Thus died that remarkable man. A dark story now arose in Scotland: Countess Margaret had encouraged a criminal pa.s.sion for the English baron, John Russel, and was openly accused of having poisoned her husband, by means of a posset of milk and sack, to make way for her paramour, whom she married with indecent haste. Insulted and disgraced, she and her husband were thrown into prison, despoiled of their estate, and compelled to leave the kingdom. It was afterwards rumoured in Scotland that she quarrelled with Russel--who ill-used her, and stood in continual fear of being treated in the same way as Comyn--and, finally, drowned herself in the river Thames.
END OF VOL. X