"Safe, my lord,--not well. Oh, hear me. I depart to battle for your
cause and your king's. A gentleman in your train has advised me that
you are married to a noble dame in the foreign land. If so, this girl
whom I have loved so long and truly may yet forget you, may yet be
mine. Oh, give me that hope to make me a braver soldier."

"But," said Hastings, embarrassed, and with a changing countenance,
"but time presses, and I know not where the demoiselle--"

"She is here," interrupted Alwyn; "here, within these walls, in yonder
courtyard. I have just left her. You, whom she loves, forgot her!
I, whom she disdains, remembered. I went to see to her safety, to
counsel her to rest here for the present, whatever betides; and at
every word I said, she broke in upon me with but one name,--that name
was thine! And when stung, and in the impulse of the moment, I
exclaimed, 'He deserves not this devotion. They tell me, Sibyll, that
Lord Hastings has found a wife in exile.' Oh, that look! that cry!
they haunt me still. 'Prove it, prove it, Alwyn,' she cried. 'And--'
I interrupted, 'and thou couldst yet, for thy father's sake, be true
wife to me?'"

"Her answer, Alwyn?"

"It was this, 'For my father's sake only, then, could I live on; and--'
her sobs stopped her speech, till she cried again, 'I believe it not!
thou hast deceived me. Only from his lips will I hear the sentence.'
Go to her, manfully and frankly, as becomes you, high lord,--go! It
Is but a single sentence thou hast to say, and thy heart will be the
lighter, and thine arm the stronger for those honest words."