to whom it stood only in the second rank to glory, to
look without emotion on the countenance and the tremor of a creature so
beautiful as Berengaria, or to feel, without sympathy, that her lips,
her brow, were on his hand, and that it was wetted by her tears. By
degrees, he turned on her his manly countenance, with the softest
expression of which his large blue eye, which so often gleamed with
insufferable light, was capable. Caressing her fair head, and mingling
his large fingers in her beautiful and dishevelled locks, he raised and
tenderly kissed the cherub countenance which seemed desirous to hide
itself in his hand. The robust form, the broad, noble brow and majestic
looks, the naked arm and shoulder, the lions' skins among which he lay,
and the fair, fragile feminine creature that kneeled by his side,
might have served for a model of Hercules reconciling himself, after a
quarrel, to his wife Dejanira.

"And, once more, what seeks the lady of my heart in her knight's
pavilion at this early and unwonted hour?"

"Pardon, my most gracious liege--pardon!" said the Queen, whose fears
began again to unfit her for the duty of intercessor.

"Pardon--for what?" asked the King.

"First, for entering your royal presence too boldly and unadvisedly--"

She stopped.

"THOU too boldly!--the sun might as well ask pardon because his rays
entered the windows of some wretch's dungeon. But I was busied with work
unfit for thee to witness, my gentle one; and I was unwilling, besides,
that thou shouldst risk thy precious health where sickness had been so
lately rife."

"But thou art now well?" said the Queen, still delaying the
communication which she feared to make.

"Well enough to break a lance on the bold crest of that champion who
shall refuse to acknowledge thee the fairest dame in Christendom."

"Thou wilt not then refuse me one boon--only one--only a poor life?"

"Ha!--proceed," said King Richard, bending his brows.

"This unhappy Scottish knight--" murmured the Queen.

"Speak not of him, madam," exclaimed Richard sternly; "he dies--his doom
is fixed."

"Nay, my royal liege and love, 'tis but a silken banner neglected.
Berengaria will give thee another broidered with her own hand, and rich
as ever dallied with the wind. Every pearl I have shall go to bedeck it,
and with every pearl I will drop a tear of thankfulness to my generous
knight."

"Thou knowest not what thou sayest," said the King, interrupting her i