He found her in a white cymar of silk lined with furs, her little
feet unstockinged and hastily thrust into slippers; her unbraided hair
escaping from under her midnight coif, with little array but her own
loveliness, rather augmented than diminished by the grief which she felt
at the approaching moment of separation.
"Now, God be with thee, my dearest and loveliest!" said the Earl, scarce
tearing himself from her embrace, yet again returning to fold her again
and again in his arms, and again bidding farewell, and again returning
to kiss and bid adieu once more. "The sun is on the verge of the blue
horizon--I dare not stay. Ere this I should have been ten miles from
hence."
Such were the words with which at length he strove to cut short their
parting interview. "You will not grant my request, then?" said the
Countess. "Ah, false knight! did ever lady, with bare foot in slipper,
seek boon of a brave knight, yet return with denial?"
"Anything, Amy, anything thou canst ask I will grant," answered the
Earl--"always excepting," he said, "that which might ruin us both."
"Nay," said the Countess, "I urge not my wish to be acknowledged in the
character which would make me the envy of England--as the wife, that
is, of my brave and noble lord, the first as the most fondly beloved of
English nobles. Let me but share the secret with my dear father! Let me
but end his misery on my unworthy account--they say he is ill, the good
old kind-hearted man!"
"They say?" asked the Earl hastily; "who says? Did not Varney convey to
Sir Hugh all we dare at present tell him concerning your happiness and
welfare? and has he not told you that the good old knight was following,
with good heart and health, his favourite and wonted exercise. Who has
dared put other thoughts into your head?"
"Oh, no one, my lord, no one," said the Countess, something alarmed at
the tone, in which the question was put; "but yet, my lord, I would fain
be assured by mine own eyesight that my father is well."
"Be contented, Amy; thou canst not now have communication with thy
father or his house. Were it not a deep course of policy to commit no
secret unnecessarily to the custody of more than must needs be, it were
sufficient reason for secrecy that yonder Cornish man, yonder Trevanion,
or Tressilian, or whatever his name is, haunts the old knight's house,
and must necessarily know whatever is communicated there."