Page:Waverley Novels, vol. 23 (1831).djvu/259

 awoke.

The Countess awoke to hear a real bugle-note, or rather the combined breath of many bugles, sounding not the MORT. but the jolly REVEILLE, to remind the inmates of the Castle of Kenilworth that the pleasures of the day were to commence with a magnificent stag-hunting in the neighbouring Chase. Amy started up from her couch, listened to the sound, saw the first beams of the summer morning already twinkle through the lattice of her window, and recollected, with feelings of giddy agony, where she was, and how circumstanced.

"He thinks not of me," she said; "he will not come nigh me! A Queen is his guest, and what cares he in what corner of his huge Castle a wretch like me pines in doubt, which is fast fading into despair?" At once a sound at the door, as of some one attempting to open it softly, filled her with an ineffable mixture of joy and fear; and hastening to remove the obstacle she had placed against the door, and to unlock it, she had the precaution to ask! "Is it thou, my love?"

"Yes, my Countess," murmured a whisper in reply.

She threw open the door, and exclaiming, "Leicester!" flung her arms around the neck of the man who stood without, muffled in his cloak.

"No--not quite Leicester," answered Michael Lambourne, for he it was, returning the caress with vehemence--"not quite Leicester, my lovely and most loving duchess, but as good a man."

With an exertion of force, of which she would at another time have thought herself incapable, the