‘If you are still for hanging yourself, Ruthven,’ said my Lord Morton, in one of these pauses, ‘you’ve time.’
And Ruthven turned his eyes about with evident pain. Those thought, who looked at him, that he had not so much time. He was horribly ill, with fever in bones and blood. ‘I’m not for that now, my lord,’ he said, ‘I have a better game than that in hand.’
‘I could name you one if you were needing it,’ said Morton again, with a glance towards Archie Douglas. Listening and watching, the grey-headed youth chuckled, and rubbed his dry hands together.
‘Ay,’ said Ruthven, observing the action, and sickening of actor and it, ‘slough your skin, snake, and bite the better.’
‘Man, Ruthven,’ said Morton impatiently, ‘you talk too much of what you will do, and spend too much of your spleen on them that would serve ye if ye would let them. Body of me, we have time before us to scheme a great propyne for this good town that spews us out like so much garbage.’
‘We have that, cousin,’ says Archie, ‘if but we accord together.’
‘Ah, traitors all, traitors all!’ Ruthven was muttering to himself; then (as he thought of the chief of traitors) burst out—‘When we have done his butcher’s work—he heels us out of doors! Sublime, he washes his hands and goes to bed. We are the night-men, look you. Foh, we smell of our trade! what king could endure us? Oh, lying, sleek, milky traitor!’
Lord Morton, whose rage lay much deeper, thought all this just wind and vapour. ‘To fret and cry treachery, Ruthven! Pooh, a French trick, never like to save your face. Why, poor splutterer, nothing will save that but to mar another’s face.’
‘Your talk against my talk,’ cried Ruthven; ‘and will you do it any better?’
Lord Morton flushed to a heavy crimson colour, and his eyes were almost hidden. ‘Ay, mark me, that I will. I will score him deep with this infamy.’ He went to the window and stood there alone. Nobody could draw him into talk again.