true cause, he wearied himself with vain conjectures, and knew not
that Edward involuntarily did homage to the superior chivalry of his
gallant favourite, when he dreaded that, above all men, Hastings
should be made aware of the guilty secret which the philosopher and
his child could tell. If Hastings gave his name and rank to Sibyll,
how powerful a weight would the tale of a witness now so obscure
suddenly acquire!

Turning from the image of Sibyll, thus beset with thoughts of danger,
embarrassment, humiliation, disgrace, ruin, Lord Hastings recalled the
words of Gloucester; and the stately image of Katherine, surrounded
with every memory of early passion, every attribute of present
ambition, rose before him; and he slept at last, to dream not of
Sibyll and the humble orchard, but of Katherine in her maiden bloom,
of the trysting-tree by the halls of Middleham, of the broken ring, of
the rapture and the woe of his youth's first high-placed love.




CHAPTER IV.

THE STRIFE WHICH SIBYLL HAD COURTED, BETWEEN KATHERINE AND HERSELF,
COMMENCES IN SERIOUS EARNEST.

Hastings felt relieved when, the next day, several couriers arrived
with tidings so important as to merge all considerations into those of
state. A secret messenger from the French court threw Gloucester into
one of those convulsive passions of rage, to which, with all his
intellect and dissimulation, he was sometimes subject, by the news of