At the
end of this passage, and through the partition, was a door leading
into the _ben_, or inner chamber of the cottage, and when Roland
Graeme's hand was upon the latch of this door, a female voice
pronounced, "_Benedictus qui veniat in nomine Domini, damnandus qui
in nomine inimici._" On entering the apartment, he perceived the
figure which the chamberlain had pointed out to him as Mother
Nicneven, seated beside the lowly hearth. But there was no other
person in the room. Roland Graeme gazed around in surprise at the
disappearance of Catherine Seyton, without paying much regard to the
supposed sorceress, until she attracted and riveted his regard by the
tone in which she asked him--"What seekest thou here?"
"I seek," said the page, with much embarrassment; "I seek--"
But his answer was cut short, when the old woman, drawing her huge
gray eyebrows sternly together, with a frown which knitted her brow
into a thousand wrinkles, arose, and erecting herself up to her full
natural size, tore the kerchief from her head, and seizing Roland by
the arm, made two strides across the floor of the apartment to a small
window through which the light fell full on her face, and showed the
astonished youth the countenance of Magdalen Graeme.--"Yes, Roland,"
she said, "thine eyes deceive thee not; they show thee truly the
features of her whom thou hast thyself deceived, whose wine thou hast
turned into gall, her bread of joyfulness into bitter poison, her hope
into the blackest despair--it is she who now demands of thee, what
seekest thou here?--She whose heaviest sin towards Heaven hath been,
that she loved thee even better than the weal of the whole church, and
could not without reluctance surrender thee even in the cause of
God--she now asks you, what seekest thou here?"
While she spoke, she kept her broad black eye riveted on the youth's
face, with the expression with which the eagle regards his prey ere he
tears it to pieces.
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