I seek to dwell, and unhappy, lady, I will not be. He, to whom I dedicate my future life, will be my comforter, if I do His will.”
“Have you then convents, to one of which you mean to retire?” asked Rowena.
“No, lady,” said the Jewess; “but among our people, since the time of Abraham downwards, have been women who have devoted their thoughts to Heaven, and their actions to works of kindness to men, tending the sick, feeding the hungry, and relieving the distressed. Among these will Rebecca be numbered. Say this to thy lord, should he chance to inquire after the fate of her whose life he saved.”
There was an involuntary tremor in Rebecca’s voice, and a tenderness of accent, which perhaps betrayed more than she would willingly have expressed. She hastened to bid Rowena adieu.
“Farewell,” she said. “May He, who made both Jew and Christian, shower down on you His choicest blessings! The bark that wafts us hence will be under weigh ere we can reach the port.”
She glided from the apartment, leaving Rowena surprised as if a vision had passed before her. The fair Saxon related the singular conference to her husband, on whose mind it made a deep impression. He lived long and happily with Rowena, for they were attached to each other by the bonds of early affection, and they loved each other the more, from the recollection of the obstacles which had impeded their union. Yet it would be inquiring too curiously to ask, whether the recollection of Rebecca’s beauty and magnanimity did not recur to his mind more frequently than the fair descendant of Alfred might altogether have approved.
Ivanhoe distinguished himself in the service of Richard, and was graced with further marks of the royal favour. He might have risen still higher, but for the premature death of the heroic Cœur-de-Lion, before the Castle of Chaluz, near Limoges. With the life of a generous, but rash and romantic monarch, perished all the projects which his ambition and his generosity had formed; to whom may be applied, with a slight alteration, the lines composed by Dr. Johnson for Charles of Sweden—
A petty fortress and an “humble” hand;
He left the name, at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a Tall