He slackened his pace, but he stood not still.
"I care not," he resolutely determined; "let them wink, point, nod,
sneer, speak of the conceit which is humbled, of the pride which has
had a fall--I care not; it is a penance due to my folly, and I will
endure it with patience. But if she also, my benefactress, if she also
should think me sordid and weak-spirited enough to beg, not for her
pardon alone, but for a renewal of the advantages which I derived from
her favour--_her_ suspicion of my meanness I cannot--I will not
brook."
He stood still, and his pride rallying with constitutional obstinacy
against his more just feeling, urged that he would incur the scorn of
the Lady of Avenel, rather than obtain her favour, by following the
course which the first ardour of his repentant feelings had dictated
to him.
"If I had but some plausible pretext," he thought, "some ostensible
reason for my return, some excuse to allege which might show I came
not as a degraded supplicant, or a discarded menial, I might go
thither--but as I am, I cannot--my heart would leap from its place and
burst."
As these thoughts swept through his mind, something passed in the air
so near him as to dazzle his eyes, and almost to brush the plume in
his cap. He looked up--it was the favourite falcon of Sir Halbert,
which, flying around his head, seemed to claim his attention, as that
of a well-known friend. Roland extended his arm, and gave the
accustomed whoop, and the falcon instantly settled on his wrist, and
began to prune itself, glancing at the youth from time to time an
acute and brilliant beam of its hazel eye, which seemed to ask why he
caressed it not with his usual fondness.
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