I found her seated on the settle in the window. Oh, how white and worn and weary she looked! Dark rings were round her eyes, worn by pain and weeping and watching through that dreadful night. But I heeded not the signs of her woe. She deserved them. Guy's wrong burned in my heart, and consumed every thing but itself.
She rose hastily when she saw me, and a faint flush came to her white cheek.
She spoke in a hesitating tone, as if she scarcely knew what to say. She might well tremble before Guy's sister!
What a strange thing it is, that when our hearts are specially wrung with distress, our eyes seem opened to notice all sorts of insignificant minutiæ which we should never see at another time, or should never remember if we did see them. I perceived that one of the buttons of Lady Sybil's robe had caught her chatelaine, and that a bow of ribbon on her super-tunic was coming loose.
"May it please your Grace," I said--and I heard a hard metallic ring in my own voice,--"have I heard the truth just now from Lady Judith?"
I did not spare her for the crushing clasp of her hands, for the slight quiver of the under lip. Let her suffer! Had she not wronged my Guy?
"I have heard that your Grace means to give way before the vulgar clamour of your inferiors, and to repudiate your wedded lord at their dictation."
No, I would not spare her so much as one adjective. She pressed her lips close, and a sort of shudder went over her from head to foot. But she said, in a calm, even voice, like a child repeating some formal lesson--
If she would have warmed into anger, and have resented my words, I think I might have kept more within bounds. But she was as cold as ice, and it infuriated me.
"And you call yourself a Christian and a Catholic?" cried I, raising my voice.
"The Lord look upon it, and avenge us!" I cried. "Do you know how I loved you? Next to my love for Guy himself,--better than I loved any other, save you two, in earth or Heaven! You!--was it you I loved? My sister Sybil loved Guy, and would have died rather than sacrifice him to a mob of parvenu nobles. She is gone, and you are come in her stead, the saints know how! You are not the Sybil whom I loved, but a stranger,--a cold, calculating, politic, false-hearted woman. Heartless, ungenerous, faithless, false! I sweep you out of my heart this day, as if you had never entered it. You are false to Guy, and false to God. I will never, never, never forgive you! From this hour you are no more to me than the meanest Paynim idolatress whom I would think scorn to touch!"