"Ah, Sir Osborne Maurice!" answered the lady, "you men jest when you say such things; but you know not sometimes what women feel. But trust me that same Cupid's shaft that you scoff at, because it never wounds you deeply, sometimes lodges in a woman's breast, and rankling there will pale her cheek, and drain her heart of every better hope."
The lady spoke so earnestly that Sir Osborne was surprised, and perhaps looked it; for instantly catching the expression of his eye, Lady Katrine coloured, and then breaking out into one of her own gay laughs, she answered his glance as if it had been expressed in speech, "You are mistaken! quite mistaken!" said she, "I never thought of myself. Nay, my knight, do not look incredulous; my heart is too light a one to be so touched. It skims like a swallow o'er the surface of all it sees, and the boy archer spends his shafts in vain; its swift flight mocks his slow aim. But to convince you, when I spoke," she proceeded in a lower voice, "I alluded to that poor girl, Geraldine, who rides behind. Her lover was a soldier, who, when Tournay was delivered to the French, was left without employment; and after having won the simple wench's heart, and promised her a world of fine things, he went as an adventurer to Flanders, vowing that he would get some scribe to write to her of his welfare, and that as soon as he had made sufficient, what with pay and booty they would be married; but eighteen months have gone, and never a word."
"What was his name?" asked the knight; "I would wish much to hear."
"Hal Williamson, I think she calls him," said the lady: "but it matters little; the poor girl has nigh broke her heart for the unfaithful traitor."
"You do him wrong," said the knight; "indeed, lady, you do him wrong. The poor fellow you speak of joined himself to my company at Lisle, and died in the very last skirmish before the death of the late emperor. With some money and arms, that I expect transmitted by the first Flemish ship, there is also a packet, I fancy, for your maid, for I forget the address. From it she will learn that he was not faithless to her, together with the worse news of his death."
"Better! a thousand times better!" cried Lady Katrine, energetically. "If I had a lover, I would a thousand times rather know that he was dead, than that he was unfaithful. For the first, I could but weep all my life, and mourn him with the mourning of the heart; but for the last, there would be still bitterer drops in the cup of my sorrow. I would mourn him as dead to me. I would mourn him as dead to honour; and I should reproach myself for having believed a traitor, almost as much as for being one."
"So!" said the knight, with a smile, "this is the heart that defies Cupid's shaft: that is too light and volatile to be hit by his purblind aim!"
"Now you are stupid!" said she, pettishly. "Now you are just what I always fancied a man in armour. Why, I should have thought, that while your custrel carries your steel cap, you might have comprehended better, and seen that the very reason why my heart is so giddy and so light is because it is resolved not to be so wounded by the shaft it fears."
"Then it does fear?" said Sir Osborne.
"Pshaw!" cried Lady Katrine. "Geraldine, come up, and deliver me from him: he is worse than the Rochester rioters."