"Yet you will wed one," said Handassah.
"He is not like the rest," said Eleanor.
"How know you that, lady?" asked Handassah. "His time may not yet be come. See what to-morrow will bring forth."
"You are averse to my marriage with Ranulph, Handassah."
"I was Sybil's handmaid ere I was yours, lady. I bear in mind a solemn compact with the dead, which this marriage will violate. You are plighted by oath to another, if he should demand your hand."
"But he has not demanded it."
"Would you accept him were he to do so?" asked Handassah, suddenly.
"I meant not that," replied Eleanor. "My oath is annulled."
"Say not so, lady," cried Handassah—"'twas not for this that Sybil spared your life. I love you, but I loved Sybil, and I would see her dying behests complied with."
"It may not be, Handassah," replied Eleanor. "Why, from a phantom sense of honor, am I to sacrifice my whole existence to one who neither can love me, nor whom I myself could love? Am I to wed this man because, in her blind idolatry of him, Sybil enforced an oath upon me which I had no power to resist, and which was mentally cancelled while taken? Recall not the horrors of that dreadful cell—urge not the subject more. 'Tis in the hope that I may be freed for ever from this persecution that I have consented thus early to wed with Ranulph. This will set Luke's fancied claims at rest for ever."