CHAPTER XXIX.

THE SECOND VISIT.

"Give me again my innocence of soul; Give me my forfeit honour blanched anew; Cancel my treasons to my royal master; Restore me to my country's lost esteem, To the sweet hope of mercy from above, And the calm comforts of a virtuous heart." _Edward the Black Prince_.

The soothing or sleeping draught had been duly administered by Tib Trotter, and Jane Seton slept.

Everything of late had happened most favourably for the intriguing lord advocate. The queen's delicate health, the king's anxiety, his fear and suspicion of the Douglases; the imprisonment of the countess of Inchkeith, and the retirement of the court to the Abbey of Balmerino; but chiefly the young earl's proscription, the banishment of all his retainers from the city, and the protracted absence of Roland Vipont in Douglasdale, from whence it was to be hoped Birrel would never permit him to return alive, left Archibald Seton and his sister utterly at the mercy of Redhall, the chambers of whose mansion were as secret and secure as those of the recently-established Holy Office at St. Andrew's.

Animated by no new evil intention, but solely by his clamorous desire to see her, to be near her, that he might touch her hands or kiss her cheek unrepelled, Redhall had administered the narcotic to his fair captive, whom he now prepared to visit.

It was midnight; his whole household was buried in slumber; and as the moment approached when he had proposed to pay this somewhat equivocal visit, a tremor took possession of his heart, a dimness came over his eyes, and he imbibed more than one glass of wine, to string his nerves and still his agitation.

"Poh!" said he, as his cheek reddened; "all this excitement about visiting a girl--a girl who is asleep, too."

Like many other Scottish houses where the walls were strong, Redhall's mansion was furnished with several narrow wheel-staircases, which, like gimlet-holes, perforated the edifice from top to bottom, communicating with the various stories. One of these descended from the door of his apartment to another which gave entrance to Jane Seton's, opening just behind the arras of her bed.

Redhall laid his poniard on the table, from which he took a candle, and treading softly in his maroquin slippers, found himself at the door of Jane's apartment, and there he paused. Though not a current of air swept up the narrow staircase, the candle in his tremulous hand streamed like a pennon, while a glow of fear and shame traversed his heart like a red-hot iron.

Tib had informed him that Lady Jane kept candles burning in her room all night; so extinguishing his, he noiselessly opened the little private door, and drew back the arras. A sense of flowers and perfume, mingled with the closer atmosphere of the chamber, was wafted towards him, and, by the light of two candles which, in massive square holders of Bruges silver, burned on the toilet-table, he was enabled to make a survey of the whole dormitory on which he was intruding. Though he was unconscious of any guilty intention, there was (he mentally acknowledged) something equivocal in the time and manner of his visit that appalled his heart. He felt shame glowing on his cheek: he saw spies in every shadow, and heard a voice in every echo of his own footfalls.

Softly he let the arras drop, but, in his excitement, forgot to close behind him the door which it was intended to conceal.

Unused, from the first hour she had occupied the chamber, the magnificent bed prepared for Jane Seton had not been disturbed, and with its cornices of carved oak, its festooned hangings and aspiring feathers, its heraldic blazonry and grotesque devices, it towered upon its dais like a monument in some old abbey aisle.

Placed on each side of a mirror, the two candles reflected a bright light upon the warmly-coloured tapestry of the apartment; the Persian carpet of its floor, the fresh flowers that, in jars of Venetian glass, decorated the mantelpiece, and all the innumerable little ornaments with which the taste and policy of Redhall had furnished it, to beguile the tedium or flatter the vanity of his unwilling prisoner.

"She sleeps!" said he, advancing on tiptoe, and shading his eyes with his hand, "she sleeps, and soundly too. Oh, how beautiful she is! How pure, how innocent she looks," he added, gazing upon her with eyes of adoration, for he loved her exceedingly, and with a depth of regard which, though not based on the same sentiments of esteem, was no-wise inferior perhaps to that of the more favoured Roland Vipont.

She was seated in a large arm-chair of the most luxurious description. Carved like a gigantic clamshell, the back, with its arms and sides, were of damask, stuffed with the softest down, and the woodwork was elaborately gilt. She reclined within it, with a hand, white as alabaster, resting on each of the arms; her head lay somewhat on her right shoulder, over which her unbound hair poured in a shower of ringlets, which, from her recumbent position, reached nearly to the ground. Her face was pale as her hands; but some vision was rising before her, through the depth of her slumber, and a soft smile played on her beautiful mouth.

Though feeling certain that, under the influence of what she had imbibed, Jane would not awake, Redhall scarcely dared to breathe; but, impelled by the delirium that was rapidly mounting to his brain, a devouring longing to touch, to embrace her, possessed him; and, kneeling before his sleeping divinity, he kissed both her hands repeatedly and affectionately. Then he became giddy, and his heart beat furiously; pulses rang in his ears, and all his senses began to wander wildly; he gently encircled her with his arms, pressed her to his breast, and kissed her soft cheek again and again. A blindness seemed to come over him.

"Oh, beautiful, indeed, thou art, and most adorable, too; but proud and pitiless to me--to poor me, that loves thee so well!" he murmured, becoming almost maudlin; "why hast thou so great a horror of a poor being that would kiss the very dust whereon thou treadest? Oh, this love is bewildering me--I am not the same man--oh, no,--'tis a torment--a frenzy."

His hot, dry eyes became moistened, and one large tear fell upon the cheek of Jane.

She suddenly opened her large startled eyes, and fixed them upon him with an expression of terror and stupefaction; while his own astonishment was so great that he forgot to release her from his embrace.

The draught had been less potent than the apothegar intended.

"'Tis a dream!" she muttered, and closed her eyes; "another dream, but always that face of horror!"

Then, becoming more awake, and more alive to her situation, and feeling that the arms of some one encircled her, she shuddered, and, in great alarm, attempted to rise, but her limbs were powerless, and a strange numbness tied her to her chair. She made a superhuman effort to cry, but her tongue was powerless.

"Mother! mother! what is this? Assist me, for I am wholly at his mercy! I am in the power of a demon, who will fascinate me with his eyes."

Laying her gently back, his first impulse was to retreat before perfect consciousness returned; but she seemed so agitated, so woe-begone, and so frightfully pale, that he dared not leave her; and, on his knees, began to chafe in his her soft and dimpled hands.

Gradually, the truth forced itself upon Jane. Her actual tormentor, and no vision, was before her. She began to weep, and covered her face with her snow-white hands, over which her hair fell like a glossy veil.

"Oh, despair! despair! am I abandoned for ever? Roland, Roland! come to me, dearest Roland!" she exclaimed, incoherently. "Oh, man, man! why dost thou persecute me thus?"

Sir Adam Otterburn was stung to the heart by her words; but, sighing deeply, he gently parted her dishevelled hair, and said--

"Lady Jane, I am aware that I am guilty of great wrong towards you; but it is the guilt of love, and love should pardon the frenzy it has caused."

"I can pardon your love, but can I pardon the misery it hath caused me? It is not the love of a sane man, but the fantasy of a madman. I am thy prisoner, lawlessly thy prisoner; but thou hast infamously violated the ties of honour and hospitality in breaking the privacy of a helpless woman. Fie upon thee, man! for I will raise upon thee even thine own detested household!"

She rose, staggering, and more than once passed her hand across her forehead, for her faculties were as yet obscured by the potion.

"Oh, deem me not so vile!" said Redhall, clasping his hands, and looking upon her with the most sad and solemn earnestness. "I came but to see, to touch, to be near you, to breathe but the same air with you, to look upon you without being repulsed, to sit by and worship you; and I have done so with such adoration as I have never felt even before the altar of my God; and I call Him to witness, if in my mind there was kindled one impure or one unholy thought."

"Fool!" said Jane, bitterly, for she was full of angry alarm; "thou ravest like one of Lindesay's playmen. Thy purity of thought should have made thee respect as sacred the chamber to which I am consigned. Sir Adam, in all thy love-making there is a fustian sophistry, which shows thou art immensely inferior to my Vipont; and he, though but a rough soldier, never dared resort to blasphemy in expressing his love for me."

Jane saw the agony that Vipont's name always occasioned her tormentor, and could not forbear to sting him with it. A cold moisture studded his pale forehead with diamond-like drops; a satanic smile lit up with a gleam of undisguised jealousy his dark and homicidal eyes.

In this taunt she felt her strength; but saw not the danger of driving to despair a heart so fierce, so proud, so jealous and resentful. He approached, but she drew back with a haughty look.

"Beware, Sir Adam," said she; "for even if the king and his court forget that I am the daughter of John, Earl of Ashkirk, I have a dear brother, and a dearer _friend_, who, if they cannot at present protect, will one day surely and fearfully avenge me!"

"Proud lady," he replied, with calm fury, "if neither Heaven nor hell can protect thee, dost think that thy brother, who is my prisoner, and whose life is in my hands; or that other miserable moth--that holiday captain, in steel plates and gilded scales--will succour, save, or avenge thee?"

"They will, they will, I tell thee, false baron and craven man; thou corrupt counsellor and cowardly Otterburn! And when Vipont returns, thou and all thy kindred may tremble, for neither the Otterburns of Redhall, nor Redford of Auldhame or Avondoune, will be able to withstand him."

He smiled sourly; and she uttered a scornful laugh.

"Woman, how pitilessly thou plantest poniards in a heart that loves thee well. Oh, beware! beware! for a single drop will make the cup that brims to overflow. My heart can know no medium; it is capable of only two extremes. Love the most blind, hatred the most insane; and at times I feel that it vibrates between them. Beware of the last; and, oh! beware of thrusting this rival in my face, for slowly, but surely, drop by drop, as it were, a savage longing for revenge will gather in my heart; yea, drop by drop, till it swells into a flood--a fierce, a furious flood, that, bearing all before it (like a mountain torrent), will drown alike the stings of conscience and of pity, and, like a feather on its surface, will sweep you away with it."

"Sir Roland Vipont is a gallant soldier, who will laugh alike at thy vengeance and thy bombast. True, wretch! thou mayst murder him, as thou didst M'Clellan of Bombie," she continued, with eyes full of tears and fire; "but even then we will find hearts and hands to avenge us."

Redhall remained for some moments speechless with passion and confusion.

"Bombie!" he reiterated, turning ghastly pale; "what leads you to suppose I ever committed a crime so frightful? Speak! But this is the wordy anger of a woman. You talk of an affair which happened eleven years ago, when you must have been but little more than a child. Lady, these words are rash and unadvised. Oh! I implore thee to beware of exciting in my heart the hatred of which I spoke, and of which I feel it capable."

"Then I will repeat them a thousand and a thousand times, thou murderer of the brave Sir Thomas M'Clellan, my father's long-loved friend. I need care little for thy _hatred_, when thy mad love costs me so dear."

"My hatred--beware, I implore thee once again--beware of it!"

Lady Seton laughed; and a gloomy expression gathered in the dark solemn eyes of Redhall.

"Think, dear lady--think," said he, "of the ruin that hangs over thee and thy house."

"Do thou rather reflect on that, and remember that, were I to wed thee, for ever wouldst thou lose the favour of James, the cardinal, and their obsequious parliament; destroying thyself without lessening one iota the thousand pitiless severities to which the knights and barons of our faction are subjected."

"Nay, lady, nay; I who have done, can _undo_. Many of those acts of proscription and severity were enacted by my advice and by my influence."

"Another incentive to abhor thee."

"But I can restore the banished to their homes,--the dishonoured to honour--the unhappy to happiness--the ruined and despairing to wealth and affluence; and to do all this by a word lies with thee alone."

"St. Mary! I know not whether to weep with vexation or laugh at thee with scorn," said Jane, in great distress and perplexity, for she could not but acknowledge mentally that he spoke the truth. "Oh, Vipont! Vipont!" she added, in a low voice, "assuredly thou hast abandoned me."

Another wild gleam passed over the eyes of Redhall.

"Rash woman, how thou bravest me! if thy heart, insensible as it is, has neither love for me, nor pity for the knights and nobles of thy race, surely at least it will tremble for thyself! Behold this warrant," he continued, drawing a parchment from his bosom; "from this house, Jane Seton, thou canst only pass to the castle of Edinburgh. Here are accusations of treason; of conspiring with the English; of resetting rebels; and worse, oh! worse a thousand times than all--sorcery, and compassing, by spell and charm, the life of Queen Magdalene."

He paused, and his lowering countenance assumed a diabolical expression; for his stormy passions were wavering (as he had said) between excess of love and excess of hate.

"Ponder well upon my offer, and deeper upon my threat; respect the first, and--fear the second. Life, honour, power, and happiness are in my right hand; trial and torture, disgrace and death, the stake and the gibbet, are in my left. Here, love the most tender and most true; there, revenge revelling like an unchained fiend! Think, think, oh! for mercy's sake--for pity's sake; and for the love of God, think, ere thou dost for the last time pause or repel me."

Trembling, and scarcely able to restrain her tears--

"Sir Adam Otterburn," she replied, "I despise alike these offers and those threats; for if not a villain, and a cruel one, thou art (and, Heaven protect me!) assuredly a madman."

His countenance became livid, and his eyes sad.

"Then so be it--a _madman_! Then, as a madman, let me have but one soul, one thought, and one desire--vengeance! the deep, thirsty vengeance of madness, of jealousy and despair!"

Terrified by his aspect and his fury, Jane had withdrawn to the farthest end of the apartment, when a new gust of passion seized him, and he sprang towards her.

"There is but one way left me now. Am I a child, a boy, a fool, that I trifle with thee, who art pitiless as a panther, and inanimate as marble?" he exclaimed, as he seized her, and endeavoured to encircle her with his arms; "in this house thou art completely in my power as in the midst of a desert, and now--and now----"

"Mercy!" cried Jane, filled with a sudden sense of new danger, as she endeavoured to elude his wild grasp, and the gaze of his large, dark, gloating eyes, and prayed aloud for safety and protection.

"Ay, invoke and cry, and pray to God or to man, as thou pleasest; but will either hear thee?"

"Vipont! Vipont!

"Ha! ha! the hand of Birrel is in his heart."

"Archibald!" she panted, sinking down against the wall, and overcome with terror. "Oh, Archibald, my brother, my brother!"

"_Here!_" cried a voice like a trumpet; the arras was torn aside, and a man sprang forward--there was a flash as a poniard was buried in the breast of Redhall, and the black velvet of his doublet was stained with red, a cloud of darkness descended upon his eyes; and as he fell weltering in his blood, Jane was borne away by the strong intruder.