in private with her, to hear requests again urged, which he found it difficult to parry, yet which his recent conversation with his master of horse had determined him not to grant.
He found her in a white cymar of silk lined with furs, her little feet unstockinged and hastily thrust into slippers; her unbraided hair escaping from under her midnight coif, with little array but her own loveliness, rather augmented than diminished by the grief which she felt at the approaching moment of separation.
“Now, God be with thee, my dearest and loveliest!” said the Earl, scarce tearing himself from her embrace, yet again returning to fold her again and again in his arms, and again bidding farewell, and again returning to kiss and bid adieu once more. “The sun is on the verge of the blue horizon—I dare not stay.—Ere this I should have been ten miles from hence.”
Such were the words, with which at length he strove to cut short their parting interview.
“You will not grant my request, then?” said the Countess. “Ah, false knight! did ever lady, with bare foot in slipper, seek boon of a brave knight, yet return with denial?”
“Any thing, Amy, any thing thou canst ask I will grant,” answered the Earl—“always excepting,” he said, “that which might ruin us both.”
“Nay,” said the Countess, “I urge not my wish to be acknowledged in the character which would make me the envy of England—as the wife, that is, of my brave and noble lord, the first as the most
