"You are right, Jean Cochrane, and I will do you this justice, ye could not do more than meet him in the orchard and in the dark of the night. Yes, ye were both seen, and word was brought me to the north by a faithful messenger--I judge the only true heart left. That was fine doing and fine pleading, when he confessed that you had won his heart, but his honor was hindering him. Ye cannot deny the words, they are graven on my heart like fire, and are burning it to the core. You, my wife, and whom I made my Lady Dundee, as if you had been a lowborn country lass."

"You are unjust, my lord, shamefully and cruelly unjust. It was not a pleasant thing for me to do, and I hated myself in the stooping to do it, but there was no other way for it, since he dared not come in the daylight, and I dared not go to him. Now I wish to God I had never troubled myself and never lifted my little finger to accomplish this thing for the cause, since spies have been going and coming between Dudhope and the north. What I did, I did for you and King James, and if I had succeeded ye would have praised me and said that a woman's wiles had won a regiment of horse. But because I have failed ye fling my poor effort in my face, and make me angry with myself that I ever tried to serve you--you who stand here reproaching me for my condescension."

"Well acted, my lady, and a very cunning tale. So it was to serve me ye crept out at night disguised, and it was to win his heart for King James that ye spoke so tenderly? I never expected the day would come when John Graham of Claverhouse would call down blessings--aye, the richest benediction of heaven--upon a Covenanter, but I pray God to bless Captain Balfour with all things that he desires in this world and in that which is to come. Because, though he knew not what he was doing, and might have served his own cause better by letting things run their course, he saved, at least in the eyes of the world, my honor, and averted the public shame of a treacherous wanton."

As the words fell slowly and quietly from his lips, like drops of vitriol, Jean's face reflected the rapid succession of emotions in her heart. She was startled as one not grasping the meaning of his words: she was horrified as their shameful charge emerged: she was stricken to the heart as the man she had loved from out of all the world called her by the vilest of all names a woman can hear. Then, being no gentle and timid young wife who could be crushed by a savage and unexpected blow and find her relief in a flood of tears, but a proud and determined woman with the blood of two ancient houses in her veins, after the briefest pause she struck back at Dundee, carrying herself at her full height, throwing back her head with an attitude of scorn, her face pale because intense feeling had called the blood back to the heart, and her eyes blazing with fury, as when the forked lightning bursts from the cloud and shatters a house or strikes a living person dead. And it was like her that she spoke almost as quietly as Graham, neither shrinking nor trembling.




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