“Yes, from Front-de-Boeuf’s castle, where you were locked up with the Jewess in the tower!” said Rowena, haughtily replying to the timid appeal of her husband.  “Gurth, give him four dozen!”

And this was all poor Wamba got by applying for the mediation of his master.

In fact, Rowena knew her own dignity so well as a princess of the royal blood of England, that Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, her consort, could scarcely call his life his own, and was made, in all things, to feel the inferiority of his station.  And which of us is there acquainted with the sex that has not remarked this propensity in lovely woman, and how often the wisest in the council are made to be as fools at her board, and the boldest in the battle-field are craven when facing her distaff?

“Where you were locked up with the Jewess in the tower,” was a remark, too, of which Wilfrid keenly felt, and perhaps the reader will understand, the significancy.  When the daughter of Isaac of York brought her diamonds and rubies—­the poor gentle victim!—­and, meekly laying them at the feet of the conquering Rowena, departed into foreign lands to tend the sick of her people, and to brood over the bootless passion which consumed her own pure heart, one would have thought that the heart of the royal lady would have melted before such beauty and humility, and that she would have been generous in the moment of her victory.

But did you ever know a right-minded woman pardon another for being handsome and more love-worthy than herself?  The Lady Rowena did certainly say with mighty magnanimity to the Jewish maiden, “Come and live with me as a sister,” as the former part of this history shows; but Rebecca knew in her heart that her ladyship’s proposition was what is called bosh (in that noble Eastern language with which Wilfrid the Crusader was familiar), or fudge, in plain Saxon; and retired with a broken, gentle spirit, neither able to bear the sight of her rival’s happiness, nor willing to disturb it by the contrast of her own wretchedness.  Rowena, like the most high-bred and virtuous of women, never forgave Isaac’s daughter her beauty, nor her flirtation with Wilfrid (as the Saxon lady chose to term it); nor, above all, her admirable diamonds and jewels, although Rowena was actually in possession of them.

In a word, she was always flinging Rebecca into Ivanhoe’s teeth.  There was not a day in his life but that unhappy warrior was made to remember that a Hebrew damsel had been in love with him, and that a Christian lady of fashion could never forgive the insult.  For instance, if Gurth, the swineherd, who was now promoted to be a gamekeeper and verderer, brought the account of a famous wild-boar in the wood, and proposed a hunt, Rowena would say, “Do, Sir Wilfrid, persecute these poor pigs:  you know your friends the Jews can’t abide them!” Or when, as it oft would happen, our lion-hearted