"Not unless you make it such by choice," answered Rose. "Oh, could you but have seen the pale cheek, sunken eye, and dejected bearing of my poor mother!--I have said too much." "It was then your mother," said her young lady, "of whose unhappy wedlock you have spoken?" "It was--it was," said Rose, bursting into tears. "I have exposed my own shame to save you from sorrow. Unhappy she was, though most guiltless--so unhappy, that the breach of the dike, and the inundation in which she perished, were, but for my sake, to her welcome as night to the weary labourer. She had a heart like yours, formed to love and be loved; and it would be doing honour to yonder proud Baron, to say he had such worth as my father's.-- Yet was she most unhappy. Oh! my sweet lady, be warned, and break off this ill-omened match!" Eveline returned the pressure with which the affectionate girl, as she clung to her hand, enforced her well-meant advice, and then muttered with a profound sigh,--"Rose, it is too late." "Never--never," said Rose, looking eagerly round the room. "Where are those writing materials?--Let me bring Father Aldrovand, and instruct him of your pleasure--or, stay, the good father hath himself an eye on the splendours of the world which he thinks he has abandoned--he will be no safe secretary.--I will go myself to the Lord Constable--_me_ his rank cannot dazzle, or his wealth bribe, or his power overawe. I will tell him he doth no knightly part towards you, to press his contract with your father in such an hour of helpless sorrow--no pious part, in delaying the execution of his vows for the purpose of marrying or giving in marriage--no honest part, to press himself on a maiden whose heart has not decided in his favour--no wise part, to marry one whom he must presently abandon, either to solitude, or to the dangers of a profligate court." "You have not courage for such an embassy, Rose," said her mistress, sadly smiling through her tears at her youthful attendant's zeal. "Not courage for it!--and wherefore not?--Try me," answered the Flemish maiden, in return. "I am neither Saracen nor Welshman--his lance and sword scare me not. I follow not his banner--his voice of command concerns me not. I could, with your leave, boldly tell him he is a selfish man, veiling with fair and honourable pretexts his pursuit of objects which concern his own pride and gratification, and founding high claims on having rendered the services which common humanity demanded. And all for what?-- Forsooth the great De Lacy must have an heir to his noble house, and his fair nephew is not good enough to be his representative, because his mother was of Anglo-Saxon strain, and the real heir must be pure unmixed Norman; and for this, Lady Eveline Berenger, in the first bloom of youth, must be wedded to a man who might be her father, and who, after leaving her unprotected for years, will return in such guise as might beseem her grandfather!"