Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/259

Rh all the laws of hospitality and loyalty, should never again cross alive the threshold over which he had thus graciously passed, to confer upon it honor and distinction.

Duncan was unwarned of his fate, and he read no presage of it in the faces of his treacherous host and hostess. Macbeth was tremulous and eager. The shallowest observer could have read his agitation in his uncertain voice, in the tremor of his hand, his restless eye; but all believed that the honors heaped on him had disconcerted his usually unruffled spirit. But his wife wore a mask impenetrable to all scrutiny. When she met the royal train, it was in her richest attire, with jewels braided in her yellow hair. Her soft eyes beamed nothing but welcome, and no rebellious flush on her fair cheek told of the murderous passion that stirred in her blood.

That night, when all the reveling had ceased, and Ducan’s attendants, worn out with eating and drinking, slept their soundest sleep, Macbeth and his ambitious wife met in the antechamber to the King’s apartment. The grooms who guarded his couch, had been drugged by her fair hands; she forced upon her wavering spouse the daggers with which to do the bloody deed, and, spurred on by ber scorn and her entreaties, he entered Duncan’s chamber and slew him as he slept. Then, shuddering a their crime, so