“She is dead!” she screamed.  “My dove is dead.  She whom these breasts nursed, the greatest lady of all the wolds and all the vales, the Lady of Blossholme, of Cranwell and of Shefton, in whose veins ran the blood of mighty nobles, aye, and of old kings, is dead, murdered by a beggarly foreign monk, who not ten days gone butchered her father also yonder by King’s Grave—­yonder by the mere.  Oh! the arrow in his throat! the arrow in his throat!  I cursed the hand that shot it, and to-day that hand is blue beneath the mould.  So, too, I curse you, Maldonado, evil-gifted one, Abbot consecrated by Satan, you and all your herd of butchers!” and she broke into the stream of Spanish imprecations whereof the Abbot knew the meaning well.

Presently Emlyn paused and looked behind her at the smouldering ruins.

“This house is burned,” she cried; “well, mark Emlyn’s words:  even so shall your house burn, while your monks run squeaking like rats from a flaming rick.  You have stolen the lands; they shall be taken from you, and yours also, every acre of them.  Not enough shall be left to bury you in, for, priest, you’ll need no burial.  The fowls of the air shall bury you, and that’s the nearest you will ever get to heaven—­in their filthy crops.  Murderer, if Christopher Harflete is dead, yet he shall live, as his lady swore, for his seed shall rise up against you.  Oh!  I forgot; how can it, how can it, seeing that she is dead with him, and their bridal coverlet has become a pall woven by the black monks?  Yet it shall, it shall.  Christopher Harflete’s seed shall sit where the Abbots of Blossholme sat, and from father to son tell the tale of the last of them—­the Spaniard who plotted against England’s king and overshot himself.”

Her rage veered like a hurricane wind.  Forgetting the Abbot, she turned upon the monk at his side and cursed him.  Then she cursed the hired men-at-arms, those present and those absent, many by name, and lastly—­greatest crime of all—­she cursed the Pope and the King of Spain, and called to God in heaven and Henry of England upon earth to avenge her Lady Cicely’s wrongings, and the murder of Sir John Foterell, and the murder of Christopher Harflete, on each and all of them, individually and separately.

So fierce and fearful was her onslaught that all who heard her were reduced to utter silence.  The Abbot and the monk leaned against each other, the soldiers crossed themselves and muttered prayers, while one of them, running up, fell upon his knees and assured her that he had had nothing to do with all this business, having only returned from a journey last night, and been called thither that morning.

Emlyn, who had paused from lack of breath, listened to him, and said—­