Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/258

250 lain dying in the sunlight. Anything of her empire that had been hazarded in the past few hours she recovered tenfold; anything of abhorrent doubt that had stolen into his loyalty and faith to her, was swept away and forgotten.

He believed in her—he worshipped her! Not less so, when with a shook of surprise, and all the Border-blood warming in him, he heard her sing the Scottish sonnet, beautiful and living still as the waters of the Esk, by which it was written:

The words, only the sweeter for the lingering softness of the foreign accent, came to his ear like the breath of his mountain air over the heather; as they died off the air he leaned eagerly forward: "You know onr poems? You believe that beauty may come even out of our rugged glens?" "Surely every one knows Drummond? The gentle Cavalier who died of his Master's death? You most often have seen Hawthornden, I suppose?"