It was after a hard contested battle, in which his corps had distinguished itself unusually, and he had turned the tide of war on one wing by his own valor and influence, that his sovereign filled up the measure of his renown, by reviving in his person, an honor long disused, and creating him a knight banneret upon the field of conflict. “Rise, Sir Henry Lorraine,” said the monarch, as, surrounded by a brilliant cortège, he waved his hand for the kneeling knight to arise, “you have this day won a name far more imperishable than the title I have bestowed upon you. Were a tithe of the gentlemen of my realm like you, England would have a Bayard or a Roland for every knight’s fee.” Such a compliment, from the lips of a phlegmatic sovereign, placed the finishing stone on the renown of Lorraine. He was henceforth without a rival. Courted by the titled; adored by his fellow soldiers; and smiled on by the young and beautiful; what farther had this world to bestow upon him? Alas! all these brought him no happiness. To Lorraine they were but empty shadows, for they could not give him the love of his cousin. “Ah! how will Isabel rejoice to hear of this,” said De Courtenay, the day after the young hero’s knighthood, “you and she were playmates in childhood, you know, and it will please her all the more that I too love you. I wonder why she says nothing of you in her letters, but then—.” De Courtenay paused. Even the happy lover felt that it would not do to say how wholly a mistress forgets in her missives all but the object of her adoration. Lorraine could not reply. His brow throbbed to bursting, and he turned away. Yet he did not betray himself. Never had De Courtenay suspected that his friend loved Isabel; and Lorraine vowed in his inmost heart that he never should. And thus time rolled on, and day by day, and week by week, and month by month, the renown of the young soldier increased, while the blight at his heart grew more venomous and deadly. _He loved in vain._ Often in the still watches of the night, when the camp lay buried in silence around him, and the holy stars looked down like guardian angels on the world below, he would stand for hours, gazing on the hushed landscape around, and wandering, in thought, back to the time when he stood at the side of Isabel, and together they gazed up upon the starry sky, or listened to the low whisper of the night-wind across the firmament, while their hearts held high communion, as if linked in with each other by some mysterious sympathy. Alas! those days were gone forever. Alone Lorraine gazed up at the sky, while Isabel perhaps thought of him no more. Chapter VII. _He Comes._