lored the death of her lord cannot be questioned,
for she ordered the deepest mourning which any milliner in York could
supply, and erected a monument to his memory as big as a minster. But
she was a lady of such fine principles, that she did not allow her grief
to overmaster her; and an opportunity speedily arising for uniting the
two best Saxon families in England, by an alliance between herself
and the gentleman who offered himself to her, Rowena sacrificed her
inclination to remain single, to her sense of duty; and contracted a
second matrimonial engagement.

That Athelstane was the man, I suppose no reader familiar with life, and
novels which are a rescript of life, and are all strictly natural and
edifying, can for a moment doubt. Cardinal Pandulfo tied the knot for
them: and lest there should be any doubt about Ivanhoe's death (for his
body was never sent home after all, nor seen after Wamba ran away from
it), his Eminence procured a Papal decree annulling the former marriage,
so that Rowena became Mrs. Athelstane with a clear conscience. And who
shall be surprised, if she was happier with the stupid and boozy Thane
than with the gentle and melancholy Wilfrid? Did women never have a
predilection for fools, I should like to know; or fall in love with
donkeys, before the time of the amours of Bottom and Titania? Ah! Mary,
had you not preferred an ass to a man, would you have married Jack Bray,
when a Michael Angelo offered? Ah! Fanny, were you not a woman, would
you persist in adoring Tom Hiccups, who beats you, and comes home
tipsy from the Club? Yes, Rowena cared a hundred times more about tipsy
Athelstane than ever she had done for gentle Ivanhoe, and so great was
her infatuation about the former, that she would sit upon his knee in
the presence of all her maidens, and let him smoke his cigars in the
very drawing-room.

This is the epitaph she caused to be written by Father Drono (who piqued
himself upon his Latinity) on the stone commemorating the death of her
late lord:--

Hic est Guilfridus, belli dum vixit avidus:
Cum gladio et lancea, Normania et quoque Francia
Verbera dura dabat: per Turcos multum equitabat:
Guilbertum occidit: atque Hierosolyma vidit.
Heu! nunc sub fossa sunt tanti militis ossa,
Uxor Athelstani est conjux castissima Thani.

And this is the translation which the doggerel knave Wamba made of the
Latin lines:

"REQUIESCAT.

"Under