It was these sad thoughts which engrossed the Princess Joan, and they lingered too on Hereford’s prisoner, the brave, and noble Nigel, for both to her husband and herself he had been in his boyhood an object not only of interest but of love.  His beauty, his extraordinary talents, had irresistibly attracted them; and yet scarcely could they now believe the youthful knight, with whose extraordinary valor not only Scotland but England rung, could be that same enthusiast boy.  That he had been taken, was now a prisoner in Berwick Castle, on whom sentence of death sooner or later would be passed, brought conviction but too sadly to their hearts, and made them feel yet more bitterly their influence with Edward was of no account.

“Hast thou succeeded, Gilbert?  Oh, say that poor Elizabeth may at least be permitted access to her husband,” was the countess’s eager salutation to her husband, as he silently approached her.  He shook his head sorrowfully.

“Alas! not even this.  Edward is inexorable, possessed by I know not what spirit of opposition and wrath, furiously angered against Hereford, to the utter forgetfulness of all his gallant deeds in Scotland.”

“But wherefore?  What can have chanced in this brief period to occasion this? but a few days since he spoke of Hereford as most loyal and deserving.”

“Aye, that was on the news of Kildrummie’s surrender; now forgotten, from anger at a deed which but a few years back he would have been the first to have admired.  That rash madman, Nigel Bruce, hath not only trebly sealed his own fate, but hurled down this mishap on his captor,” and briefly he narrated all he had learned.

“It was, indeed, a rash action, Gilbert; yet was it altogether unnatural?  Alas, no! the boy had had no spark of chivalry or patriotism about him, had he stood tamely by; and Gloucester,” she added, with bitter tears, “years back would my father have given cause for this—­would he thus have treated an unhappy woman, thus have added insult to misery, for an act which, shown to other than his rival, he would have honored, aye, not alone the deed, but the doer of it?  If we, his own children, feel shamed and indignant at this cruelty, oh, what must be the feelings of her countrymen, her friends?”

“Then thou believest not the foul slander attached to the Countess of Buchan, my Joan?”

“Believe it!” she answered, indignantly; “who that has looked on that noble woman’s face can give it the smallest credence?  No, Gilbert, no.  ’Tis published by those base spirits so utterly incapable of honor, knighthood, and patriotism themselves, that they cannot conceive these qualities in others, particularly in a female breast, and therefore assign it to motives black as the hearts which thought them; and even if it were true, is a kingly conqueror inflicting justice for treason against himself, to assign other motives for that justice?  Doth he not lower himself—­his own cause?”