Saying these words, Lady Rollo retired hurriedly, as if with the view of avoiding a reply, or witnessing the sudden effects of her announcement. The words had fallen upon her daughter's heart like the announcement of a doom, and closed up the fountains of her tears. She sat riveted to the chair, incapable of speech, or even of thought. On partially recovering her senses, she found Bertha standing before her. Rising into a paroxysm of struggling emotion, she flung her arms round the neck of the old nurse, and burst into a fit of hysterical weeping. The choking sobs seemed to come from the inmost recesses of her heart, and the burning tears, forcing the closed issues of their fountains, flowed down her cheeks, and dropped on the neck of her confidant. Bertha heard the intelligence, as it was communicated in detached syllables, in silence; and, having placed the unhappy maiden on her chair, sank into a train of thinking, which her young friend attributed to a sympathetic sorrow for her sufferings. The voice of Lady Rollo prevented the expected consolation, and obeying the command of her mistress, Bertha left the apartment, promising to return soon again. The day passed, and Matilda, unable to join the company in the western wing of the castle, remained in her apartment, sunk in despondency, and at times verging on the bleak province of despair.
Heedless of the gloom that overhung the minds of mortals, the bright moon rose again in the evening with undiminished splendour, throwing her silver beams over the tear-bedewed face of the sorrowful maiden, whose weeping was increased by the contrast of nature's loveliness. She sat again at the casement; her eyes wandered heavily over the scene that lay like a fair painting spread before her; the long, dark shadows of the wood, lying by the side of bright, moonlit plots of greensward, with their spangles of dew glittering like diamonds, reminded her of the chequered scenes of life, into the depth of one of the gloomiest of which she was now sunk; and her pain was increased as she felt herself, by the power of fate, contemplating again her wood-bower, which stood fair in the broad light of the moon. A sound struck her ears and called forth her attention. It was that of a lute, and came in dying notes from a distance in the wood. Gradually increasing in distinctness, it seemed to come nearer and nearer; and now she recognised the air that was sung by her preserver on that night when she discovered him. The sound ceased suddenly, and she saw the figure of her preserver emerge from a thick part of the wood and pass into her bower. The same plaintive air was again raised, and spread around in soft mellifluous strains, suggesting the union, by some process unknown to metaphysical analysis, of light and sound—so connected and blended were the feelings produced by the soft beams of the moon and the sounds of the lute. The blessed sensation passed over her racked nerves like the odorous incense of the altar on the excited sensibility of the bleeding victim; her eyes and ears were versant with heaven, while her thoughts were claimed by the evil workings of bad angels; her heart swelled with the conflicting emotions, and a fresh burst of tears afforded her a temporary relief. Her paroxysm over, the soft sounds fell again upon her ear. Retaining her breath to drink deeper of the draught, she heard the notes gradually diminishing, as if the performer were retiring in the wood. He had left the bower unobserved; and the silence that now reigned around announced that he was gone.
For seven successive nights the music in the wood-bower had assuaged the sufferings of the respective days; but for three nights there had been nothing heard but the cry of the screech-owl, and the moon had been illuminating other lands. The period of her sacrifice was drawing nearer and nearer, and the cloud of her sorrow was gradually becoming deeper and darker.
"'Tis now three nights since he was in the wood," she said to Bertha. "My silence and inattention have but ill repaid his services and his passion. The sound of his lute has been to me the voice of hope breaking through the clouds of despair. O Bertha! my sense of duty to my parents and the honour of the old house of Roseallan has so nearly perished amidst this persecution, that I could now feel it no crime to throw myself into his arms, and seek in humble worth the protection I cannot procure in the Castle of Roseallan's master."
"Wisely spoken, my bonny bairn," replied Bertha. "My auld blood boils wi' the passion o' youth, and drives frae my heart the gratitude I owe to the proud master and mistress o' Roseallan, as I witness this persecution o' the bonniest and the best o' Scotland's daughters. The arms o' George Templeton, the archer, the son o' the widow of Mosscairn, can send an arrow beyond the cast o' the best archer o' the Borders; and may weel defend (were he again in health) her for whom the proudest o' Scotland's knights would send the last shaft into the heart o' his rival."
"Is that the name of my preserver, Bertha?" ejaculated Matilda, in surprise. "How came you by your knowledge? Speak, and relieve me, that I may be certain that I know to whom I owe my life or my honour; and to whom I—unworthy, thankless, ungrateful being that I am!—have not yet vouchsafed one solitary look or word of thanks or gratitude. But what said you of his health? He was wounded for me—ha! Has adverse fate another evil in store for a daughter of affliction?"
"For your sake, my bairn, I traced out this man," replied the old nurse; "but, oh, that I should hae to add anither sorrow to the wo-worn child o' my early affection! He is ill. A wound he received in the wood has become, by ill treatment and exposure, the heart o' a fever that has eaten into the seat o' life."
"And he will die for me—killed by the second and severest wound, of ingratitude!" cried Matilda, starting up in violent emotion. "With death on him, received in my defence, has he nightly visited the bower of his ungrateful mistress, who never, even by the movement of her evening lamp, showed that she heard his strains, or understood their meaning. That countenance, streaming with blood, yet beautiful through his life's stream flowing for me, will haunt me through the short span that misery may allow me. Would to God that I had returned one token as a mark of my gratitude, if not of my love! Bertha, I must see this man, who holds in his hands the issues of my destiny."
"And ye will, guid child," answered the nurse; "but, should death deprive ye o' this refuge, we may think o' some ither means o' savin ye frae this forced match wi' this high Catholic knight o' Haughhead, wha persecuted the reformers as muckle as he does his lovers. Sir Thomas Courtney—whom your father has banned frae Roseallan—shows as muckle mercy to the Catholics as he does fair-seeming love to his lass-lemans. But are you able to wander to Mosscairn, child?"
"A bleeding head did not keep him from my wood-bower," replied Matilda—"a bleeding heart shall not prevent me from seeing him before he dies."