Barely on terms of acquaintance, your high

ness if we met in a street, we should probably

"Have you received no thanks for your attentions to young Wilton ?" inquired the prince less harshly.

"None, your highness."

"No thanks?-Did they feel no gratitude ?"

"So please your highness, I have heard of none.”

"Indeed! Have you seen Mistress Margaret Wilton since her brother's death ?" "Not until yesterday."

"And was she not gracious, though perhaps unwilling to recur to painful subjects ?"

"Mistress Margaret Wilton scarcely spoke; and when she did, her words had little graciousness. I understood, your highness, that Major Ritson had reported all that passed."

"So it seems," said Rupert with a suppressed smile the suspicions awakened by the young

officer's strange looks and husky voice allayed by his subsequent replies.

The prince busied himself for some moments in looking over the papers that lay before him: but Roland, who watched his half-averted face, read in its expression the hopes, the doubts, the consciousness of love. When he spoke it was with a still averted head, and there was a considerable degree of hesitation mingled with his characteristic decision.

66

Judging it advisable to soften Lady Burfrey by polite attentions, I shall visit her in person, and appoint a guard to prevent the intrusion of stragglers, who might consider insolence but the licence of war. Select ten of your most sober and trustworthy troopers, men on whom you can rely, and wait for me an hour hence at the quarry in the lane leading to Westbury. I go now to the council at Lord Hertford's, but will join you immediately on my return. I know I can depend on your judgment and discretion," said the prince graciously: adding, after a brief

pause, "it may be as well not to name my intended visit, since it might give rise to comments."

"All shall be as your highness wishes," replied Roland Eden, glad to escape from so trying an interview, and hurrying to his quarters, afraid to meet the searching of keen eyes, aware that neither his mind nor countenance were at that moment fitted for scrutiny.

"He loves her!" was his muttered exclamation, as, knowing that no look was on him, he threw off his hat, which seemed to bind his brow as with a band of iron. It was not the hat that pained his brow." He loves her!" he repeated, clenching his hand till the nails left their prints in his flesh, though he knew it not, the pangs of the mind leaving him no thought for the pangs of the body. "He loves her! and does she love Was it for this that I was flung aside so readily? The love the vows of our young days, all broken, or forgotten, or despised?

him?

I know not how, or where, or when they met :

but this I know-he loves her! not lightly; for he fears the jesting of his gay companions, and cannot brook a laugh on what is sacred in his eyes. It is no idle fancy of an idle mind, now followed, and now thrown aside; he loves, and he is one to have his love returned: courteous and winning in a lady's bower, as he is fierce and daring in the battle-field. Doth she love him? Let me but see their meeting, and I ask no words to tell the truth."

"But one short' hour hence, and we shall meet again; and not to part abruptly either. The youth has no suspicion of my love, I talked so carelessly. He thinks I go from prudence: — cold heart to gaze on her and yet not love. But he holds enmity towards all the sex, and thus a safer guide for me. He cannot name a woman without bitterness Carey and Palmer would have guessed my secret at a word, and mocked me when away, even had I forced them to be silent in my presence:

no jests must pass on her.

Now to the council;

discussion shall not

that concluded (and the

linger), then on to Lawrence Weston, and fair Margaret Wilton."

:

Such were the thoughts,-such the decision of Prince Rupert but those who saw him at the council-board guessed neither his thoughts nor his decision. If his demeanour was abrupt, and by no means courteous to those who differed from him in opinion, such a circumstance was not sufficiently singular to attract observation. His manner, sometimes polite to excess, was at others almost brutal; and in his occasional fits of fury, which he seldom sought to control, the expression of his features was said by a contemporary writer to be " truly infernal;" but there were moments when those very features won from his softer or more generous feelings a power of attraction little short of fascination. Such moments were very rare: even the flatterers and favourites with whom he was surrounded, and who courted his humours, felt that they trod

rare -