"
I picture to myself, with a painful sympathy, Rowena undergoing this
disagreeable sentence. All her virtues, her resolution, her chaste
energy and perseverance, shine with redoubled lustre, and, for the first
time since the commencement of the history, I feel that I am partially
reconciled to her. The weary year passes--she grows weaker and more
languid, thinner and thinner! At length Ivanhoe, in the disguise of a
barrister of the Northern Circuit, is introduced to her cell, and finds
his lady in the last stage of exhaustion, on the straw of her dungeon,
with her little boy in her arms. She has preserved his life at the
expense of her own, giving him the whole of the pittance which her
gaolers allowed her, and perishing herself of inanition.
There is a scene! I feel as if I had made it up, as it were, with this
lady, and that we part in peace, in consequence of my providing her with
so sublime a death-bed. Fancy Ivanhoe's entrance--their recognition--the
faint blush upon her worn features--the pathetic way in which she gives
little Cedric in charge to him, and his promises of protection.
"Wilfrid, my early loved," slowly gasped she, removing her gray hair
from her furrowed temples, and gazing on her boy fondly, as he nestled
on Ivanhoe's knee--"promise me, by St.
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