His wife, the countess, was directly the reverse of her husband. Tall in her person, handsomely formed, with graceful movements and accomplished manners, she was accounted open-hearted, good-humoured, approaching to simplicity, destitute of all guile and deceit. Her countenance wore a continual smile, and was so open and ingenuous, that it might be read like the page of a book. The best proof of her goodness was the kindness she exhibited to the deformed partner of her life. She boasted--and he admitted--that she was the only person who could read him, not from her powers of penetration, but from his yielding relaxation of the deceptive discipline of his face and manners. He often remarked that it was fortunate for him that his Countess Margaret was so much of a child; for he felt and acknowledged that it was only in the presence of children that he considered himself safe in throwing off his disguise, and appearing for a time in his natural character. Such are the effects of ambition.
A legend saith that, on one occasion, the following conversation took place between these dissimilar yet well-mated companions--
"Wert thou not so simple, fair Margaret," said the earl, "I would suspect thou hadst no great affection for him whom King Henry calleth the 'Crooked Comyn.' Men may love me for my subtlety and power, from interest; my brothers because I am their brother, from instinct; and my wolf-dog, Grim, because I join him in the chase. Now, to gratify my humour for frolic on this night when I think I have overturned the power of the English regent, tell me what thou lovest me for, good simpleton; for I cannot doubt that simpletons have their fancies like other folks; and, if thou dost not love me, why hast thou prepared for me, even now on this night of my triumph, that cup of warm milk curdled with sack which thou callest a posset? I asked it not of thee, and love must have suggested it."
"What should I love my Walter for," replied Countess Margaret, "but his noble qualities, placed in a person the defects of which, as he states them, I cannot see? Custom hath made thee straight, and love hath embellished both thy mind and body; but, above all, I love thee because thou lovest me; for it is an old saying in our cottage, that love begets love, and"--patting him playfully on the cheek--"my heart must have been barren indeed, if, after ten years of thy wooing, it produced no more affection than was able to prepare for thee a posset of milk and sack on the evening of the day of thy triumph."