“She is,” answered Montreal, with a deep and evident feeling which, save in love, rarely, if ever, crossed his hardy breast.  “She is! our tale is a brief one:—­we loved each other as children:  Her family was wealthier than mine:  We were separated.  I was given to understand that she abandoned me.  I despaired, and in despair I took the cross of St. John.  Chance threw us again together.  I learned that her love was undecayed.  Poor child!—­she was even then, sir, but a child!  I, wild,—­reckless—­and not unskilled, perhaps, in the arts that woo and win.  She could not resist my suit or her own affection!—­We fled.  In those words you see the thread of my after history.  My sword and my Adeline were all my fortune.  Society frowned on us.  The Church threatened my soul.  The Grand Master my life.  I became a knight of fortune.  Fate and my right hand favoured me.  I have made those who scorned me tremble at my name.  That name shall yet blaze, a star or a meteor, in the front of troubled nations, and I may yet win by force from the Pontiff the dispensation refused to my prayers.  On the same day, I may offer Adeline the diadem and the ring.—­Eno’ of this;—­you marked Adeline’s cheek!—­Seems it not delicate?  I like not that changeful flush,—­and she moves languidly,—­her step that was so blithe!”

“Change of scene and the mild south will soon restore her health,” said Adrian; “and in your peculiar life she is so little brought in contact with others, especially of her own sex, that I trust she is but seldom made aware of whatever is painful in her situation.  And woman’s love, Montreal, as we both have learned, is a robe that wraps her from many a storm!”

“You speak kindly,” returned the Knight; “but you know not all our cause of grief.  Adeline’s father, a proud sieur, died,—­they said of a broken heart,—­but old men die of many another disease than that!  The mother, a dame who boasted her descent from princes, bore the matter more sternly than the sire; clamoured for revenge,—­which was odd, for she is as religious as a Dominican, and revenge is not Christian in a woman, though it is knightly in a man!—­Well, my Lord, we had one boy, our only child; he was Adeline’s solace in my absence,—­his pretty ways were worth the world to her!  She loved him so, that, but he had her eyes and looked like her when he slept, I should have been jealous!  He grew up in our wild life, strong and comely; the young rogue, he would have been a brave knight!  My evil stars led me to Milan, where I had business with the Visconti.  One bright morning in June, our boy was stolen; verily that June was like a December to us!”

“Stolen!—­how?—­by whom?”

“The first question is answered easily,—­the boy was with his nurse in the courtyard, the idle wench left him for but a minute or two—­so she avers—­fetch him some childish toy; when she returned he was gone; not a trace left, save his pretty cap with the plume in it!  Poor Adeline, many a time have I found her kissing that relic till it was wet with tears!”