The grief and agitation of the Lady Edith, as well as the deep interest she felt in a hasty explanation with the Scottish knight, perhaps occasioned her forgetting that her locks were more dishevelled and her person less heedfully covered than was the wont of high-born damsels, in an age which was not, after all, the most prudish or scrupulous period of the ancient time.

A thin, loose garment of pink-coloured silk made the principal part of her vestments, with Oriental slippers, into which she had hastily thrust her bare feet, and a scarf hurriedly and loosely thrown about her shoulders.

Her head had no other covering than the veil of rich and dishevelled locks falling round it on every side, that half hid a countenance which a mingled sense of modesty and of resentment, and other deep and agitated feelings, had covered with crimson.
But although Edith felt her situation with all that delicacy which is her sex's greatest charm, it did not seem that for a moment she placed her own bashfulness in comparison with the duty which, as she thought, she owed to him who had been led into error and danger on her account.
She drew, indeed, her scarf more closely over her neck and bosom, and she hastily laid from her hand a lamp which shed too much lustre over her figure; but, while Sir Kenneth stood motionless on the same spot in which he was first discovered, she rather stepped towards than retired from him, as she exclaimed, "Hasten to your post, valiant knight!--you are deceived in being trained hither--ask no questions." "I need ask none," said the knight, sinking upon one knee, with the reverential devotion of a saint at the altar, and bending his eyes on the ground, lest his looks should increase the lady's embarrassment.
"Have you heard all ?" said Edith impatiently.

"Gracious saints! then wherefore wait you here, when each minute that passes is loaded with dishonour!" "I have heard that I am dishonoured, lady, and I have heard it from you," answered Kenneth.

"What reck I how soon punishment follows?
I have but one petition to you; and then I seek, among the sabres of the infidels, whether dishonour may not be washed out with blood." "Do not so, neither," said the lady.