and woe, no silver thread had mingled, falling round her from her
noble brow, which shone forth from its shade white as snow, and
displaying that most perfect face, which anguish had only chiselled into
paler, purer marble; it could not rob it of its beauty, that beauty
which is the holy emanation of the soul, _that_ lingered still with
power to awe the rudest heart, to bow the proudest in voluntary respect.

The sovereign of England had commanded this solemn procession and its
degrading accompaniments to humble, to crush to dust, the woman who had
dared defy his power, but it was himself alone he humbled. As she walked
there, surrounded by guards, by gazing hundreds, on foot, and but
protected from the flinty ground by a thin sandal, her step was as firm
and unfaltering, her attitude, her bearing as dignified, as calmly,
imposingly majestic as when, in the midst of Scotland's patriots, she
had placed the crown on the Bruce's head. Edward sought to debase her,
but she was not debased; to compel her to regret the part that she had
acted, but she gloried in it still; to acknowledge his power--but in all
he failed.

Calmly and majestically the Countess of Buchan proceeded on her way,
neither looking to the right or left, nor evincing by the slightest
variation of countenance her consciousness of the many hundreds gazing
on, or that they annoyed or disturbed her; her spirit was wrapt in
itself. We should assert falsehood did we say she did not suffer; she
did, but it was a mother's agony heightened by a patriot's grief. She
believed her son, who had been in truth the idol of her mourning heart,
had indeed fallen. Her Agnes was not amongst the queen's train, of whose
captivity she had been made aware, though not allowed speech with them.
Where was _she_--what would be her fate? She only knew her as a lovely,
fragile flower, liable to be crushed under the first storm; and pictured
her, rudely severed from Nigel, perchance in the hands of some lawless
spoiler, and heart-broken, dying. Shuddering with anguish, she thought
not of her own fate--she thought but of her children, of her country;
and if King Robert did enter these visions, it was simply as her
sovereign, as one whose patriotism would yet achieve the liberty of
Scotland; but there was a dimness even o'er that dream, for the figure
of her noble boy was gone, naught but a blank--dull, shapeless--occupied
that spot in the vision of the future, which once his light had fi