Long, long will I remember your features, and bless God that I leave my noble deliverer united with—"
She stopped short—her eyes filled with tears. She hastily wiped them, and answered to the anxious enquiries of Rowena—"I am well, lady—well.
But my heart swells when I think of Torquilstone and the lists of Templestowe.—Farewell.
One, the most trifling part of my duty, remains undischarged.
Accept this casket—startle not at its contents."
Rowena opened the small silver-chased casket, and perceived a carcanet, or neck lace, with ear-jewels, of diamonds, which were obviously of immense value.
"It is impossible," she said, tendering back the casket.
"I dare not accept a gift of such consequence."
"Yet keep it, lady," returned Rebecca.—"You have power, rank, command, influence; we have wealth, the source both of our strength and weakness; the value of these toys, ten times multiplied, would not influence half so much as your slightest wish.
To you, therefore, the gift is of little value,—and to me, what I part with is of much less.
Let me not think you deem so wretchedly ill of my nation as your commons believe.
Think ye that I prize these sparkling fragments of stone above my liberty? or that my father values them in comparison to the honour of his only child?
Accept them, lady—to me they are valueless.
I will never wear jewels more."
"You are then unhappy!" said Rowena, struck with the manner in which Rebecca uttered the last words.
"O, remain with us—the counsel of holy men will wean you from your erring law, and I will be a sister to you."
"No, lady," answered Rebecca, the same calm melancholy reigning in her soft voice and beautiful features—"that—may not be.
I may not change the faith of my fathers like a garment unsuited to the climate in which I seek to dwell, and unhappy, lady, I will not be.
He, to whom I dedicate my future life, will be my comforter, if I do His will."
"Have you then convents, to one of which you mean to retire?" asked Rowena.
"No, lady," said the Jewess; "but among our people, since the time of Abraham downwards, have been women who have devoted their thoughts to Heaven, and their actions to works of kindness to men, tending the sick, feeding the hungry, and relieving the distressed.
Among these will Rebecca be numbered.
Say this to thy lord, should he chance to enquire after the fate of her whose life he saved."
There was an involuntary tremour on Rebecca's voice, and a tenderness of accent, which perhaps betrayed more than she would willingly have expressed.
She hastened to bid Rowena adieu.
"Farewell," she said. "May He, who made both Jew and Christian, shower down on you his choicest blessings!
The bark that waits us hence will be under weigh ere we can reach the port."
She glided from the apartment, leaving Rowena surprised as if a vision had passed before her.
The fair Saxon related the singular conference to her husband, on whose mind it made a deep impression.
He lived long and happily with Rowena, for they were attached to each other by the bonds of early affection, and they loved each other the more, from the recollection of the obstacles which had impeded their union.
Yet it would be enquiring too curiously to ask, whether the recollection of Rebecca's beauty and magnanimity did not recur to his mind more frequently than the fair descendant of Alfred might altogether have approved.
Ivanhoe distinguished himself in the service of Richard, and was graced with farther marks of the royal favour.
He might have risen still higher, but for the premature death of the heroic Coeur-de-Lion, before the Castle of Chaluz, near Limoges.
With the life of a generous, but rash and romantic monarch, perished all the projects which his ambition and his generosity had formed; to whom may be applied, with a slight alteration, the lines composed by Johnson for Charles of Sweden—
His fate was destined to a foreign strand, A petty fortress and an "humble" hand; He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a TALE.