“Ah! how will Isabel rejoice to hear of this,” said De Courtenay, the day after the young hero’s knighthood, “you and she were playmates in childhood, you know, and it will please her all the more that I too love you. I wonder why she says nothing of you in her letters, but then—.” De Courtenay paused. Even the happy lover felt that it would not do to say how wholly a mistress forgets in her missives all but the object of her adoration.
Lorraine could not reply. His brow throbbed to bursting, and he turned away. Yet he did not betray himself. Never had De Courtenay suspected that his friend loved Isabel; and Lorraine vowed in his inmost heart that he never should.
And thus time rolled on, and day by day, and week by week, and month by month, the renown of the young soldier increased, while the blight at his heart grew more venomous and deadly. _He loved in vain._ Often in the still watches of the night, when the camp lay buried in silence around him, and the holy stars looked down like guardian angels on the world below, he would stand for hours, gazing on the hushed landscape around, and wandering, in thought, back to the time when he stood at the side of Isabel, and together they gazed up upon the starry sky, or listened to the low whisper of the night-wind across the firmament, while their hearts held high communion, as if linked in with each other by some mysterious sympathy. Alas! those days were gone forever. Alone Lorraine gazed up at the sky, while Isabel perhaps thought of him no more.
“Your cousin, young Harry, now Sir Henry Lorraine, knight banneret, is coming to visit us, Isabel,” said Lord Deraine, one morning, as he entered the breakfast room, holding an open letter in his hand, “he has come over with despatches, and says that he shall have a few days of leisure. Here is his letter. It came by a special courier, to whom I gave a reply, inviting Lorraine down here at once. So you may expect the gallant boy to-morrow.”
“But pa, how know you he will come?” said Isabel, with ill-concealed agitation, for she had not yet forgotten their last parting.
“Come! why where else would he go, but to those who love him like we do? Ah! I wonder if glory has changed him. By the honor of my house but it will make me young again to see the gallant lad, who has made the name of a Lorraine to ring like a watch word through Europe.”