But her ladyship said that Rowena gave herself such airs, and
bored her so intolerably with stories of King Edward the Confessor, that
she preferred any place rather than Rotherwood, which was as dull as if
it had been at the top of Mount Athos.
The only person who visited it was Athelstane. "His Royal Highness the
Prince" Rowena of course called him, whom the lady received with
royal honors. She had the guns fired, and the footmen turned out with
presented arms when he arrived; helped him to all Ivanhoe's favorite
cuts of the mutton or the turkey, and forced her poor husband to
light him to the state bedroom, walking backwards, holding a pair of
wax-candles. At this hour of bedtime the Thane used to be in such a
condition, that he saw two pair of candles and two Ivanhoes reeling
before him. Let us hope it was not Ivanhoe that was reeling, but only
his kinsman's brains muddled with the quantities of drink which it was
his daily custom to consume. Rowena said it was the crack which the
wicked Bois Guilbert, "the Jewess's OTHER lover, Wilfrid my dear,"
gave him on his royal skull, which caused the Prince to be disturbed so
easily; but added, that drinking became a person of royal blood, and was
but one of the duties of his station.
Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe saw it would be of no avail to ask this man to
bear him company on his projected tour abroad; but still he himself was
every day more and more bent upon going, and he long cast about for some
means of breaking to his Rowena his firm resolution to join the King.
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