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Wherefore is Sibyll sad? Some short month since and we beheld her gay with hope and basking in the sunny atmosphere of pleasure and of love. The mind of this girl was a singular combination of tenderness and pride, the first wholly natural, the last the result of circumstance and position.
And therefore it was that the maid was changed! At the sight of the delicate beauty, the self-possessed expression, the courtly dress, the noble air of Sibyll, Nicholas Alwyn recoiled and turned pale; he no longer marvelled at her rejection of Marmaduke, and he started at the remembrance of the bold thoughts which he had dared himself to indulge. The girl smiled at the young man's confusion.
They launched themselves through the open entrance, gained the space beyond, and scoured away to the battlefield. Meanwhile, Sibyll and her father were still under the canopy of heaven, they had scarcely passed the garden and entered the fields, when they saw horsemen riding to and fro in all directions.
Occupied with her own dreams, Sibyll respected those of her father; and so in silence, not altogether mournful, the morning and the noon passed, and the sun was sloping westward, when a confused sound below called Sibyll's gaze to the lattice, which looked over the balustrade of the staircase into the vast yard.
Marmaduke, rapidly recovering from the effect of his wounds, and without other resource than Sibyll's society in the solitude of his confinement, was not proof against the temptation which one so young and so sweetly winning brought to his fancy or his senses. The poor Sibyll she was no faultless paragon, she was a rare and singular mixture of many opposite qualities in heart and in intellect!
"We can pay you, mistress!" exclaimed Sibyll, springing up. "We have moneys yet. Here, here!" and she took from her gipsire the broad pieces which poor Madge's precaution had placed therein, and which the bravoes had fortunately spared. The sight of the gold somewhat softened the housewife.
And now Hugh stopped before a house of good fashion, knocked at the door, which was opened by an old servitor, disappeared for a few moments, and returning, informed Sibyll, in a meaning whisper, that the gentlewoman within was a good Lancastrian, and prayed the donzell to rest in her company till Master Warner's return.
And Sibyll stayed. While these charming girls thus innocently conferred; while, Anne's sweet voice running on in her artless fancies, they helped each other to undress; while hand in hand they knelt in prayer by the crucifix in the dim recess; while timidly they extinguished the light, and stole to rest; while, conversing in whispers, growing gradually more faint and low, they sank into guileless sleep, the unholy king paced his solitary chamber, parched with the fever of the sudden and frantic passion that swept away from a heart in which every impulse was a giant all the memories of honour, gratitude, and law.
He managed, therefore, to detain the old servant, who, besides the liking a skilful leech naturally takes to a thriving patient, had enough of her sex about her to be pleased with a comely face and a frank, good-humoured voice. Moreover, Marmaduke, wishing to satisfy his curiosity, turned the conversation upon Warner and Sibyll, a theme upon which the old woman was well disposed to be garrulous.
And if," she added, with a sudden and generous energy, "if in this I have bowed my pride, it is because by pride thou wert wounded; and now, at last, thou hast a just revenge." O terrible rival for thee, lost Sibyll!
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