“And you have no clue, no thought of her retreat?” he asked, at length, abruptly, when the earl ceased.

“Not the very faintest, your grace.  Had not that interfering Gloucester come between me and my foe, I had forced it from him at the sharp sword’s point.”

“Gloucester—­humph!” muttered the king.  “Yet an so bloody was thy purpose, my good lord, his interference did thee no ill.  How was the earl accompanied—­was he alone?”

“If I remember rightly, alone, your grace.  No, by my faith, there was a page with him!”

“A page—­ha! and what manner of man was he?”

“Man! your highness, say rather a puny stripling, with far more of the woman about him than the man.”

“Ha!” again uttered the king; “looked he so weakly—­did thy fury permit such keen remark?”

“Not at that time, your highness; but he was, with Gloucester, compelled to witness the execution of this black traitor, and he looked white, statue-like, and uttered a shriek, forsooth, likely to scare back the villain’s soul even as it took flight.  Gloucester cared for the dainty brat, as if he had been a son of your highness, not a page in his household, for he lifted him up in his arms, and bore him out of the crowd.”

“Humph!” said Edward again, in a tone likely to have excited curiosity in any mind less obtuse on such matters than that of the Scottish earl.  “And thou sayest,” he added, after some few minutes pause, “this daring traitor, so lately a man, would tell thee no more than that thy daughter was his wife, and in safety—­out of thy reach?”

Buchan answered in the affirmative.

“And thou hast not the most distant idea where he hath concealed her?”

“None, your highness.”

“Then I will tell thee, sir earl; and if thou dost not feel inclined to dash out thine own brains with vexation at letting thy prey so slip out of thy grasp, thou art not the man I took thee for,” and Edward fixed his eyes on his startled companion with a glance at once keen and malicious.

“The white and statue-looking page, with more of woman about him than the man, was the wife of this rank villain, Sir Nigel Bruce, and thy daughter, my Lord of Buchan.  The Earl of Gloucester may, perchance, tell thee more.”

The earl started from his seat with an oath, which the presence of majesty itself could not restrain.  The dulness of his brain was dissolved as by a flash of lightning; the ghastly appearance, the maddening shriek, the death-like faint, all of which he had witnessed in Gloucester’s supposed page, nay, the very disturbed and anxious look of the earl himself, gave truth and life to Edward’s words, and he struck his clenched fist against his brow, and strode up and down the royal closet, in a condition as frantically disturbed as the monarch could possibly have desired; and then, hastily and almost incoherently, besought the king’s aid in sifting the matter to the very bottom, and obtaining repossession of his daughter, entreating leave of absence to seek out Gloucester and tax him with the fact.