smile, my lord De Lacy," replied the maiden, haughtily, "trust me, the lesson will be right tardy; and I beseech you, pollute not the name of Arela De Rossenville, by mingling it, in your hours of revelry, with the pledges of blood and death ;" and darting a scornful look on De Lacy, she gathered up the folds of her mantle, and proudly passed from the hall.

"I will be revenged this dishonour!" muttered the Gaul, with clenched teeth; and then marking at a distance the retreating form of the lady Arela, he, in a few instants, pursued her; but even in the short interval which had elapsed, the gentle daughter of the knight had gained a good space on her pursuer, for when she had quitted the hall, her haughty step had yielded to a more swift and passionless pace, and unconscious that any marked her, she advanced immediately, as was her wont, to the apartment of the lord Morcar. Here she paused, and during the interval in which she made the accustomed signal for admission, De Lacy

was close upon her. Unsuspiciously the lady Arela entered, and as she advanced, pressed the door behind her, as was her custom, and as she did so, dreamt not that the point of De Lacy's weapon had impeded its latch.

"I fear me, my lord," said the maiden, but in a far more gentle tone than that in which she had last spoken, when her words were addressed to the Gallic De Lacy, "I fear me that you will scarce recall your sojourn at Sarum with pleasure in after times, for you have spent many hours of solitude and weariness within its walls."

"The wretched, ladye," replied the Saxon noble, "must recall every scene with pleasure, in which they have been greeted by the voice of kindness; in the hours of my solitude, I have, at least, my gentle hostess, had my own thoughts to commune with, though truly they have been but bitter company; in those of weariness, I have thought of my country, my mistress, and those friends whom even

misery has failed to wring from me; in good sooth, ladye, my weariness grows not for want of thought."

De Lacy started-his ear could not have deceived him-that voice was the voice of Hereward; his heart throbbed, and his chest heaved; but with stealthy and noiseless bend, he approached his eye to the narrow opening of the door; he could see nothing, save a line of light streaming from the lamp in the apartment. With cautious and almost trembling care, he enlarged the opening with his dagger-immediately before him he descried the lord of Hereward, seated near a table, on which lay his helmet and his weapon; he was pale and attenuated, and pillowed his cheek on his hand, while his fine blue eye was fixed on the lady of Rossenville.

"Methinks, my gallant lord," said the lady, in an accent of pleasantry, anxious to call a smile to the faded lip of the Saxon, "the passion of your Gallic foeman De Lacy, resembles the unsteady flame of a

lamp-it serves to lighten a gloomy hour; but if treated incautiously, would breed destruction, while, on the other hand, the slightest breeze would extinguish it."

The lord Gualtier listened, with suppressed but foaming rage, to catch the reply of the Saxon, to a jest of which he was himself the subject; but a faint smile alone repaid the sally of the lady; and it was all she sought, for she felt that it implied a mute acknowledgment of her motive: but the excited De Lacy read it far otherwise to him the sickly smile of the lord of Hereward appeared one of scornful pity, and he-he-the Gallic De Lacy, was the scorned, the pitied object of that smile!

"Shall I sing for you one of our own loved Saxon ballads, my lord ?" demanded the maiden, as she threw her white arms over the harp, and turned, with a witching smile, to the Saxon, while her fingers playfully awoke a few wild and measureless sounds.

But De Lacy paused not to mark his

reply this, then, was the cause of her coldness to him-the heiress of Sarum preferred to share the smiles of the rebel Saxon to those of the courtly Gaul! there was madness in the thought! Yes, he would work the ruin of Hereward; the means were in his hands; and while men judged only that he wrought for the public weal, he would satiate private vengeance, and wreak revenge on the head of the favoured Saxon. True, by imparting the refuge of the lord Morcar, he must sacrifice his friend, the noble-minded De Rossenville, to the displeasure of William; but De Lacy almost smiled as the thought crossed his dark soul-sir Eguilard was his friend only when he aided his ambition, or contributed to his pleasures; now, to shackle himself by such a bond, were to frustrate the loveliest promises of hope. His daughter-ay, that was another spur to action-when the lord Morcar had fallen-when her imprisoned father had no longer a roof to shelter, or an arm to shield his loved and only child,