,
appealing to Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, "and canst thou not save me from
the lash?"

"Yes, from Front-de-Boeuf's castle, WHERE YOU WERE LOCKED UP WITH THE
JEWESS IN THE TOWER!" said Rowena, haughtily replying to the timid
appeal of her husband. "Gurth, give him four dozen!"

And this was all poor Wamba got by applying for the mediation of his
master.

In fact, Rowena knew her own dignity so well as a princess of the
royal blood of England, that Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, her consort, could
scarcely call his life his own, and was made, in all things, to feel the
inferiority of his station. And which of us is there acquainted with the
sex that has not remarked this propensity in lovely woman, and how often
the wisest in the council are made to be as fools at HER board, and the
boldest in the battle-field are craven when facing her distaff?

"Where you were locked up with the Jewess in the tower," was a
remark, too, of which Wilfrid keenly felt, and perhaps the reader will
understand, the significancy. When the daughter of Isaac of York brought
her diamonds and rubies--the poor gentle victim!--and, meekly laying
them at the feet of the conquering Rowena, departed into foreign lands
to tend the sick of her people, and to brood over the bootless passion
which consumed her own pure heart, one would have thought that the heart
of the royal lady would have melted before such beauty and humility, and
that she would have been generous in the moment of her victory.

But did you ever know a right-minded woman pardon another for being
handsome and more love-worthy than herself? The Lady Rowena did
certainly say with mighty magnanimity to the Jewish maiden, "Come and
live with me as a sister," as the former part of this history shows; but
Rebecca knew in her heart that her ladyship's proposition was what
is called BOSH (in that noble Eastern language with which Wilfrid the
Crusader was familiar), or fudge, in plain Saxon; and retired with a
broken, gentle spirit, neither able to bear the sight of her rival's
happiness, nor willing to disturb it by the contrast of her own
wretchedness. Rowena, like the most high-bred and virtuous of women,
never forgave Isaac's daughter her beauty, nor her flirtation with
Wilfrid (as the Saxon lady chose to term it); nor, above all, her
admirable diamonds and jewels, although Rowena was actually in
possession of them.

In a word, she was always flinging Rebecca into Ivanhoe's teeth. There
was not