time of lovers and of love, and the young girl, sighing, said to her
mournful heart, "The world hath its sun,--where is mine?"

The peacock strutted up to his poor protectors, and spread his plumes
to the gilding beams. And then Sibyll recalled the day when she had
walked in that spot with Marmaduke, and he had talked of his youth,
ambition, and lusty hopes, while, silent and absorbed, she had thought
within herself, "Could the world be open to me as to him,--I too have
ambition, and it should find its goal." Now what contrast between the
two,--the man enriched and honoured, if to-day in peril or in exile,
to-morrow free to march forward still on his career, the world the
country to him whose heart was bold and whose name was stainless! and
she, the woman, brought back to the prison-home, scorn around her,
impotent to avenge, and forbidden to fly! Wherefore?--Sibyll felt her
superiority of mind, of thought, of nature,--wherefore the contrast?
The success was that of man, the discomfiture that of woman. Woe to
the man who precedes his age; but never yet has an age been in which
genius and ambition are safe to woman!

The father and the child turned into their house. The day was
declining. Adam mounted to his studious chamber, Sibyll sought the
solitary servant.

"What tidings, oh, what tidings? The war, you say, is over; the great
earl, his sweet daughter, safe upon the seas, but Hastings--ob,
Hastings! what of him?"

"My bonnibell, my lady-bird, I have none but good tales to tell thee.
I saw and spoke with a soldier who served under Lord Hastings himself;
he is unscathed, he is in London. But they say that one of his bands