is name was spoken in the gentle tones which
had never been forgotten, although the memory was growing dim.

Weak and dazed and feeble, both in body and mind, from the exhausting
and wasting illness that had followed the severe winter's campaign,
Wendot knew not if this vision was but the figment of his own brain, or
whether the passionate love he felt rising up in his heart was lavished
upon a mere phantom. But so long as she flitted about him he was content
to lie and watch her, with the light of a great happiness in his eyes;
and once when he had called her name -- the never forgotten name of
Gertrude -- he had thought that she had come and taken his hand and had
bent over him with a wonderful light in her eyes, but the very effort he
made to rise up and grasp her hands, and learn if indeed it were a
creature of flesh and blood, had resulted in a lapse back into
unconsciousness, and he was silent as to the vision even to Griffeth,
lest perchance he should have to learn that it was but a fevered dream,
and that there was no Gertrude within the castle walls at all.

But Gertrude knew all; it was no dream to her. She saw the love light in
the eyes dearest to her in the world. She had heard her name called; she
had seen that the love she had cherished for the hero of her childhood
had not been cherished in vain. Perhaps Wendot had betrayed more in his
sickness and weakness than he would have allowed himself to do in his
strength, knowing himself a helpless, landless prisoner in the hands of
the stern monarch who occupied England's throne. But be that as it may,
Gertrude had read his secret and was happy, though with such a chastened
happiness as alone was possible to one who knew the peril in which her
lover lay, and how hopeless even Alphonso thought it to obtain for him
the king's pardon.

"My father would have betrothed us as children," said Gertrude, her face
glowing, but her voice steady and soft, for why should she be ashamed of
the faithful love of a lifetime?

"When we saw each other again he would have plighted us, but for the
fear of what Llewelyn and Howel would do. But think you I love him less
for his love to his country? Think you that I have aught to reproach him
with, when I know how he was forced into rebellion by others? I care not
what he has done. I love him, and I know that he loves me. Sooner would
I share a prison with him than a palace with any man beside; yet I fear
that in prison walls he wil