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Yet never did I dream she could have proceeded so far as to have caused my once affectionate kinswoman to have left me behind in the perils of Schonwaldt, while she made her own escape." "Did the Lady Hameline not mention to you, then," said Quentin, "her intended flight?" "No," replied the Countess, "but she alluded to some communication which Marthon was to make to me.
To this speech, which was made in the tone in which a modern beauty, whose charms are rather on the wane, may be heard to condemn the rudeness of the present age, Quentin took upon him to reply that there was no lack of that chivalry which the Lady Hameline seemed to consider as extinct, and that, were it eclipsed everywhere else, it would still glow in the bosoms of the Scottish gentlemen.
There are strange news from that country they say La Marck hath married Hameline, the elder Countess of Croye." "That old fool was so mad on marriage that she would have accepted the hand of Satan," said the King; "but that La Marck, beast as he is, should have married her, rather more surprises me."
"On my honour," said Durward, "by the fame of my house, by the bones of my ancestry, I could not, for France and Scotland laid into one, be guilty of treachery or cruelty towards you!" "You speak well, young man," said the Lady Hameline, "but we are accustomed to hear fair speeches from the King of France and his agents.
Spurring his horse forward, Quentin respectfully presented himself to the ladies in that capacity, and thus underwent the interrogatories of the Lady Hameline. "What was his name, and what his degree?" He told both. "Was he perfectly acquainted with the road?"
But on this anxious morning, he rode beside the Ladies of Croye without any of his usual attempts to amuse them, and they could not help observing his silence as something remarkable. "Our young companion has seen a wolf," said the Lady Hameline, alluding to an ancient superstition, "and he has lost his tongue in consequence." Virgilii ix. Ecloga.
Durward was delighted when the king told him that he was selected, with four others under his command, to escort the Countess Isabelle and her companion to the little court of their relative the bishop, in the safest and most secret manner possible. They set out at midnight, and Lady Hameline soon interrogated the captain of her escort, and learnt that he was of noble birth.
"Ha!" exclaimed Charles, but, as if subduing his own passion, he made a sign to him to proceed. "And, in right of his wife, the Honourable Countess Hameline of Croye, Count of Croye, and Lord of Bracquemont."
She was in a state of the deepest distress, both on account of the uncertainty of the fate of her kinswoman, the Lady Hameline, and the gloom which overhangs her own, guilty as she has been of a feudal delinquency, in withdrawing herself from the protection of her liege lord, Duke Charles, who is not the person in the world most likely to view with indifference what trenches on his seignorial rights."
"You speak mysteriously you know of some pressing and present danger," said the Lady Hameline. "I have read it in his eye for this hour past!" exclaimed the Lady Isabelle, clasping her hands. "Sacred Virgin, what will become of us?" "Nothing, I hope, but what you would desire," answered Durward. "And now I am compelled to ask gentle ladies, can you trust me?"
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