“And if I am mad, as thy words would imply,” said Hepborne, smiling, “’tis thou, lady, who must answer for my frenzy; for since I first saw thee last night, I have thought and dreamt of thee alone.”
“Nay, Sir Knight,” said the lady, blushing, “methinks it savours of a more constitutional madness to be so affected by so short a meeting. We were but some few minutes together, if I err not.”
“Ay, lady,” said Adam of Gordon, significantly; “but love will work miracles like this.”
“’Tis indeed true,” said the lady, with a sigh; and then, as if recollecting herself, she added, “I have indeed heard of such sudden affections.”
“Ay,” said Sir Patrick, “and that fair falcon of thine! Depardieux, I begin to believe that he was Cupid himself in disguise, for ever sith I gave the traitor lodgment in my bosom, it hath been affected with the sweet torment the urchin Love is wont to inflict. My heart’s disease began with thy hawk’s ensayning.”
“Nay, then, much as I love him,” said the lady, “yet should I hardly have purchased his health, I wot, at the price of that of the gallant knight who did so feelingly redeem it.”
“Heaven’s blessings on thee for thy charity, lady,” exclaimed Hepborne; “yet should I rejoice in my disease were it to awaken thy sympathy, so that thou mightest yield me the healing leechcraft that beameth from those eyes.”
“Verily, my youth doth lack experience in all such healing skill,” said the lady.
“Nay, ’tis a mystery most easily learned by the young,” [[60]]replied Hepborne. “Thou dost possess the power to assuage, if not to heal, my wound,” added he tenderly. “Let me but be enlisted among the humblest of the captives whom thine eyes hath made subject to thy will; and albeit thy heart may be already given to another, spurn not the adoration of one whose sole wish is to live within the sphere of thy cheering influence, and to die in thy defence.”
“In truth, Sir Knight, these eyes have been guiltless of any such tyranny as thou wouldst charge them withal,” replied the lady, artlessly; “at least they have never wilfully so tyrannized. As for my heart, it hath never known warmer feeling than that which doth bind me to him to whom I owe the duty of a daughter.”