Traversing an ambulatory, on the discolored walls of which old pictures and older trophies hung decaying, Clermistonlee was about to enter the hall; but its vast space rang so hollowly to his tread, and its gloom so much resembled that of a church at midnight, that he drew back overpowered by some superstitious feeling, and entered a small apartment which adjoined it, and had in earlier days been named the Lady's Bower. A fire burned cheerily on the hearth; the furniture and the tapestry were fresh; the gilding and scarlet marquise of the high-backed chairs unfaded; a large mirror gleamed over the carved buffet, which two grotesque imps sustained on their heads; and several old portraits in the warm glow looked complacently out of their round oak frames. "And 'tis here you have made your lair!" said Clermistonlee, throwing himself into a chair. "Yea: it was her boudoir--her bower. Hast thou forgotten that too?" responded the woman, setting down her lamp, and surveying him with a malicious eye. "Well! old dame, and what recks it thee?" asked the Lord, impatiently. "Art alone--of course--eh?" "Alone!" reiterated the woman, bitterly--"when am I ever otherwise? Alone--and why! Because I am old and hideous now. Yet there was a time when it was otherwise. Yea--I am ever alone, save when the knave and the fool (on whose scanty bounty I am too often dependant), prompted by the devil, come hither to visit me." "Dependant? have I not given thee a fee of four hundred pounds Scots per year, and what the devil more?" "Between your own necessities and your butler's villany, not a plack of it have I seen since Lammas-tide." "This shall be seen to. Come, come, Beatrix, my merry old lass, thou art as petulant as when I led you into this chamber twenty years ago. You want gold, I know; but, faith! I have devilish little of that." He spread a few French crowns on the table. "'Tis but white money," said the hag, her eyes sparkling as, with clutching hands, she swept the coins into her lap. "Greedy Gled! if thou art faithful, the gold will come in bushels anon." "On what ill errand come ye now? Is there any one to be poisoned--hah! any poor flower to be torn from its stem, and trod under foot when its perfume is gone?" "Harkee! Lucky Gilruth," said the Lord, striking his clenched hand on the table; "thou knowest me well, I think." "O would to Heaven I had never, never known thee!" said Beatrix, with a tearless sob. "I know little of thee that is good." "What know ye that is bad?" She gave him a glance of scorn and fear. "Say forth, old Barebones--I care not. I am one----" "Who never spared a man in his hatred or a woman in his lust! A renegade covenanter!--a relentless persecutor of the pious and the holy!--a perjured lover!--a faithless husband!--a false friend!--one to whom Lord Solis of old, and the Marquis de Laval, were as saints in comparison. Randal Clermont, thou art a fiend in the form of a man!"