Afraid to ask, yet ashamed to seem to fear the ill tidings which impended, the Constable confronted his messenger with person erect, arms folded, and brow expanded with resolution: while the minstrel, carried beyond his usual and guarded apathy by the interest of the moment, bent on his master a keen fixed glance, as if to observe whether his courage was real or assumed.
Philip Guarine, on the other hand, to whom Heaven, in assigning him a rough exterior, had denied neither sense nor observation, kept his eye in turn, firmly fixed on Vidal, as if endeavouring to determine what was the character of that deep interest which gleamed in the minstrel’s looks apparently, and was unable to ascertain whether it was that of a faithful domestic sympathetically agitated by the bad news with which he was about to afflict his master, or that of an executioner standing with his knife suspended over his victim, deferring his blow until he should discover where it would be most sensibly felt. In Guarine’s mind, prejudiced, perhaps, by the previous opinion he had entertained, the latter sentiment so decidedly predominated, that he longed to raise his staff, and strike down to the earth the servant, who seemed thus to enjoy the protracted sufferings of their common master.
At length a convulsive movement crossed the brow of the Constable, and Guarine, when he beheld a sardonic smile begin to curl Vidal’s lip, could keep silence no longer. “Vidal,” he said, “thou art a —”
“A bearer of bad tidings,” said Vidal, interrupting him, “therefore subject to the misconstruction of every fool who cannot distinguish between the author of harm, and him who unwillingly reports it.”
“To what purpose this delay?” said the Constable. “Come, Sir Minstrel, I will spare you a pang — Eveline has forsaken and forgotten me?” The minstrel assented by a low inclination.
Hugo de Lacy paced a short turn before the stone monument, endeavouring to conquer the deep emotion which he felt. “I forgive her,” he said. “Forgive, did I say — Alas! I have nothing to forgive. She used but the right I left in her hand — yes — our date of engagement was out — she had heard of my losses — my defeats — the destruction of my hopes — the expenditure of my wealth; and has taken the first opportunity which strict law afforded to break off her engagement with one bankrupt in fortune and fame. Many a maiden would have done — perhaps in prudence should have done — this;— but that woman’s name should not have been Eveline Berenger.”
He leaned on his esquire’s arm, and for an instant laid his head on his shoulder with a depth of emotion which Guarine had never before seen him betray, and which, in awkward kindness, he could only attempt to console, by bidding his master “be of good courage — he had lost but a woman.”
“This is no selfish emotion, Philip,” said the Constable, resuming self-command. “I grieve less that she has left me, than that she has misjudged me — that she has treated me as the pawnbroker does his wretched creditor, who arrests the pledge as the very moment elapses within which it might have been relieved. Did she then think that I in my turn would have been a creditor so rigid?— that I, who, since I knew her, scarce deemed myself worthy of her when I had wealth and fame, should insist on her sharing my diminished and degraded fortunes? How little she ever knew me, or how selfish must she have supposed my misfortunes to have made me! But be it so — she is gone, and may she be happy. The thought that she disturbed me shall pass from my mind; and I will think she has done that which I myself, as her best friend, must in honour have advised.”
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