It would have been a sweet and grateful sight to some kindly bystander to hear these pleasant communications between two young persons so unfriended, and to imagine that hearts thus opened to each other might unite in one.

But Sibyll, though she listened to him with interest, and found a certain sympathy in his aspirations, was ever and anon secretly comparing him to one, the charm of whose voice still lingered in her ears; and her intellect, cultivated and acute, detected in Marmaduke deficient education, and that limited experience which is the folly and the happiness of the young.
On the other hand, whatever admiration Nevile might conceive was strangely mixed with surprise, and, it might almost be said, with fear.
This girl, with her wise converse and her child's face, was a character so thoroughly new to him.

Her language was superior to what he had ever heard, the words more choice, the current more flowing: was that to be attributed to her court-training or her learned parentage?
"Your father, fair mistress," said he, rousing himself in one of the pauses of their conversation--"your father, then, is a mighty scholar, and I suppose knows Latin like English ?" "Why, a hedge-priest pretends to know Latin," said Sibyll, smiling; "my father is one of the six men living who have learned the Greek and the Hebrew." "Gramercy!" cried Marmaduke, crossing himself.

"That is awsome indeed! He has taught you his lere in the tongues ?" "Nay, I know but my own and the French; my mother was a native of France." "The Holy Mother be praised!" said Marmaduke, breathing more freely; "for French I have heard my father and uncle say is a language fit for gentles and knights, specially those who come, like the Neviles, from Norman stock.

This Margaret of Anjou--didst thou love her well, Mistress Sibyll ?" "Nay," answered Sibyll, "Margaret commanded awe, but she scarcely permitted love from an inferior: and though gracious and well-governed when she so pleased, it was but to those whom she wished to win.