"Thanks, lady, thanks!" cried Lucy; "you confirm me in my purpose."
"But what is your purpose, my sweet cousin?" asked the Princess. "I do not yet comprehend you."
"Will you promise me," said Lucy, "that if I tell, you will let me have my will; that you will put no bar or hindrance in my way, nor inform any one of my scheme, but with my leave."
Eleanor smiled. "I may well promise that," she answered, "for if you please, you may conceal your scheme, and then I am powerless. No bar or hindrance will I place, dear Lucy, but kind remonstrances, if I think you wrong. What is this plan of yours?"
"This, this!" cried Lucy. "Here on this paper has my brother written down that he doubts Hugh de Monthermer's guilt; that he so much doubts the truth of the charge which he himself has made, as to require his sister to overlook the shedding of his blood, and unite her fate with the man who slays him, if he should fall in those fatal lists.--Nay, lady, look you here; he puts no condition, but that Hugh de Monthermer should prove his innocence."
"Well," said Eleanor, "I see he is kind and generous, and evidently believes the charge was rashly made, and is not just."
"Yet nought will keep him," replied Lucy, "from sustaining that charge to-morrow at the lance's point, although he knows it to be false. Tears, prayers, entreaties, appeals to conscience and to honour, are all in vain with him: he will die, but yield no jot of what he thinks his fame requires. He would not withdraw the accusation if an angel told him it were untrue. But Hugh is not so stern and cruel, lady; he will listen to reason and to right. He told me himself that he would have laid down his battle hand, would but the King have named a few days later; for he is as sure as of his own life, to prove the guilt upon another man. Oh, lady! in that long, sad interview, he was as much shaken as I, a poor weak girl. Yet what could I say, what could I do, so long as my brother maintained the charge in all its virulence? Now, however, now I will hie to him--ay, lady," she continued, "even to his chamber! I will beseech him, for mercy's sake, for my sake, for our love's sake, to avoid this unholy encounter; for the peace, for the comfort throughout life of the lady that he loves, to quit this place ere morning's dawn to-morrow."
"He will not do it," answered Eleanor, sadly; "you will but wring his heart, and break your own.--He will not do it."
"I will soften him with my tears!" said Lucy vehemently, "I will kneel to him on the ground; I will cover his hand with my kisses and water it with my eyes--"
Eleanor shook her head.