Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/257

Rh breathed in loyalty as the air of his native heath, and whose honor was as inflexible as death. Towering above them all,conspicuous for his striking figure, his gallant horsemanship,readiest in wit and in those delicate flatteries which charm the ear of royalty,dashing, spirited, handsome, and brave, rode Macbeth, the new-made Thane of Cawdor.

Macbeth’s messengers rode well. Scarcely had the first delivered the letter to his mistress, which informed her of her lord’s accession to the titles and estates of Cawdor, and the prediction of the weird sisters, before the mailed heel of the second messenger clanked on the paved hall of the castle, and breathless with the haste of his journey, told her of Duncan’s immediate visit at Inverness.

Lady Macbeth was reputed a worthy match for her noble husband in all the qualities which could become her station. Her beauty was unquestioned, her manners elegant and polished to a remarkable degree in that age of warfare; and though her mind was wonderfully bold and original, she concealed such masculine attributes under a mask of the most womanly softness and delicacy. Not inferior to Macbeth in any of the qualities which won him scores of friends, she far excelled him in strength of intellect and will, and in unshaken purpose. And her ambition was