“Nay, as to that, Mary,” replied the Lady Isabelle, “they are both handsome, yet both very diverse in their beauty. Thou knowest that one is fair, and the other dark. My brother, Sir Patrick, and I, do take our fair tint from our poor mother. Is it not common for fair to affect dark, and dark fair? My father, thou seest, is dark, yet was my dear departed mother fair as the light of day. Is it unnatural, then, that I should esteem Sir John Assueton’s olive tint of countenance, his speaking black eyes, his nobly-arched jet eyebrows, and the raven curls of his finely-formed head, more than the pure red and white complexion, the blue eyes and the fair hair of my dear brother? Nay, nay, my brother is very handsome; but algate he be my brother, and though I love him, as sure never sister loved brother before, yet must I tell the truth, thou knowest, Mary; and, in good fay, I do think Sir John Assueton by much the properer man.”
Hepborne had been by no means blind to that of which neither his sister nor Sir John Assueton were, as yet, themselves aware. He saw the change on Assueton with extreme delight. He enjoyed the idea of this woman-hater being at last himself enslaved, and, above all, he rejoiced that the enslaver should be his sister, the Lady Isabelle. He longed to attack him on the subject; but, lest he might scare him away from the toils before [[99]]he was fairly and irrecoverably meshed, he resolved to appear to shut his eyes to his friend’s incipient disease. As he went with Sir John, therefore, to see him comfortably accommodated for the night, he only indulged himself in a remark, natural enough in itself, upon his wounded arm.
“Assueton,” said he, “wilt thou not have thine arm dressed by some cunning leech ere thou goest to rest? Our chaplain is no mean proficient in leechcraft; better take that rag of a kerchief away, and have it properly bound up.”
“Nay, nay,” cried Assueton, hastily, “I thank thee, my good friend; but ’tis very well as it is. Thy sister, the Lady Isabelle, bound it up with exceeding care; and in these cases I have remarked that there is no salve equal in virtue to the bloody goutes of the wound itself. Good night, and St. Andrew be with thee.”
“And may St. Baldrid, our tutelary saint, be with you,” replied Hepborne, as he shut the door. “Poor Assueton,” said he then to himself, with a smile, “my sister has cured one wound for him, only to inflict another, which he will find it more difficult to salve.”
The next day being devoted to the gay amusement of hawking, was yet more decisive of the fate of poor Sir John Assueton. He rode by the side of the Lady Isabelle; and as the nature of the sport precluded the possibility of her using that attention necessary to make her palfrey avoid the obstacles lying in its way, or to keep it up when it stumbled, Sir John found a ready excuse for again acting the part of her knight; and, one-armed as he had been rendered by the bites of the wolf, he ran all manner of risks of his own neck to save hers. Hepborne was more occupied in regarding them than in the sport they were following. He rode after the pair, enjoying all he saw; for in the malicious pleasure he took in perceiving Assueton getting deeper and deeper entangled in the snares of love, and its fever mounting higher and higher into his brain, he almost forgot the toils he had himself been caught in, and found a palliative for his own heart’s disease, producing a temporary relaxation of its intensity. Thus then they rode. When the game was on wing, the fair Isabelle galloped fearlessly on, with her eyes sometimes following the flight of the falcon after its quarry, but much oftener with her head turned towards Sir John Assueton, whilst Sir John’s looks were fixed now with anxiety on the ground, to ensure safe riding to the lady, and now thrown with love-sick gaze of tenderness into the heaven of her eyes, for his had no wish to soar higher. [[100]]
In the evening, the Lady Isabelle and her knight were again left to themselves by the father and son. Her brother’s tales were less interesting to her than they had been the previous night, and though Assueton talked less of his friend, yet she by no means found his conversation duller on that account; nay, she even listened much more intensely to it than before. The younger Sir Patrick, towards the close of the night, begged of his sister to sit down to her harp, and when she did so, Assueton hung over her with a rapture sufficiently marking the strength of his new-born passion, and the little art he had in concealing it.
Having been asked by her brother to sing, she accompanied her voice in the following canzonette:—
Why was celestial Music given,
But of enchanting love to sing!