“Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, my beloved, my beautiful! thy death will be on my head, though it come from a father’s hand.  I will plead, I will be heard!  My lord, my lord,” she continued, wrought to a pitch of agonized feeling, no heart save that to which she pleaded could have heard unmoved, “I ask but his freedom, the freedom of a boy, a child—­and of whom do I ask it?—­of his father, his own father!  Speak to me, answer me; thou canst not be so lost to the voice, the feelings of nature.  For the sake of the mother who loved, the father who blessed thee, whose blessing hallowed our union and smiled on our infant boy, have mercy on me, on thyself—­let him, oh, let him be free!”

“Mercy on thee, thou false and perjured woman!” the earl burst forth, the cold sarcastic expression with which he had at first listened to her impassioned entreaties giving way to the fearful index of ungoverned rage; “on thee, thou false traitress, not alone to thy husband’s principles but to his honor!  Do I not know thee, minion—­do I not know the motives of thy conduct in leaving thy husband’s castle for the court of Bruce?  Patriotism, forsooth—­patriotism, ha! the patriotism that had vent in giving and receiving love from him; it was so easy to do homage to him in public as thy king.  Oh, most rare and immaculate specimen of female loyalty and virtue, I know thee well!”

“Man!” answered the countess, springing from her knee, and standing before him with a mien and countenance of such majestic dignity, that for a brief moment it awed even him, and her bewildered son gazed at her with emotions of awe, struggling with surprise.

“Ha! faithless minion, thou bravest it well,” continued Buchan, determined on evincing no faltering in his purpose, “but thou bravest it in vain; dishonored thou art, and hast been, aye, from the time thy minion Robert visited thee in Buchan Tower, and lingered with thee the months he had disappeared from Edward’s court.  Would Isabella of Buchan have rendered homage to any other bold usurper, save her minion Robert?  Would the murder of a Comyn have passed unavenged by her had the murderer been other than her gallant Bruce?  Would Isabella of Buchan be here, the only female in the Bruce’s train—­for I know that he is with thee—­were loyalty and patriotism her only motive?  Woman, I know thee!  I know that thou didst love him, ere that false hand and falser heart were given to me; thy lips spoke perfidy when they vowed allegiance at the altar; and shall I have mercy on thy son, for such as thee?  Mercy! ha, have I silenced thy eloquence now?”

“Silenced, false, blasphemous villain!” vociferated Alan, every other feeling lost in the whirlwind of passion, and springing on the earl, with his drawn sword. “’Tis thou who art the false and faithless—­thou who art lost to every feeling of honor and of truth.  Thy words are false as hell, from whence they spring!”