expression of melancholy and tenderness. All her pride seemed to have
gone; the very character of her face was changed: grave severity had
become soft timidity, and stately self-control was broken into the
unmistaken struggle of hope and fear.

"Hastings--William!" she said, in a gentle and low whisper, and at the
sound of that last name from those lips, the noble felt his veins
thrill and his heart throb. "If," she continued, "the step I have
taken seems to thee unwomanly and too bold, know, at least, what was
my design and my excuse. There was a time" (and Katherine blushed)
"when, thou knowest well, that, had this hand been mine to bestow, it
would have been his who claimed the half of this ring." And Katherine
took from a small crystal casket the well-remembered token.

"The broken ring foretold but the broken troth," said Hastings,
averting his face.

"Thy conscience rebukes thy words," replied Katherine, sadly; "I
pledged my faith, if thou couldst win my father's word. What maid,
and that maid a Nevile, could so forget duty and honour as to pledge
thee more? We were severed. Pass--oh, pass over that time! My
father loved me dearly; but when did pride and ambition ever deign to
take heed of the wild fancies of a girl's heart? Three suitors,
wealthy lords, whose alliance gave strength to my kindred in the day
when their very lives depended on their swords, were rivals for Earl
Salisbury's daughter. Earl Salisbury bade his daughter choose. Thy
great friend and my own kinsman, Duke Richard of York, himself pleaded
for thy rivals. He proved to me that my disobedience--if, indeed, for
the first time, a child of my House could disobey its chief--would be
an external barrier to thy fortune; that while Salisbury was thy foe,