said Montreal, "ere long
be sure she will marry the very man who did the deed. Of this I have
certain proof."

Thus conversing, the Knights wore away the daylight, and beheld from the
open tent the sun cast his setting glow over the purple sea. Adeline
had long retired from the board, and they now saw her seated with her
handmaids on a mound by the beach; while the sound of her lute faintly
reached their ears. As Montreal caught the air, he turned from the
converse, and sighing, half shaded his face with his hand. Somehow or
other the two Knights had worn away all the little jealousy or pique
which they had conceived against each other at Rome. Both imbued with
the soldier-like spirit of the age, their contest in the morning had
served to inspire them with that strange kind of respect, and even
cordiality, which one brave man even still (how much more at that day!)
feels for another, whose courage he has proved while vindicating his
own. It is like the discovery of a congenial sentiment hitherto latent;
and, in a life of camps, often establishes sudden and lasting friendship
in the very lap of enmity. This feeling had been ripened by their
subsequent familiar intercourse, and was increased on Adrian's side by
the feeling, that in convincing Montreal of the policy of withdrawing
from the Roman territories, he had obtained an advantage that well
repaid whatever danger and delay he had undergone.

The sigh, and the altered manner of Montreal, did not escape Adrian, and
he naturally connected it with something relating to her whose music had
been its evident cause.

"Yon lovely dame," said he, gently, "touches the lute with an exquisite
and fairy hand, and that plaintive air seems to my ear as of the
minstrelsy of Provence."

"It is the air I taught her," said Montreal, sadly, "married as it is
to indifferent words, with which I first wooed a heart that should never
have given itself to me! Ay, young Colonna, many a night has my boat
been moored beneath the starlit Sorgia that washes her proud father's
halls, and my voice awaked the stillness of the waving sedges with a
soldier's serenade. Sweet memories! bitter fruit!"

"Why bitter? ye love each other still."

"But I am vowed to celibacy, and Adeline de Courval is leman where she
should be wedded dame. Methinks I fret at that thought even more than
she,--dear Adeline!"

"Your lady, as all would guess, is then nobly born?"

"She is," answered Montreal, with a deep