injury whatsoever! If not for thyself, yet for thy father’s sake forbear! I will be his friend, and in this castle he will need a powerful one.”
“Alas!” said Rebecca, “I know it but too well—dare I trust thee?”
“May my arms be reversed, and my name dishonoured,” said Brian de Bois-Guilbert, “if thou shalt have reason to complain of me! Many a law, many a commandment have I broken, but my word never.”
“I will then trust thee,” said Rebecca, “thus far;” and she descended from the verge of the battlement, but remained standing close by one of the embrasures, or machicolles, as they were then called.—“Here,” she said, “I take my stand. Remain where thou art, and if thou shalt attempt to diminish by one step the distance now between us, thou shalt see that the Jewish maiden will rather trust her soul with God, than her honour to the Templar!”
While Rebecca spoke thus, her high and firm resolve, which corresponded so well with the expressive beauty of her countenance, gave to her looks, air, and manner, a dignity that seemed more than mortal. Her glance quailed not, her cheek blanched not, for the fear of a fate so instant and so horrible; on the contrary, the thought that she had her fate at her command, and could escape at will from infamy to death, gave a yet deeper colour of carnation to her complexion, and a yet more brilliant fire to her eye. Bois-Guilbert, proud himself and high-spirited, thought he had never beheld beauty so animated and so commanding.
“Let there be peace between us, Rebecca,” he said.
“Peace, if thou wilt,” answered Rebecca—“Peace—but with this space between.”
“Thou needst no longer fear me,” said Bois-Guilbert.
“I fear thee not,” replied she; “thanks to him that reared this dizzy tower so high, that nought could fall from it and live—thanks to him, and to