or love,--no, not love--that question were an insult to Lord
Bonville's wife!--Ofttimes we seem pitiless to each other,--why? Lord
Hastings would have wooed me, an English matron, to forget mine honour
and my House's. He chafes that he moves me not. I behold him
debasing a great nature to unworthy triflings with man's conscience
and a knight's bright faith. But mark me!--the heart of Hastings is
everlastingly mine, and mine alone! What seek I in this confidence?
To warn thee. Wherefore? Because for months, amidst all the vices of
this foul court-air, amidst the flatteries of the softest voice that
ever fell upon woman's ear, amidst, peradventure, the pleadings of
thine own young and guileless love, thine innocence is unscathed. And
therefore Katherine of Bonville may be the friend of Sibyll Warner."

However generous might be the true spirit of these words, it was
impossible that they should not gall and humiliate the young and
flattered beauty to whom they were addressed. They so wholly
discarded all belief in the affection of Hastings for Sibyll; they so
haughtily arrogated the mastery over his heart; they so plainly
implied that his suit to the poor maiden was but a mockery or
dishonour, that they made even the praise for virtue an affront to the
delicate and chaste ear on which they fell. And, therefore, the
reader will not be astonished, though the Lady of Bonville certainly
was, when Sibyll, drawing her hand from Katherine's clasp, stopping
short, and calmly folding her arms upon her bosom, said,--

"To what this tends, lady, I know not. The Lord Hastings is free to
carry his homage where he will. He has sought me,--not I Lord
Hastings. And if to-morrow he offered me his hand, I would reject it,
if I were not convinced that the heart--"