length,
abruptly, when the earl ceased.

"Not the very faintest, your grace. Had not that interfering Gloucester
come between me and my foe, I had forced it from him at the sharp
sword's point."

"Gloucester--humph!" muttered the king. "Yet an so bloody was thy
purpose, my good lord, his interference did thee no ill. How was the
earl accompanied--was he alone?"

"If I remember rightly, alone, your grace. No, by my faith, there was a
page with him!"

"A page--ha! and what manner of man was he?"

"Man! your highness, say rather a puny stripling, with far more of the
woman about him than the man."

"Ha!" again uttered the king; "looked he so weakly--did thy fury permit
such keen remark?"

"Not at that time, your highness; but he was, with Gloucester, compelled
to witness the execution of this black traitor, and he looked white,
statue-like, and uttered a shriek, forsooth, likely to scare back the
villain's soul even as it took flight. Gloucester cared for the dainty
brat, as if he had been a son of your highness, not a page in his
household, for he lifted him up in his arms, and bore him out of the
crowd."

"Humph!" said Edward again, in a tone likely to have excited curiosity
in any mind less obtuse on such matters than that of the Scottish earl.
"And thou sayest," he added, after some few minutes pause, "this daring
traitor, so lately a man, would tell thee no more than that thy daughter
was his wife, and in safety--out of thy reach?"

Buchan answered in the affirmative.

"And thou hast not the most distant idea where he hath concealed her?"

"None, your highness."

"Then I will tell thee, sir earl; and if thou dost not feel inclined to
dash out thine own brains with vexation at letting thy prey so slip out
of thy grasp, thou art not the man I took thee for," and Edward fixed
his eyes on his startled companion with a glance at once keen and
malicious.

"The white and statue-looking page, with more of woman about him than
the man, was the _wife_ of this rank villain, Sir Nigel Bruce, and thy
daughter, my Lord of Buchan. The Earl of Gloucester may, perchance, tell
thee more."

The earl started from his seat with an oath, which the presence of
majesty itself could not restrain. The dulness of his brain was
dissolved as by a flash of lightning; the ghastly appearance, the
maddening shriek, the death-like faint, all of which he had witnessed in
Gloucester's supposed page, nay, the very disturbed and anxio