tened to forestall her
questions. Otho was well, he said, and sojourning at Constantinople; he
had lingered there so long that the crusade had terminated without his
aid: doubtless now he would speedily return,--a month, a week, nay, a
day, might restore him to her side.

Leoline was inexpressibly consoled, yet something remained untold.
Why, so eager for the strife of the sacred tomb, had he thus tarried at
Constantinople? She wondered, she wearied conjecture, but she did not
dare to search further.

The generous Warbeck concealed from her that Otho led a life of the most
reckless and indolent dissipation,--wasting his wealth in the pleasures
of the Greek court, and only occupying his ambition with the wild
schemes of founding a principality in those foreign climes, which the
enterprises of the Norman adventurers had rendered so alluring to the
knightly bandits of the age.

The cousins resumed their old friendship, and Warbeck believed that it
was friendship alone.

They walked again among the gardens in which their childhood had
strayed; they sat again on the green turf whereon they had woven
flowers; they looked down on the eternal mirror of the Rhine,--ah! could
it have reflected the same unawakened freshness of their life's early
spring!

The grave and contemplative mind of Warbeck had not been so contented
with the honours of war but that it had sought also those calmer sources
of emotion which were yet found among the sages of the East. He had
drunk at the fountain of the wisdom of those distant climes, and had
acquired the habits of meditation which were indulged by those wiser
tribes from which the Crusaders brought back to the North the knowledge
that was destined to enlighten their posterity. Warbeck, therefore, had
little in common with the ruder chiefs around; he did not summon them to
his board; nor attend at their noisy wassails. Often late at night, in
yon shattered tower, his lonely lamp shone still over the mighty stream,
and his only relief to loneliness was in the presence and the song of
his soft cousin.

Months rolled on, when suddenly a vague and fearful rumour reached the
castle of Liebenstein. Otho was returning home to the neighbouring tower
of Sternfels; but not alone. He brought back with him a Greek bride of
surprising beauty, and dowered with almost regal wealth. Leoline was
the first to discredit the rumour; Leoline was soon the only one who
disbelieved.

Bright in the summer noo