xcept in
Nevile's room, and in that appropriated to the forge.

To this chamber, then, resembling a dungeon in appearance, Sibyll drew
the student, and here, from an old worm-eaten chest, she carefully
extracted a gown of brown velvet, which his father, Sir Armine, had
bequeathed to him by will,--faded, it is true, but still such as the
low-born wore not, [By the sumptuary laws only a knight was entitled to
wear velvet.] trimmed with fur, and clasped with a brooch of gold. And
then she held the ewer and basin to him, while, with the docility of a
child, he washed the smoke-soil from his hands and face. It was
touching to see in this, as in all else, the reverse of their natural
position,--the child tending and heeding and protecting, as it were, the
father; and that not from his deficiency, but his greatness; not because
he was below the vulgar intelligences of life, but above them. And
certainly, when, his patriarchal hair and beard smoothed into order,
and his velvet gown flowing in majestic folds around a figure tall and
commanding, Sibyll followed her father into Marmaduke's chamber, she
might well have been proud of his appearance; and she felt the innocent
vanity of her sex and age in noticing the half-start of surprise with
which Marmaduke regarded his host, and the tone of respect in which he
proffered him his salutations and thanks. Even his manner altered to
Sibyll; it grew less frank and affable, more courtly and reserved: and
when Madge came to announce that the refection was served, it was with a
blush of shame, perhaps, at his treatment of the poor gittern-player
on the pastime-ground, that the Nevile extended his left hand, for his
right was still not at his command, to lead the damsel to the hall.

This room, which was divided from the entrance by a screen, and, except
a small closet that adjoined it, was the only sitting-room in a day
when, as now on the Continent, no shame was attached to receiving
visitors in sleeping apartments, was long and low; an old and very
narrow table, that might have feasted thirty persons, stretched across
a dais raised upon a stone floor; there was no rere-dosse, or fireplace,
which does not seem at that day to have been an absolute necessity in
the houses of the metropolis and its suburbs, its place being supplied
by a movable brazier. Three oak stools were placed in state at the
board, and to one of these Marmaduke, in a silence unusual to him,
conducted the fair Sibyll.