he might have been permitted to hallow with his blessing.
Alexander Comyn, Earl of Buchan and High Constable of Scotland, had been
from early youth the brother in arms and dearest friend of the Earl of
Fife, and in the romantic enthusiasm which ever characterized the
companionship of chivalry, they had exchanged a mutual vow that in after
years, should heaven grant them children, a yet nearer and dearer tie
should unite their houses. The birth of Isabella, two years after that
of an heir to Buchan, was hailed with increased delight by both fathers,
and from her earliest years she was accustomed to look to the Lord John
as her future husband. Perhaps had they been much thrown together,
Isabella's high and independent spirit would have rebelled against this
wish of her father, and preferred the choosing for herself; but from the
ages of eleven and nine they had been separated, the Earl of Buchan
sending his son, much against the advice of his friend, to England,
imagining that there, and under such a knight as Prince Edward, he would
better learn the noble art of war and all chivalric duties, than in the
more barbarous realm of Scotland. To Isabella, then, her destined
husband was a stranger; yet with a heart too young and unsophisticated
to combat her parent's wishes, by any idea of its affections becoming
otherwise engaged, and judging of the son by the father, to whom she was
ever a welcome guest, and who in himself was indeed a noble example of
chivalry and honor, Isabella neither felt nor expressed any repugnance
to her father's wish, that she should sign her name to a contract of
betrothal, drawn up by the venerable abbot of Buchan, and to which the
name of Lord John had been already appended; it was the lingering echoes
of that deep, yet gentle voice, blessing her compliance to his wishes,
which thrilled again and again to her heart, softening her grief, even
when that beloved voice was hushed forever, and she had no thought, no
wish to recall that promise, nay, even looked to its consummation with
joy, as a release from the companionship, nay, as at times she felt, the
wardance of her kinsman.

But this calm and happy frame of mind was not permitted to be of long
continuance. In one of the brief intervals of Macduff's absence from the
castle, about eighteen months after her father's death, the young earl
prevailed on the aged retainer in whose charge he had been left, to
consent to his going forth to hunt the red d