ine Nevile,--that we loved, and were severed.
They who see us now marvel whether we hate or love,--no, not love--that
question were an insult to Lord Bonville's wife!--Ofttimes we seem
pitiless to each other,--why? Lord Hastings would have wooed me, an
English matron, to forget mine honour and my House's. He chafes that he
moves me not. I behold him debasing a great nature to unworthy triflings
with man's conscience and a knight's bright faith. But mark me!--the
heart of Hastings is everlastingly mine, and mine alone! What seek I in
this confidence? To warn thee. Wherefore? Because for months, amidst all
the vices of this foul court-air, amidst the flatteries of the softest
voice that ever fell upon woman's ear, amidst, peradventure, the
pleadings of thine own young and guileless love, thine innocence is
unscathed. And therefore Katherine of Bonville may be the friend of
Sibyll Warner."

However generous might be the true spirit of these words, it was
impossible that they should not gall and humiliate the young and
flattered beauty to whom they were addressed. They so wholly discarded
all belief in the affection of Hastings for Sibyll; they so haughtily
arrogated the mastery over his heart; they so plainly implied that his
suit to the poor maiden was but a mockery or dishonour, that they made
even the praise for virtue an affront to the delicate and chaste ear
on which they fell. And, therefore, the reader will not be astonished,
though the Lady of Bonville certainly was, when Sibyll, drawing her hand
from Katherine's clasp, stopping short, and calmly folding her arms upon
her bosom, said,--

"To what this tends, lady, I know not. The Lord Hastings is free to
carry his homage where he will. He has sought me,--not I Lord Hastings.
And if to-morrow he offered me his hand, I would reject it, if I were
not convinced that the heart--"

"Damsel," interrupted the Lady Bonville, in amazed contempt, "the hand
of Lord Hastings! Look ye indeed so high, or has he so far paltered with
your credulous youth as to speak to you, the daughter of the alchemist,
of marriage? If so, poor child, beware!

"I knew not," replied Sibyll, bitterly, "that Sibyll Warner was more
below the state of Lord Hastings than Master Hastings was once below the
state of Lady Katherine Nevile."

"Thou art distraught with thy self-conceit," answered the dame,
scornfully; and, losing all the compassion and friendly interest she had
before felt, "my rede is