us look of
the earl himself, gave truth and life to Edward's words, and he struck
his clenched fist against his brow, and strode up and down the royal
closet, in a condition as frantically disturbed as the monarch could
possibly have desired; and then, hastily and almost incoherently,
besought the king's aid in sifting the matter to the very bottom, and
obtaining repossession of his daughter, entreating leave of absence to
seek out Gloucester and tax him with the fact.

Edward, whose fury against the house of Bruce--whether man, woman, or
child, noble or serf, belonging to them--had been somewhat soothed by
the ignominious execution of Nigel, had felt almost as much amused as
angered at the earl's tale, and enjoyed the idea of a man, whom in his
inmost heart he most thoroughly despised, having been so completely
outwitted, and for the time so foiled. The feud between the Comyn and
the Bruce was nothing to him, except where it forwarded his own
interests. He had incited Buchan to inquire about his daughter, simply
because the occupation would remove that earl out of his way for a short
time, and perhaps, if the rumor of her engagement with one of the
brothers of the Bruce were true, set another engine at work to discover
the place of their concealment. The moment Buchan informed him it was to
Nigel she had been engaged, with Nigel last seen, his acute penetration
recalled the page who had accompanied the princess when she supplicated
mercy, and had he heard no more, would have pointed there for the
solution of the mystery. Incensed he was and deeply, at the fraud
practised upon him at the Karl and Countess of Gloucester daring to
harbor, nay, protect and conceal the wife of a traitor; but his anger
was subdued in part by the belief that now it was almost impossible she
could escape the wardance of her father, and _his_ vengeance would be
more than sufficient to satisfy him; nay, when he recalled the face and
the voice, it was so like madness and death, and he was, moreover, so
convinced that now her husband was dead she could do him no manner of
harm, that he inwardly and almost unconsciously hoped she might
eventually escape her father's power, although he composedly promised
the earl to exercise his authority, and give him the royal warrant for
the search and committal of her person wherever she might be. Anger,
that Gloucester and his wife should so have dared his sovereign power,
was now the prevailing feeling, and t