“It is some years since I saw the Queen of Naples,” answered Adrian; “and I little dreamed then, when I gazed upon that angel face, that I should live to hear her accused of the foulest murther that ever stained even Italian royalty.”

“And, as if resolved to prove her guilt,” said Montreal, “ere long be sure she will marry the very man who did the deed.  Of this I have certain proof.”

Thus conversing, the Knights wore away the daylight, and beheld from the open tent the sun cast his setting glow over the purple sea.  Adeline had long retired from the board, and they now saw her seated with her handmaids on a mound by the beach; while the sound of her lute faintly reached their ears.  As Montreal caught the air, he turned from the converse, and sighing, half shaded his face with his hand.  Somehow or other the two Knights had worn away all the little jealousy or pique which they had conceived against each other at Rome.  Both imbued with the soldier-like spirit of the age, their contest in the morning had served to inspire them with that strange kind of respect, and even cordiality, which one brave man even still (how much more at that day!) feels for another, whose courage he has proved while vindicating his own.  It is like the discovery of a congenial sentiment hitherto latent; and, in a life of camps, often establishes sudden and lasting friendship in the very lap of enmity.  This feeling had been ripened by their subsequent familiar intercourse, and was increased on Adrian’s side by the feeling, that in convincing Montreal of the policy of withdrawing from the Roman territories, he had obtained an advantage that well repaid whatever danger and delay he had undergone.

The sigh, and the altered manner of Montreal, did not escape Adrian, and he naturally connected it with something relating to her whose music had been its evident cause.

“Yon lovely dame,” said he, gently, “touches the lute with an exquisite and fairy hand, and that plaintive air seems to my ear as of the minstrelsy of Provence.”

“It is the air I taught her,” said Montreal, sadly, “married as it is to indifferent words, with which I first wooed a heart that should never have given itself to me!  Ay, young Colonna, many a night has my boat been moored beneath the starlit Sorgia that washes her proud father’s halls, and my voice awaked the stillness of the waving sedges with a soldier’s serenade.  Sweet memories! bitter fruit!”

“Why bitter? ye love each other still.”

“But I am vowed to celibacy, and Adeline de Courval is leman where she should be wedded dame.  Methinks I fret at that thought even more than she,—­dear Adeline!”

“Your lady, as all would guess, is then nobly born?”