Meanwhile the lady Eleanor had been an anxious though admiring spectator of the contest, and many a prayer did she breathe for the success of her gallant rescuers. The boldness of the youth especially aroused her interest, and her heart beat faster and her breath came quicker, whenever he seemed on the point of being overpowered. As he now moved toward her, she felt, she knew not why, the color mounting in her cheeks,—and as he raised his visor, she could not but acknowledge that the countenance beneath, vied with, and even excelled, in manly beauty and frankness of expression, any she had ever seen. The youth, however, had just began to express, in the courtly language of the day, his delight at having come up so opportunely, when a sudden paleness shot over his countenance, and after endeavoring vainly to speak, he sank, fainting to the ground.
“It is only this ugly wound in his side,” said his older comrade, noticing the alarm in the maiden’s countenance, “he has fainted from loss of blood.”
“Can he not be borne to the castle?—here Ralph, Leoline, a litter for the wounded man—but, see, he revives.”
The wounded youth opened his eyes faintly, and gazed upon the maiden as she spoke, and then closed them, as if in pain.
“He has fainted again,” said the lady Eleanor, “cannot the blood be staunched? I have some slight skill in the healing art, let me at least bind up his wounds.”
Taking a scarf from her neck as she spoke, the maiden proceeded to examine the hurts of the young man-at-arms, and having carefully bound them up, during which operation the reviving sufferer testified his mute gratitude by his looks, she allowed him to be placed on the rude litter her servitors had hastily prepared for him, and then the whole party set out to return to the castle.
It was a fortnight after the above events, and the wounded youth was now convalescent. The room in which he sat, was a large old gothic apartment, but the mild breath of summer stealing through the open window, and bearing the odor of flowers upon its bosom, gave a freshness to that old chamber, which banished, for the time, its gloominess. The invalid was sitting up, and by his side was the lady Eleanor, gazing up into his eyes with a look which a woman bestows only upon the one she loves.
On reaching the castle, the lady Eleanor, in the absence of her uncle, ordered the utmost attentions to be paid to the wounded young man. In consequence, the best room in the castle was allotted to him, and in the absence of a better leech, and in compliance with the customs of the time, the lady Eleanor herself became his physician. Opportunities were thus presented for their being together, which, as he grew more convalescent, became dangerous to the peace of both. Perhaps it was his dependence on her skill; perhaps it was the wound he had received in her cause; perhaps it was that she had expected no refinement whatever in one apparently of such questionable rank; perhaps—but no matter—like many a one before and since, it was not long before the lady Eleanor found that in attending her patient, she had lost her heart.
Nor was the wounded youth less inspired by affection for his fair physician. Gratitude for her kindness, to say nothing of her sweetness and beauty, had long since won his most devoted love. And, now, as they sat together, one might perceive, by the heightened color on the cheek of the maiden, and the unresisting manner in which her hand lay in that of the youth, that their mutual affections had just been revealed to each other in words.