wn years and nearer to her in station; but in showing himself
ashamed to be seen with her, he had galled her heart, and moved the
bitter tears of her pride. What had the stranger done? Nothing but
reconciled the wounded delicacy to itself; and suddenly he became to her
one ever to be remembered, wondered at,--perhaps more. They reached an
obscure suburb, and parted at the threshold of a large, gloomy, ruinous
house, which Sibyll indicated as her father's home.

The girl lingered before the porch; and the stranger gazed, with the
passionless admiration which some fair object of art produces on one
who has refined his taste, but who has survived enthusiasm, upon the
downcast cheek that blushed beneath his gaze. "Farewell!" he said; and
the girl looked up wistfully. He might, without vanity, have supposed
that look to imply what the lip did not dare to say,--"And shall we meet
no more?"

But he turned away, with formal though courteous salutation; and as he
remounted his steed, and rode slowly towards the interior of the city,
he muttered to himself, with a melancholy smile upon his lips, "Now
might the grown infant make to himself a new toy; but an innocent heart
is a brittle thing, and one false vow can break it. Pretty maiden! I
like thee well eno' not to love thee. So, as my young Scotch minstrel
sings and plays,--

'Christ keep these birdis bright in bowers,
Sic peril lies in paramours!'"

[A Scotch poet, in Lord Hailes's Collection, has the following lines in
the very pretty poem called "Peril in Paramours:"--

"Wherefore I pray, in termys short,
Christ keep these birdis bright in bowers,
Fra false lovers and their disport,
Sic peril lies in paramours."]

We must now return to Marmaduke. On leaving Sibyll, and retracing his
steps towards the more crowded quarter of the space, he was agreeably
surprised by encountering Nicholas Alwyn, escorted in triumph by a
legion of roaring apprentices from the victory he had just obtained over
six competitors at the quarter-staff.

When the cortege came up to Marmaduke, Nicholas halted, and fronting
his attendants, said, with the same cold and formal stiffness that
had characterized him from the beginning, "I thank you, lads, for your
kindness. It is your own triumph. All I cared for was to show that you
London boys are able to keep up your credit in these days, when there's
little luck in a yard-measure, if the same hand cannot bend a bow, or