e. This king so fierce, my name so
hated! No, no! leave me. Farewell forever, if it be right, as what thou
and my father say must be. But thy life, thy liberty, thy welfare,--they
are my happiness; thou hast no right to endanger them!" And she fell at
his knees. He raised and strained her to his heart; then resigning her
to her father's arms, he said in a voice choked with emotion,--

"Not as peer and as knight, but as man, I claim my prerogative of
home and hearth. Let Edward frown, call back his gifts, banish me his
court,--thou art more worth than all! Look for me, sigh not, weep not,
smile till we meet again!" He left them with these words, hastened to
the stall where his steed stood, caparisoned it with his own hands,
and rode with the speed of one whom passion spurs and goads towards the
Tower of London.

But as Sibyll started from her father's arms, when she heard the
departing hoofs of her lover's steed,--to listen and to listen for the
last sound that told of him,--a terrible apparition, ever ominous of woe
and horror, met her eye. On the other side of the orchard fence, which
concealed her figure, but not her well-known face, which peered above,
stood the tymbestere, Graul. A shriek of terror at this recognition
burst from Sibyll, as she threw herself again upon Adam's breast; but
when he looked round to discover the cause of her alarm, Graul was gone.

CHAPTER III. VIRTUOUS RESOLVES SUBMITTED TO THE TEST OF VANITY AND THE
WORLD.

On reaching his own house, Hastings learned that the court was still
at Shene. He waited but till the retinue which his rank required were
equipped and ready, and reached the court, from which of late he had
found so many excuses to absent himself, before night. Edward was then
at the banquet, and Hastings was too experienced a courtier to disturb
him at such a time. In a mood unfit for companionship, he took his way
to the apartments usually reserved for him, when a gentleman met him by
the way, and apprised him, with great respect, that the Lord Scales
and Rivers had already appropriated those apartments to the principal
waiting-lady of his countess,--but that other chambers, if less
commodious and spacious, were at his command.

Hastings had not the superb and more than regal pride of Warwick and
Montagu; but this notice sensibly piqued and galled him.

"My apartments as Lord Chamberlain, as one of the captain-generals in
the king's army, given to the waiting-lady of S