a week after the events
narrated in the preceding chapter, King Edward reclined. His couch was
softly and luxuriously cushioned, and not a little art had been expended
in the endeavor to lighten his sufferings, and enable him to rest at
ease. The repeated contraction of his countenance, however, betrayed how
impotent was even luxury when brought in contact with disease. The
richly-furred and wadded crimson velvet robe could not conceal the
attenuation of his once peculiarly fine and noble form; his great length
of limb, which had gained him, and handed down to posterity, the
inelegant surname of Longshanks, rendered his appearance yet more gaunt
and meagre; while his features, which once, from the benignity and
nobleness of his character, had been eminently handsome, now pale, thin,
and pointed, seemed to express but the one passion of his soul--its
gratification of revenge. His expansive brow was now contracted and
stern, rendered more so perhaps by the lack of hair about the temples;
he wore a black velvet cap, circled coronet-wise with large diamonds
from which a white feather drooped to his shoulder. There was a slight,
scarcely visible, sneer resting on his features that morning, called
forth perhaps by his internal scorn of the noble with whom he had
deigned a secret conference; but the Earl of Buchan had done him good
service, had ably forwarded his revenge, and he would not therefore
listen to that still voice of scorn.

"Soh! she is secure, and your desires on that head accomplished, sir
earl," he said, in continuance of some subject they had been discussing.
"Thou hast done us good service, and by mine honor, it would seem we
have done your lordship the same."

"Aye," muttered the earl, whose dark features had not grown a whit more
amiable since we last beheld him; "aye, we are both avenged."

"How, sir I darest thou place thyself on a par with me?" angrily
retorted Edward; "thinkest thou the sovereign of England can have aught
in common with such as thee? Isabella of Buchan, or of Fife, an thou
likest that better, is debased, imprisoned, because she hath dared
insult our person, defy our authority, to act treasonably and
mischievously, and sow dissension and rebellion amid our Scottish
subjects--for this she is chastised; an it gratify your matrimonial
revenge, I am glad on't; but Edward of England brooks no equality with
Comyn of Buchan, though it be but equality in revenge."

Buchan bent his knee, and