This eBook was produced by Tapio Riikonen
and David Widger
While such the entrance of Marmaduke Nevile into a court, that if farless intellectual and refined than those of later days, was yet morecalculated to dazzle the fancy, to sharpen the wit, and to charm thesenses,—for round the throne of Edward IV. chivalry was magnificent,intrigue restless, and pleasure ever on the wing,—Sibyll had ampleleisure in her solitary home to muse over the incidents that hadpreceded the departure of the young guest. Though she had rejectedMarmaduke's proffered love, his tone, so suddenly altered, his abrupt,broken words and confusion, his farewell, so soon succeeding hispassionate declaration, could not fail to wound that pride of womanwhich never sleeps till modesty is gone. But this made the leastcause of the profound humiliation which bowed down her spirit. Themeaning taunt conveyed in the rhyme of the tymbesteres pierced her tothe quick; the calm, indifferent smile of the stranger, as he regardedher, the beauty of the dame he attended, woke mingled and contraryfeelings, but those of jealousy were perhaps the keenest: and in themidst of all she started to ask herself if indeed she had suffered hervain thoughts to dwell too tenderly upon one from whom the vastinequalities of human life must divide her evermore. What to her washis indifference? Nothing,—yet had she given worlds to banish thatcareless smile from her remembrance.
Shrinking at last from the tyranny of thoughts till of late unknown,her eye rested upon the gipsire which Alwyn had sent her by the oldservant. The sight restored to her the holy recollection of herfather, the sweet joy of having ministered to his wants. She put upthe little treasure, intending to devote it all to Warner; and afterbathing her heavy eyes, that no sorrow of hers might afflict thestudent, she passed with a listless step into her father's chamber.
There is, to the quick and mercurial spirits of the young, somethingof marvellous and preternatural in that life within life, which thestrong passion of science and genius forms and feeds,—that passion somuch stronger than love, and so much more self-dependent; which asksno sympathy, leans on no kindred heart; which lives alone in its worksand fancies, like a god amidst his creations.
The philosopher, too, had experienced a great affliction since theymet last. In the pride of his heart he had designed to show Marmadukethe mystic operations of his model, which had seemed that morning toopen into life; and when the young man was gone, and he made theexperiment alone, alas! he found that new progress but involved him innew difficulties. He had gained the first steps in the giganticcreation of modern days, and he was met by the obstacle that baffledso long the great modern sage. There was the cylinder, there theboiler; yet, work as he would, the steam failed to keep the cylinderat work. And now, patiently as the spider re-weaves the broken web,his untiring ardour was bent upon constructing a new cylinder of othermaterials. "Strange," he said to himself, "that the heat of the moveraids not the movement;" and so, blundering near the truth, he labouredon.
Sibyll, meanwhile, seated herself abstractedly on a heap of fagotspiled in the corner, and seemed busy in framing characters on thedusty floor with the point of her tiny sl