Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/50

Rh leaned against her prison casement, and seen him look upward in the tawny torrid heat of the monastic marshes, was with her now.

She had told him that he was dear to her, and she knew him to be so; knew that she could go to his side and promise him a love that should be no mockery and no treachery, but a living truth, deep and warm, and rooted fast in honour. She had known many who, in other things, equalled or far surpassed him; she had known every splendour of intellect; every dignity of power, every brilliance of fascination in the men of every country who had been about her in so many changing throngs, but none amongst them had touched her as the singleness and the self-sacrifice of Erceldoune's devotion touched her, and none had roused in her the mingled pity and reverence which the hopelessness of his passion and the chivalry of his character had roused in her almost from the first moment of their intercourse. There was a bold free carelessness of manhood; there was a lofty fearless reading of honour and its bonds; there was a noble simplicity and an antique grandeur in the cast of his nature, that had won from her what she had never felt to those amongst her lovers who had charmed her with an intellect a thousand times more subtle, wooed her