So good disport ye han made me,
Again my will, I take my leve."
And, after again kissing his hand, she let him depart, keeping down by a great effort the tears that struggled to rise up into her eyes. But she would not for the world have suffered one weak emotion to appear before her kinsman, whose character she knew right well, and over whom she proposed at once to assume an influence, which could only be gained by the display of a firm and superior mind.
"And who may that young lord be, pretty Ella?" asked Nicholas Brune: "he seems to take great heed of you, dear kinswoman, and is evidently too high a bird to mate with one of our feather."
"Mate with me!" answered Ella, in a scornful tone. "Oh, no! cousin mine. He will mate, ere long, with one of the sweetest ladies within the shores of merry England, who has been most kind to me too. He is a friend of the King; and when poor old Murdock Brune, my grandsire, and your uncle, was killed, by a fiend of a courtier trampling him under his horse's feet, that gentleman, who saw the deed, threw the monster back from his horse, and afterwards represented my case to the King, who punished the man-slayer, and sent me fifty half-nobles."
Nicholas Brune was affected in two very opposite ways by Ella's words. "My uncle killed by a courtier!" he exclaimed at first, with his eyes flashing fire. "What was his name, maiden--what was his name?"
"Sir Simeon of Roydon," answered Ella Brune; and seeking a scrap of parchment and a reed pen, the goldsmith wrote down the name, as if to prevent it from escaping his memory. But the moment after his mind reverted to another part of Ella's speech. "Fifty half nobles!" he exclaimed, taking a piece of gold out of a drawer, and looking at it. "That was a princely gift, indeed, Ella; and you owe the young gentleman much gratitude for getting it for you."
"I owe him and his fair lady-love more than I can ever repay, for many an act beside," answered Ella Brune; "but I am resolved, my good kinsman, that I will discharge part of the debt of gratitude, if not the whole. I have a plan in my head, cousin--I have a plan, which I know not whether I will tell you or not."
"Take counsel!--always take counsel!" answered the goldsmith.
"I want none, fair kinsman," replied Ella; "I need neither counsel nor help. My own wit shall be my counsellor; and as I am rich now, I can always get aid when I want it."