He turned to the table, and wrote the order of admission
to Henry’s prison, and as he gave it to Sibyll,
he said, “Thy young gallant, I see, is at the
court now. It is a perilous ordeal, and especially
to one for whom the name of Nevile opens the road
to advancement and honour. Men learn betimes
in courts to forsake Love for Plutus, and many a wealthy
lord would give his heiress to the poorest gentleman
who claims kindred to the Earl of Salisbury and Warwick.”
“May my father’s guest so prosper,”
answered Sibyll, “for he seems of loyal heart
and gentle nature!”
“Thou art unselfish, sweet mistress,”
said Hastings; and, surprised by her careless tone,
he paused a moment: “or art thou, in truth,
indifferent? Saw I not thy hand in his, when
even those loathly tymbesteres chanted warning to
thee for loving, not above thy merits, but, alas,
it may be, above thy fortunes?”
Sibyll’s delight increased. Oh, then,
he had not applied that hateful warning to himself!
He guessed not her secret. She blushed, and
the blush was so chaste and maidenly, while the smile
that went with it was so ineffably animated and joyous,
that Hastings exclaimed, with unaffected admiration,
“Surely, fair donzell, Petrarch dreamed of thee,
when he spoke of the woman-blush and the angel-smile
of Laura. Woe to the man who would injure thee!
Farewell! I would not see thee too often, unless
I saw thee ever.”
He lifted her hand to his lips with a chivalrous respect
as he spoke; opened the door, and called his page
to attend her to the gates.
Sibyll was more flattered by the abrupt dismissal
than if he had knelt to detain her. How different
seemed the world as her light step wended homeward!
Master Adam Warner and king
Henry the sixth.
The next morning Hilyard revisited Warner with the
letters for Henry. The conspirator made Adam
reveal to him the interior mechanism of the Eureka,
to which Adam, who had toiled all night, had appended
one of the most ingenious contrivances he had as yet
been enabled (sans the diamond) to accomplish, for
the better display of the agencies which the engine
was designed to achieve. This contrivance was
full of strange cells and recesses, in one of which
the documents were placed. And there they lay,
so well concealed as to puzzle the minutest search,
if not aided by the inventor, or one to whom he had
communicated the secrets of the contrivance.
After repeated warnings and exhortations to discretion,
Hilyard then, whose busy, active mind had made all
the necessary arrangements, summoned a stout-looking
fellow, whom he had left below, and with his aid conveyed
the heavy machine across the garden, to a back lane,
where a mule stood ready to receive the burden.
“Suffer this trusty fellow to guide thee, dear
Adam; he will take thee through ways where thy brutal
neighbours are not likely to meet and molest thee.
Call all thy wits to the surface. Speed and
prosper!”
