"Oh, sir, she has said it—she has said it!"
"Said what?" responded Douglas, in a sharp voice. "Has she said where her renegade brother is to be found?"
Hearing this question thus fearfully put, she exclaimed, in an agony—
"Oh no—no—no!—never—never! Let me go—let me go!"
"The waters wild
Come o'er the child!"
THE COUNTESS OF CASSILIS.
At a short distance from the ancient castle of Tyningham—the seat, at the period of our story (the beginning of the seventeenth century), of Thomas, first Earl of Haddington, a man remarkable at once for his talents and successful ambition—there is a sequestered little spot, enclosed with steep banks, now cleared and cultivated, but then covered with natural wood, which, together with the abruptness of the rising ground, excluded all view of the smooth strip of green sward that lay between, until approached within a few yards' distance.
Here, in this lovely and retired spot, met, every evening, or at least as often as circumstances would permit, two fond and happy lovers; and here had they vowed a thousand times to remain true to each other while life endured, under all changes of circumstance and time. One of these personages was a remarkably stout and tall young man, of about three-and-twenty, of a frank, bold, and sanguine expression of countenance; the other was a young lady in the nineteenth year of her age, possessing more than ordinary beauty, together with a singularly graceful form and carriage. The first was no other—a personage of no meaner note—than Sir John Faa of Dunbar; a gentleman who had already established a high reputation for bravery and for superior prowess and dexterity in all manly exercises. The other, more than his equal in rank, was the Lady Jane Hamilton, daughter of the Earl of Haddington, already spoken of.
It may be thought that such clandestine meetings between persons of such condition as this was not altogether becoming in either. But there was a reason for it.