Scarcely had silence resumed her dominion in the palace, when the porter was again aroused to admit de Courtenay and his rescued Eva. The traitor D'Essai had been lodged in the tower of Maledictum, to wait Edward's pleasure concerning him; and Eva, her heart overflowing with rapture in the assurance of Sir Henry's restored confidence, and the security of a father's love, passed the livelong night with Eleanora, in that free communion of soul which generous natures experience when the gushings of a common emotion overleap the barriers of conventionalism and formality. * * * * * Edward was himself again. The steady ray of reason had subdued the fevered gleam of his eye, and the ruddy hue of health replaced the pallor of wasting sickness upon his cheek. His athletic frame had wrestled with disease, and come off conqueror over weakness and pain; and as he assumed his seat of judgment, clad in his warlike panoply, the royal Plantagenet "looked every inch a king." The great church of Acre was thrown open, and knights in brilliant armor, and Templars and Hospitallers in the habiliments of their orders, bishops and priests in their sacred robes, and vassals in their holiday array, crowded up the long aisles, and filled the spacious choir, as though eager to witness some splendid ceremonial. But instead of gorgeous decorations, wainscot and window draped with black diffused a funereal gloom, and the solemn reverberation of the tolling bell seemed to sound a requiem over the grave of Hope. Sir Francis d'Essai had been tried in a council of his peers, and found guilty of treason to religion and knightly devoir; and this day, the anniversary of his admission to the rank of knighthood, his companions in arms, the vassals whom he despised, and all those actuated by curiosity or enmity, were assembled to witness his _degradation_. Eva shuddered at the terrible doom of her former lover, and de Courtenay, with instinctive delicacy, had obtained permission to absent himself from the scene on a visit to the Holy Sepulchre. As king-of-arms, and first in rank, it was the duty of Edward to preside over this fearful ceremony, which, by the true and loyal, was regarded as more terrible than death itself. At the first stroke of the great bell, the pursuivants, having robed Sir Francis for the last time in his knightly habiliments, conducted him from the _Cursed Tower_ toward the church. As they entered the door, the doleful peal sank in silence, and, after one awful moment, his fellow-knights, with broken voices, began to chant the burial service. An elevated stage, hung with black, had been erected in the centre of the nave, and upon this the pursuivants, whose business it was to divest him of every outward insignia of courage and truth, placed the culprit, in full view of all the vast concourse.