Towards his wife he was changed--harsh, cold, bitterly sarcastic; as if her caresses had turned to gall.

Her gentle spirit sunk beneath the withering blight, and he was heard to laugh, the mocking laugh of a fiend, as he followed her to the grave; her child, indeed, he still idolized, but it was a fearful affection, and a just heaven permitted not its continuance.

The child, to whom many had looked as likely to ascend the Scottish throne, from the failure of all direct heirs, the beautiful and innocent child of a most guilty father, faded like a lovely flower before him, so softly, so gradually, that there came no suspicion of death till the cold hand was on his heart, and he lay lifeless before him who had plunged his soul in deadliest crime through that child to aggrandize himself.

Then was it that remorse, torturing before, took the form of partial madness, and there was not one who had power to restrain, or guide, or soothe.
"Then it was the fearful tale was told, freezing the blood, not so much with the wild madness of the tone, but that the words were too collected, too stamped with truth, to admit of aught like doubt.

The couch of the baron was, at his own command, placed here, where we now stand, covering the spot where his first-born fell, and that portrait, obtained from Normandy, hung where it now is, ever in his sight.