“Lady!” said Sir Walter, with great solemnity, after having seated her in one chair, and drawn one for himself close to her, where he sat for some moments looking steadily into her pallid and agitated countenance. “Lady! are these the charitable errands on which thou art wont to send this boy?”
“What mean ye, Sir Walter?” demanded the lady, in a state of trembling and alarm which she could not conceal. “The boy hath not basely accused me of aught.”
“Sir Walter, your pardon!” said Jane, the lady’s bower woman, bursting at that moment most inopportunely into the room, “Ronald would fain know what you would have done with the corpse of poor Tomkins?”
“The corpse of Tomkins!” cried the lady, starting up, and clapping her hands together, in an ecstacy of joy, which she could not hide. “Then the boy is no longer alive!”
“He was found dead, it seems, my lady,” said the maid, “and his corpse hath this moment been brought in by Ronald and the rest. ’Tis fearsome to look upon him. He hath got a deadly contusion and gash on his head.”
“Alas, poor boy!” cried the lady, wiping her dry eyes with her pocket handkerchief, and mustering up all the symptoms of sorrow she could command. “Who can have murdered him? I shall never again meet with so faithful a page!”
“Faithful, indeed, madam,” said Sir Walter, after showing the maid again out of the room, “faithful, indeed, readily to execute those most wicked and murderous orders with which thou didst charge him.”
“Nay, nay, this is too much, Sir Walter,” replied the lady, now gaining full boldness and command of herself, from having been thus unexpectedly certified that her page was dead, and that he could now tell no tales; “how canst thou dare to insinuate any thing against me?”
“Madam,” said Sir Walter, in a hollow tone, and with considerable agitation of manner, “would it were so that thou couldst with truth speak thus boldly. But, alas! the words I heard thee utter last night to the page—the horrible catastrophe of this morning—the place where it pleased Providence that he should meet with his accidental death—the direction in which he was running when he received it, and the implements of destruction which were found in his bosom, can leave no rational doubt in my mind as to the person who conceived and directed this most cruel tragedy; and though evidence may be yet lacking to bring the crime fully home to thee, yet, convinced and satisfied as I am of the justice of this charge against thee, I can no longer suffer the head of so foul a murderess to rest upon this bosom. I leave thee to the stings of thine own conscience, and to that repentance which they may produce, believing that God, in his own good time, will make the truth appear, so that thou mayst be made to expiate thy guilt,” and so saying, Sir Walter Stewart left the apartment.
“Leave me to my conscience!” cried the lady, with a laugh of derision, after the door was closed, “my conscience will sit easy enough within me, I trow, since my good fortune hath thus got me so innocently rid of mine instrument, after he had so well worked my will.”