It was easier for him to requite scorn with scorn than give tenderness for love.
"Confusion on the buttons!" he exclaimed. "Juden! Juden! Tush, I forgot; poor Juden hath been with the devil these three years. There is none now of all my rascally household who will share with me the morrow's glut of vengeance as thou wouldst have done, my faithful Juden."
Lilian wrung her attenuated hands; Clermistonlee regarded her sternly, and then bursting into a loud laugh, as he threw away his boots and spurs, chanted a verse from the old black-letter ballad of Gilderoy:--
"Beneath the left ear so fit for a cord, A rope so charming a zone is; Thy youth in his cart hath air of a Lord, And we cry--there dies an Adonis!"
"Ha! ha! I shall see his head on the Bow Port to-morrow, madam."
"Infamous and wicked!" exclaimed Lilian, feeling all her old love revived with double ardour, and no longer able to restrain her sentiments of grief and indignation. "Walter, dear and beloved Walter, how cruelly have I been deceived!" and drawing from her bosom the ring--his mother's ring, the pledge of his betrothal, she pressed it to her lips with fervour.
The brow of the proud Clermistonlee grew black as thunder, and he grasped her slender arm with the tenacity of a falcon.
"Surrender this bauble, that I may commit it to the flames. Surrender it, madam, lest I dash thee to the earth, for at this moment I feel, by all the devils, my brain spinning like a jenny."
"Give him the ring, Lady Lilian; give it, for the sight of it will arrest his vision even as the letters of fire arrested the eyes of Belshazzar and smote him with dismay. Sweet lady, let him look upon it," said the voice of a woman.
They turned, and beheld the pale, emaciated, and haggard visage of Beatrix Gilruth, half shaded by a tattered tartan plaid. Taking advantage of Lilian's momentary surprise, her husband snatched the ring from her, and was about to hurl it into the fire, when, incited by the woman's words, and impelled by some mysterious and irresistible curiosity, he looked upon it, and the effect of his single glance acted like magic upon him. He quitted his clutch of Lilian's arm, trembled, grew pale, and turning the ring again and again, surveyed it with intense curiosity.