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Updated: June 4, 2025
You haunted me continually; you gave me no peace at all; and I would just have married you to get rid of you." "And you never loved me?" "I never did." "A frank confession! Did you, then, love any one else?" The dark eyes fell, and the roseate glow again tinged the pearly face. "Mute!" said the count, with an almost imperceptible smile. "Look up, Leoline, and speak." But Leoline would do neither.
How have you left your friend, the Count L'Estrange?" "Your lordship has probably seen him since I have, and should be able to answer that question best." "And how does his suit progress with the pretty Leoline?" went on the gay earl. "In faith, Kingsley, I never saw such a charming little beauty; and I shall do combat with you yet with both the count and yourself, and outwit the pair of you!"
The unhappy little beauty will doubtless think I have fallen into the tiger's jaws myself, and has half wept her bright eyes out by this time!" "My poor Leoline! And O Hubert, if you only knew what she is to you!" "I do know! She told me she was my sister!" Sir Norman looked at him in amazement. "She told you, and you take it like this?" "Certainly, I take it like this.
"You ought to have known it!" returned Sir Norman, in the same dogmatical way; "or if you didn't, you do now; so say no more about it. Where is she, I tell you?" repeated the young man, in a frenzy. "Your patience one moment longer, until we see which of us has the best right to the lady. I have a prior claim." "A forced one. Leoline does not care a snap far you and she loves me."
Oh," cried Sir Norman, with a burst of enthusiasm, "how I should admire to have Count L'Estrange here for about ten minutes, just now! I would spoil his next wooing for him, or I am mistaken!" "No, no!" said Leoline, looking rather alarmed; "you must not fight, you know. I shouldn't at all like either of you to get killed. Besides, he has not married me; and so there's no harm done."
"I owe my life to Sir Norman Kingsley," murmured the faint, sweet voice of the lady, "and could not rest until I had thanked him. I have no words to say how deeply thankful and grateful I am." "Fairest Leoline! one word from such lips would be enough to repay me, had I done a thousandfold more," responded Norman, laying his hand on his heart, with another deep genuflection.
"It means," exclaimed Sir Norman, drawing his sword, and flourishing it within an inch of the boy's curly head, "that you'll be a dead page in less than half a minute, unless you tell me immediately where she has been taken to." "Where who has been taken to?" inquired Hubert, opening his bright and indignant black eyes in a way that reminded Sir Norman forcibly of Leoline.
"My dear, do not look so shocked it is not her fault. You know she deserted you for fear of the plague." "Yes, yes!" "Well, that did not save her; nay, it even brought on what she dreaded so much. Your nurse is plague-stricken, my dear, and lies ill unto death in the pesthouse in Finsbury Fields." "Oh, dreadful!" exclaimed Leoline, while every drop of blood fled from her face.
But seriously, Sir Norman, I am afraid your case is of the most desperate; royal rivals are dangerous things!" "Yet Charles has kind impulses, and has been known to do generous acts." "Has he? You expect him, beyond doubt, to do precisely as he said; and if Leoline, different from all the rest of her sex, prefers the knight to the king, he will yield her unresistingly to you."
"Well, dearest," said Sir Norman, getting from the positive to the superlative at a jump, and diminishing the distance between them, "you need to what?" "To watch for you!" said Leoline, in a sly whisper. "And so I have got to know you very well!" "My own darling! And, O Leoline! may I hope dare I hope that you do not altogether hate me?"
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