There is an apartment now used as a bedroom in Sir George Warrender’s house at Bruntsfield, near Edinburgh, which, however, can hardly be called a secret chamber, inasmuch as it possesses windows and two external walls, but having the interior walls on both sides of the entrance of great thickness. The history of this room is somewhat obscure. It is said to have been used as a place of concealment for certain Jacobites after the rebellion of 1745; and blood-stains, which are still distinctly visible on the floor, point remotely to this theory. Another story is that a cadet of the house of Warrender returned from Carlisle about 1760, and shortly afterwards died in this room, which was immediately bricked up, so that all evidences of the event might be removed. In any case, the room had remained sealed up beyond the recollection of any one familiar with the house, and the ivy with which the walls were at this time covered, had almost entirely obliterated any external traces. It was rediscovered about sixty years ago by Lee, the English landscape painter, who, when sketching the house, found himself putting in windows of which he could not remember the rooms. When opened, the room presented the appearance of having been left hurriedly, by a departing guest, everything being in disorder, even to the ashes left undisturbed in the grate. Bruntsfield House dates from 1605.
BY ORDER OF THE LEAGUE.
CHAPTER V.
The weeping woman looked up, and beheld the loveliest face she had ever seen. The girl standing before her possessed all the attributes of southern beauty. Her hair, which was long and luxuriant, hung in one thick plait down her back, and lay in careless waves upon a forehead pure as chiselled marble; her face was full, with deep red flushed under the transparent skin; her features exquisitely moulded; whilst her eyes, deep as running water, conveyed an air of pride and power—a sense of passion equally capable of looking implacable hate or fondest love. They were commanding now, as the woman looked up in the stranger’s face.
‘Who are you?’ she asked wonderingly.
‘Men call me Isodore,’ the stranger replied in a voice singularly sweet. ‘I have no other name. Will you let me look at the coin you have in your hand?’
Never dreaming of refusing this request, the woman handed over the gold piece to the girl, who looked at it long and intently. Her eyes were hard and stern when she spoke again. ‘Where did you get this?’ she asked.
‘It was given me to stake at the table. I noticed that it bore some device, and I exchanged it for a coin of my own.’
‘It has no meaning to you! It is not possible you are one of us?’
‘I do not understand you,’ the woman replied. ‘It is a curious coin. I have seen one once before—that is all I know of it.’