As they passed over the drawbridge, they met Sir Ralph Montfaucon
and his squire, who were wandering in quest of Marian, and were
entering to claim that hospitality which the pilgrims had declined.
Their countenances struck Sir Ralph with a kind of imperfect recognition,
which would never have been matured, but that the eyes of Marian,
as she passed him, encountered his, and the images of those stars of beauty
continued involuntarily twinkling in his sensorium to the exclusion
of all other ideas, till memory, love, and hope concurred with imagination
to furnish a probable reason for their haunting him so pertinaciously.
Those eyes, he thought, were certainly the eyes of Matilda Fitzwater;
and if the eyes were hers, it was extremely probable, if not logically
consecutive, that the rest of the body they belonged to was hers also.
Now, if it were really Matilda Fitzwater, who were her two companions?
The baron? Aye, and the elder pilgrim was something like him.
And the earl of Huntingdon? Very probably. The earl and the baron might
be good friends again, now that they were both in disgrace together.
While he was revolving these cogitations, he was introduced to the lady,
and after claiming and receiving the promise of hospitality,
he inquired what she knew of the pilgrims who had just departed?
The lady told him they were newly returned from Palestine, having been long
in the Holy Land.
Pages:
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120