“Poor proud one,” said Sibyll, half to herself, “thy plumage lasts with thee through all changes.”
“Like the name of a brave knight,” said Marmaduke, who overheard her.
“Thou thinkest of the career of arms.”
“Surely,—I am a Nevile!”
“Is there no fame to be won but that of a warrior?”
“Not that I weet of, or heed for, Mistress Sibyll.”
“Thinkest thou it were nothing to be a minstrel, who gave delight; a scholar, who dispelled darkness?”
“For the scholar? Certes, I respect holy Mother Church, which they tell me alone produces that kind of wonder with full safety to the soul, and that only in the higher prelates and dignitaries. For the minstrel, I love him, I would fight for him, I would give him at need the last penny in my gipsire; but it is better to do deeds than to sing them.”
Sibyll smiled, and the smile perplexed and half displeased the young adventurer. But the fire of the young man had its charm.
By degrees, as they walked to and fro the neglected terrace, their talk flowed free and familiar; for Marmaduke, like most young men full of himself, was joyous with the happy egotism of a frank and careless nature. He told his young confidante of a day his birth, his history, his hopes, and fears; and in return he learned, in answer to the questions he addressed to her, so much, at least, of her past and present life, as the reverses of her father, occasioned by costly studies, her own brief sojourn at the court of Margaret, and the solitude, if not the struggles, in which her youth was consumed. It would have been a sweet and grateful sight to some kindly bystander to hear these pleasant communications between two young persons so unfriended, and to imagine that hearts thus opened to each other might unite in one. But Sibyll, though she listened to him with interest, and found a certain sympathy in his aspirations, was ever and anon secretly comparing him to one, the charm of whose voice still lingered in her ears; and her intellect, cultivated and acute, detected in Marmaduke deficient education, and that limited experience which is the folly and the happiness of the young.