She pitied me!

I did not need a voice

To tell my love.

She knew her sometime minion—

And felt that she should never be adored
With such idolatry as his, and sighed
That hearts so true beat not in palaces-
But I was poor, with all my bright renown,
And lowly born; and she-the Lady Clare!

ISIDORE.

She could not tell you this?

LORD IVON.

She broke my heart

As kindly as the fisher hooks the worm

Pitying me the while!

ISIDORE.

And you

LORD IVON.

Lived on!

But the remembrance irks me, and my throat

Chokes with the utterance !

ISIDORE.

Dear father!

LORD IVON.

Nay

Thanks to sweet Mary Mother, it is past :
And in this world I shall have no more need
To speak of it.

ISIDORE.

But there were brighter days

In store. My mother, and this palace

From this heart-broken hour, I stood again

An old man and a stranger, at the door

Of this same palace. I had been a slave

For gold that time.

My star had wrought with me!

And I was richer than the wizard king

Throned in the mines of Ind. I could not look

On my innumerable gems, the glare

Pained so my sun-struck eyes. My gold was count

less.

And Lady Clare ?

ISIDORE.

LORD IVON.

I met upon the threshold

Her very self-all youth, all loveliness

So like the fresh-kept picture in my brain,

That for a moment I forgot all else,

And stagger'd back and wept. She passed me by

With a cold look

ISIDORE.

Oh! not the Lady Clare!

LORD IVON.

Her daughter yet herself! But what a change
Waited me here! My thin and grizzled locks
Were fairer now than the young minstrel's curls;
My sun-burnt visage and contracted eye
Than the gay soldier in his gallant mien ;
My words were wit, my looks interpreted,
And Lady Clare—I tell you, Lady Clare
Leaned fondly-fondly! on my wasted arm.
O God! how changed my nature with all this!
I, that had been all love and tenderness,—
The truest and most gentle heart, till now,
That ever beat-grew suddenly a devil!
I bought me lands, and titles, and received
Men's homage with a smooth hypocrisy ;
And-you will scarce believe me, Isidore-
I suffered them to wile their peerless daughter,
The image and the pride of Lady Clare,
To wed me!

ISIDORE.

Sir! you did not!

LORD IVON.

Ay! I saw

Th' indignant anger when her mother first
Broke the repulsive wish, and the degrees
Of shuddering reluctance as her mind

Admitted the intoxicating tales

Of wealth unlimited. And when she look'd
On my age-stricken features, and my form,
Wasted before its time, and turned away
To hide from me her tears, her very mother
Whispered the cursed comfort in her ear
That made her what she is!

Knowing all this!

ISIDORE.

You could not wed her,

LORD IVON.

I felt that I had lost

My life else. I had wrung, for forty years,
My frame to its last withers; I had flung