before him - »I pray you, gentle maiden, of your courtesy« --
    But here he was interrupted by his fair physician, a smile, which she could
scarce suppress, dimpling for an instant a face whose general expression was
that of contemplative melancholy. »I am of England, Sir Knight, and speak the
English tongue, although my dress and my lineage belong to another climate.«
    »Noble damsel« - again the Knight of Ivanhoe began; and again Rebecca
hastened to interrupt him.
    »Bestow not on me, Sir Knight,« she said, »the epithet of noble. It is well
you should speedily know that your handmaiden is a poor Jewess, the daughter of
that Isaac of York to whom you were so lately a good and kind lord. It well
becomes him, and those of his household, to render to you such careful tendance
as your present state necessarily demands.«
    I know not whether the fair Rowena would have been altogether satisfied with
the species of emotion with which her devoted knight had hitherto gazed on the
beautiful features, and fair form, and lustrous eyes of the lovely Rebecca; eyes
whose brilliancy was shaded, and, as it were, mellowed by the fringe of her long
silken eye-lashes, and which a minstrel would have compared to the evening star
darting its rays through a bower of jessamine. But Ivanhoe was too good a
Catholic to retain the same class of feelings towards a Jewess. This Rebecca had
foreseen, and for this very purpose she had hastened to mention her father's
name and lineage; yet - for the fair and wise daughter of Isaac was not without
a touch of female weakness - she could not but sigh internally when the glance
of respectful admiration, not altogether unmixed with tenderness, with which
Ivanhoe had hitherto regarded his unknown benefactress, was exchanged at once
for a manner cold, composed, and collected, and fraught with no deeper feeling
than that which expressed a grateful sense of courtesy received from an
unexpected quarter, and from one of an inferior race. It was not that Ivanhoe's
former carriage expressed more than that general devotional homage which youth
always pays to beauty; yet it was mortifying that one word should operate as a
spell to remove poor Rebecca, who could not be supposed altogether ignorant of
her title to such homage, into a degraded class, to whom it could not be
honourably rendered.
    But the gentleness and candour of Rebecca's nature imputed no fault to
Ivanhoe for sharing in the universal prejudices of his age and religion. On the
contrary, the fair Jewess, though sensible