tendance as your present state necessarily demands."
I know not whether the fair Rowena would have been altogether satisfied
with the species of emotion with which her devoted knight had hitherto
gazed on the beautiful features, and fair form, and lustrous eyes, of
the lovely Rebecca; eyes whose brilliancy was shaded, and, as it were,
mellowed, by the fringe of her long silken eyelashes, and which a
minstrel would have compared to the evening star darting its rays
through a bower of jessamine. But Ivanhoe was too good a Catholic to
retain the same class of feelings towards a Jewess. This Rebecca had
foreseen, and for this very purpose she had hastened to mention her
father's name and lineage; yet--for the fair and wise daughter of Isaac
was not without a touch of female weakness--she could not but sigh
internally when the glance of respectful admiration, not altogether
unmixed with tenderness, with which Ivanhoe had hitherto regarded his
unknown benefactress, was exchanged at once for a manner cold, composed,
and collected, and fraught with no deeper feeling than that which
expressed a grateful sense of courtesy received from an unexpected
quarter, and from one of an inferior race. It was not that Ivanhoe's
former carriage expressed more than that general devotional homage which
youth always pays to beauty; yet it was mortifying that one word should
operate as a spell to remove poor Rebecca, who could not be supposed
altogether ignorant of her title to such homage, into a degraded class,
to whom it could not be honourably rendered.
But the gentleness and candour of Rebecca's nature imputed no fault to
Ivanhoe for sharing in the universal prejudices of his age and religion.
On the contrary the fair Jewess, though sensible her patient now
regarded her as one of a race of reprobation, with whom it was
disgraceful to hold any beyond the most necessary intercourse, ceased
not to pay the same patient and devoted attention to his safety and
convalescence. She informed him of the necessity they were under of
removing to York, and of her father's resolution to transport him
thither, and tend him in his own house until his health should be
restored. Ivanhoe expressed great repugnance to this plan, which he
grounded on unwillingness to give farther trouble to his benefactors.
"Was there not," he said, "in Ashby, or near it, some Saxon franklin,
or even some wealthy peasant, who would endure the burden of a wounded
countryman
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