ified Sibyll in her high-placed affection, she scrupled not to
encourage the blushing girl by predictions in which she forced her own
better judgment to believe. Nor, when she learned Sibyll's descent from
a family that had once ranked as high as that of Hastings, would she
allow that there was any disparity in the alliance she foretold. But
more, far more than Lady Longueville's assurances, did the delicate
and unceasing gallantries of Hastings himself flatter the fond faith
of Sibyll. True, that he spoke not actually of love, but every look
implied, every whisper seemed to betray it. And to her he spoke as to an
equal, not in birth alone, but in mind; so superior was she in culture,
in natural gifts, and, above all, in that train of high thought and
elevated sentiment, in which genius ever finds a sympathy, to the
court-flutterers of her sex, that Hastings, whether or not he cherished
a warmer feeling, might well take pleasure in her converse, and feel
the lovely infant worthy the wise man's trust. He spoke to her without
reserve of the Lady Bonville, and he spoke with bitterness. "I
loved her," he said, "as woman is rarely loved. She deserted me for
another--rather should she have gone to the convent than the altar; and
now, forsooth, she deems she hath the right to taunt and to rate me, to
dictate to me the way I should walk, and to flaunt the honours I have
won."

"May that be no sign of a yet tender interest?" said Sibyll, timidly.

The eyes of Hastings sparkled for a moment, but the gleam vanished.
"Nay, you know her not. Her heart is marble, as hard and as cold;
her very virtue but the absence of emotion,--I would say, of gentler
emotion; for, pardieu, such emotions as come from ire and pride and
scorn are the daily growth of that stern soil. Oh, happy was my escape!
Happy the desertion which my young folly deemed a curse! No!" he added,
with a sarcastic quiver of his lip--"no; what stings and galls the Lady
of Harrington and Bonville, what makes her countenance change in my
presence, and her voice sharpen at my accost, is plainly this: in
wedding her dull lord and rejecting me, Katherine Nevile deemed she
wedded power and rank and station; and now, while we are both young,
how proves her choice? The Lord of Harrington and Bonville is so noted a
dolt, that even the Neviles cannot help him to rise,--the meanest office
is above his mind's level; and, dragged down by the heavy clay to which
her wings are yoked, Ka