"Then haste my fear Luah,
O haste to the grove!
To pass the sweet season
Of summer in love.
In youth let our bosoms
With ecstasy glow;
For the winter of life
Ne'er a transport can know."
"Sadly true it is, fair Anna," said the amorous Earl, as he leaned
against the gothic parapet, and very nonchalantly played with his
fingers among her flowing ringlets; "youth is indeed the only season for
love and joy--for due susceptibility of the blooming and the beautiful."
"And for futile wishes and dreamy fancies," replied the young lady with
a sad smile.
"Dost thou moralize?" laughed the Earl; "why, gentle one, I who am ten
years thy senior have never once dreamt of morality yet--moralizing I
would say--ha! ha! that will suit when my years number sixty or so, if
some unlucky lance or sword-thrust does not, ere that time, spoil me for
being a doting old monk; for, as the white-haired Earl Douglas said,
when he in old age assumed the cowl, 'One who may no better be, must be
a monk.' (By the mass I would make a rare friar!) To me there is
something very droll in hearing a pretty woman moralize. And so thou
considerest youth the season for dreams and fancies?"
"O yes! for now I am ever full of them."
"'Tis well," replied Bothwell, glancing at the rugged castle, and its
still more rugged scenery; "for there are times when the realities of
life are not very pleasant. But hath not old age its fancies too, and
its dreams?"
"True, my Lord, but dreams of the past."
"Nay, of the present. Faith! I remember me when I was but a boy at
Paris, old Anne, Madame la Duchesse d'Estampes, who might have been my
grandmother, fell in love with my slender limbs and beardless chin, and
wellnigh brought me to death's door with her villanous love philtres.
From those days upward, my own mind has been full of its fancies, fair
Anna, and I have had my daydreams of power and ambition, of love and
grandeur, and wakened but to find them dreams indeed!"
"Those of love, too," murmured Anna.
"Yes--yes," said the Earl, whose face was crossed by a sudden shade,
which Anna's anxious eye soon perceived; "why should I conceal that,
like other boys, I have had my vision of that land of light and
roses--visions that faded away, even as the sunlight is now fading on
yonder mountain tops--and the hour came when I wondered how such wild
hopes had ever been cherished--how such dreams had ever dawned--and I
could look back upon my boyish folly with a smile of mingled sadness and
of scorn."
"'Tis a bitter reflection that a time may come when one may marvel that
one ever loved, my lord."
"And hoped and feared, and made one's-self alternately the victim of
misery or of joy--raised to heaven by one glance, and sunk into despair
by another. Yet, dear as a first love is while it lasts--at least so
say minstrel and romancer--there are thousands who live to thank Heaven
that they were not wedded to that first loved one."
"Dost thou really think so?" colouring with something of pique at the
tenor of this conversation, which made her think of Konrad.
"The experience of my friends in a thousand instances hath taught me
so," said the politic Earl, who began to feel that the topic was
unfortunately chosen; "but," he added adroitly, as sinking his voice he
took her hand in his, "dear Anna, never will the day come when I shall
thank Heaven that I was not wedded to thee."
Again the quick blush rushed to Anna's neck and temples; she bent over
her harp, and said in a low but laughing voice--
"Fie! Lord Bothwell, surely I am not your first love?"
"Thou art, indeed, dear Anna!"
"Go, go! I will never believe it."
"My first, my last, my only one!" said the Earl, encircling her gently
with his arms, and pressing her forehead against his cheek; and, though
this assertion was not strictly true, in the ardour of the moment he
almost believed it so. "Until the moment we parted at Frederick's
palace gate--parted as I thought to meet no more--I knew not how deep
was my unavowed love for thee. Hear me, Anna, dear Anna! I love thee
with my heart of hearts--my whole soul! My name, my coronet, all I
possess, are at thy feet; say, dear one, canst thou love me?"
Borne away by the ardour of his passion, he brought out this avowal all
at a breath--"for," sayeth the Magister Absalom, "he had repeated it, on
similar occasions, twenty times"--and, pressing her to his heart,
slipped upon her finger a very valuable ring.
"Canst thou love me, Anna," he continued in a broken voice, "as I love
thee--as my bride, my wife? and"----Anna replied an inaudible something,
as she hung half-fainting with confusion on his breast.
Bothwell had almost paused as he spoke, half scared by his own
impetuosity, and feeling, even in that moment of transport, a pang, as
the thoughts of ambition and the world arose before him.
And the ring!
By the false Earl, the fond giver of that little emblem of love was
forgotten. On the inside was engraved--
"The gift and the giver,
Are thine for-ever."
It was the pledge of betrothal from Jane Gordon of Huntly, and now it
sparkled on the hand of her rival!
"As this circlet is without end, so without end will be my love for
thee, Anna," said the impassioned noble, forgetting that with these very
words, for that ring he had given another, before the prelate of
Dunblane. Anna trembled violently; she felt his heart beating against
her own, and a new, rapid, and consuming sensation thrilled like
lightning through every vein and fibre. She became giddy, faint; and,
like a rose surcharged with dew, reclined her head upon the shoulder of
the handsome Earl.
"And thou art mine, Anna--mine, for ever!"
"O, yes--for ever!" she whispered; and passionately and repeatedly
Bothwell's dark and well mustached mouth was pressed on her dewy lip.
Footsteps approached!
He started, and hurriedly led her to a seat; placed her harp close by,
raised her hands to his lips with an air in which love and tenderness
were exquisitely blended with courtesy and respect, and then hurried
away.
Overcome, and trembling with the excitement of this brief interview,
Anna bent with closed eyes over her harp for a moment; but becoming
suddenly aware that some one stood near her, she started, and the pallor
of death and guilt overspread her flushed face when her eyes met those
of--Konrad.
*CHAPTER VII.*
*KONRAD.*
To lose thee! O, to lose thee! To live on
To see the sun--not thee! Will the sun shine,
Will the birds sing, flowers bloom, when thou art gone?
Desolate--desolate! Thy right hand in mine.
_King Arthur._
Konrad's dark blue eyes were regarding her with a peculiar expression,
such as she had never before seen them wear. There was an intense
sadness in it, mingled with pity and scorn. It was searching and
reproachful, too; and, though Anna felt all that single glance conveyed,
she never quailed beneath it; but the blood came and went in her
changing cheek as she surveyed her indignant lover.
The appearance and bearing of young Konrad were very prepossessing.
During the whole of that day he had been out hunting, and was now
returned laden with the spoil of forest and fiord. A doublet of white
cloth, trimmed with black fur, slashed with scarlet sarcenet at the
breast and sleeves, and adorned with a profusion of silver knobs, fitted
tightly to his handsome figure; his trunk hose were fashioned of the
same materials, and he wore rough leather boots, and a smart velvet cap
adorned by an eagle feather, under which his long hair descended in fair
locks upon his shoulders. He was equipped with a crossbow,
hunting-knife, and bugle-horn, and a sheaf of short arrows bristled in
his baldrick. An immense cock-of-the-wood and a bag of golden plover
were slung over one shoulder, balanced on the other by a pouch of
seabirds' eggs, taken from their eyries in those impending cliffs that
overhang the bay, where, clinging as a fly clings to a wall, he had
scrambled and swung fearlessly above the surf; and, chief spoil of the
day, he bore upon his shoulder a black fox, which he had slain by a
single bolt from his crossbow.
His natural colour had been increased by exercise; and he looked so
handsome and gallant as he sprang up the terrace steps with his unwound
arblast in his hand, that Christina Slingbunder sighed as he kissed her
dimpled hand a moment before, when enquiring for her mistress; but now
the mind of that fickle mistress was too full of Bothwell's image to
think much, if at all, on her former lover.
Unwilling to admit to her those bitter suspicions and jealousies that
were harrowing up his heart, Konrad addressed her as usual, and with an
air of affected gaiety laid the spoil of his bow and spear at her feet.
She bowed in silence, and regarded them dreamily.
"See how beautiful is the fur of this fox! Will not its blackness
contrast well with your snowy skin, dear Anna?"
"Tush!" said she, a little pettishly; "flatter not thyself, good Konrad,
I will make me trimmings of an odious fox-skin; away with it!"