried towards Edinburgh.
CHAPTER XV.
A STATESMAN OF 1688.
Call you these news? You might as well have told me,
That old King Coil is dead, and graved at Kylesfield.
I'll help thee out——.
AYRSHIRE TRAGEDY, ACT II.
Some weeks after this, at a late hour one night, Lord Clermistonlee was seated by the capacious fireplace in his chamber-of-dais. He was alone. A supper of Crail capons and roasted crabs, a white loaf, and wine posset, had just been discussed; and he was resorting to his favourite tankard of burnt sack, when a loud knocking was heard at the outer gate.
His lordship was decidedly in a bad humour: satiated with a long career of gaiety, he had resolved to give this night to retirement, to reverie, and to maturing his plans against Lilian, whose beauty and manner in the last interview had inspired him with something like a real passion for her. He remembered with pain the hatred and the horror expressed in her parting glance. The memory of it had sunk deeply in his heart; and he bitterly repented the destruction of her favourite pigeon; for he felt that this cruel act had increased the gulf between them.