"You!" said the other, scornfully; "a pretty stripling, truly, to receive the confidence of your lady."
"If not my lady's," replied the page, "perhaps her young companion has less discretion in her choice of confidants."
"Ha!" said the stranger, starting, and changing colour, in spite of his tawny disguise; "what say you of her? speak; and speak truly, for I shall soon know if thou art false, from her own lips."
"Her lips will never contradict my words," returned the boy; "but go, take the pass-word, enter the fort, and see—you will not find her there."
"Not find her there?" he repeated in astonishment, and with a bewildered air; then suddenly grasping the page's arm, he said, in no gentle tone,
"Now, by my faith, boy, you test my patience beyond endurance; if I thought you were deceiving me"—
He stopped abruptly, and withdrew his hand, as a laugh, which he could no longer repress, burst from the lips of Hector, and at the same instant the heavy cloak fell from his shoulders to the ground.
"What mountebank trick is this?" demanded the stranger, angrily; but, as his eye glanced over the figure of the page, his countenance rapidly changed, and in an altered tone, he exclaimed,
"By the holy rood, you are"—