poor Knight of the Leopard, who, to support his rank, had little
besides his sword. When she looked, and when she listened, the
lady saw and heard enough to encourage her in a partiality which
had at first crept on her unawares. If a knight's personal
beauty was praised, even the most prudish dames of the military
court of England would make an exception in favour of the
Scottish Kenneth; and it oftentimes happened that,
notwithstanding the very considerable largesses which princes and
peers bestowed on the minstrels, an impartial spirit of
independence would seize the poet, and the harp was swept to the
heroism of one who had neither palfreys nor garments to bestow in
guerdon of his applause.

The moments when she listened to the praises of her lover became
gradually more and more dear to the high-born Edith, relieving
the flattery with which her ear was weary, and presenting to her
a subject of secret contemplation, more worthy, as he seemed by
general report, than those who surpassed him in rank and in the
gifts of fortune. As her attention became constantly, though
cautiously, fixed on Sir Kenneth, she grew more and more
convinced of his personal devotion to herself and more and more
certain in her mind that in Kenneth of Scotland she beheld the
fated knight doomed to share with her through weal and woe--and
the prospect looked gloomy and dangerous--the passionate
attachment to which the poets of the age ascribed such universal
dominion, and which its manners and morals placed nearly on the
same rank with devotion itself.

Let us not disguise the truth from our readers. When Edith
became aware of the state of her own sentiments, chivalrous as