. .
"And REBECCA," he would have said; but the knight paused here in rather
a guilty panic: and her Royal Highness the Princess Rowena (as she chose
to style herself at home) looked so hard at him out of her china-blue
eyes, that Sir Wilfrid felt as if she was reading his thoughts, and was
fain to drop his own eyes into his flagon.
In a word, his life was intolerable. The dinner hour of the twelfth
century, it is known, was very early; in fact, people dined at ten
o'clock in the morning: and after dinner Rowena sat mum under her
canopy, embroidered with the arms of Edward the Confessor, working with
her maidens at the most hideous pieces of tapestry, representing the
tortures and martyrdoms of her favorite saints, and not allowing a soul
to speak above his breath, except when she chose to cry out in her own
shrill voice when a handmaid made a wrong stitch, or let fall a ball of
worsted. It was a dreary life. Wamba, we have said, never ventured to
crack a joke, save in a whisper, when he was ten miles from home; and
then Sir Wilfrid Ivanhoe was too weary and blue-devilled to laugh; but
hunted in silence, moodily bringing down deer and wild-boar with shaft
and quarrel.
Then he besought Robin of Huntingdon, the jolly outlaw, nathless, to
join him, and go to the help of their fair sire King Richard, with a
score or two of lances.
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