The news of the knight's demise, it appeared, had been known at his
quarters long before; for his servants were gone, and had ridden off
on his horses; his chests were plundered: there was not so much as a
shirt-collar left in his drawers, and the very bed and blankets had been
carried away by these FAITHFUL attendants. Who had slain Ivanhoe? That
remains a mystery to the present day; but Roger de Backbite, whose nose
he had pulled for defamation, and who was behind him in the assault at
Chalus, was seen two years afterwards at the court of King John in
an embroidered velvet waistcoat which Rowena could have sworn she had
worked for Ivanhoe, and about which the widow would have made some
little noise, but that--but that she was no longer a widow.
That she truly deplored the death of her lord cannot be questioned,
for she ordered the deepest mourning which any milliner in York could
supply, and erected a monument to his memory as big as a minster. But
she was a lady of such fine principles, that she did not allow her grief
to overmaster her; and an opportunity speedily arising for uniting the
two best Saxon families in England, by an alliance between herself
and the gentleman who offered himself to her, Rowena sacrificed her
inclination to remain single, to her sense of duty; and contracted a
second matrimonial engagement.
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