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MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE MAKES LOVE, AND IS FRIGHTENED.
For two or three days Marmaduke and Sibyll were necessarily brought much together.

Such familiarity of intercourse was peculiarly rare in that time, when, except perhaps in the dissolute court of Edward IV., the virgins of gentle birth mixed sparingly, and with great reserve, amongst those of opposite sex.

Marmaduke, rapidly recovering from the effect of his wounds, and without other resource than Sibyll's society in the solitude of his confinement, was not proof against the temptation which one so young and so sweetly winning brought to his fancy or his senses.
The poor Sibyll--she was no faultless paragon,--she was a rare and singular mixture of many opposite qualities in heart and in intellect! She was one moment infantine in simplicity and gay playfulness; the next a shade passed over her bright face, and she uttered some sentence of that bitter and chilling wisdom, which the sense of persecution, the cruelty of the world, had already taught her.

She was, indeed, at that age when the Child and the Woman are struggling against each other.