"Thou!" he exclaimed, instantly starting back, and surveying her with mingled surprise, curiosity, and disgust.
"Wouldst care to leave thy revels and their lord, and, stealing to her lone room, offer thy drunken love to her now! Ha, ha, ha! Does she not look a comely leman for thy licentious love?" she added, with malicious irony.
He gazed on her a few seconds by the light of the moon, and seemed too much overpowered by surprise to speak. At length he said, in a tone of horror,
"Hideous as thou art, it must be as thou sayest, for only thus could I be known to thee! But, holy St. Claus!" he added, in a tone, "this lad—is he—"
"No matter who he is! see thou harm him not!"
"I will be a father to him, woman! 'Fore Heaven," he exclaimed afresh, gazing upon her with mingled curiosity and pity, "was there ever such a—"
"Mind me not! spare your sympathy! Go!—Stay!" she cried, earnestly recalling him; "if you ever meet him, breathe not into his ears what and whom you have this night seen. I have made myself known to thee for this youth's sake. Farewell, young man," she said, approaching Lester as he stood on the rock, to which he had bounded from the balcony at the beginning of their conference. She extended her hand as she spoke. He took it, and grasped it warmly saying, in a soothing tone,
"Good-by, Elpsy. I have no ill-will against thee in my heart. Thou hast done but thy duty!"
The sorceress seemed to be moved, turned away from him without speaking, as if her feelings choked utterance, and stalked away through the hall, and left the tower.
"Come, my lad," said the captain, turning away and speaking with feeling, after following with his eyes her retreating form till it disappeared in the forest, "she is a poor, unhappy creature, and it'll come hard, I'm thinking, on him that made her so. But this is no time for sentiment. Let us aboard and make an offing ere the dawn; for, if we are spied lying here, we shall have the king's bulldog down upon us from windward I saw lying in Cor Bay, who will bark to some purpose if he should catch us here on a lee shore."