And in the dreams of the chaplain himself there were strangely-mingled visions of Lady Bryn Afon's fair-haired attendant and the golden-haired maiden of the mystic Pool, who ever, in his dream, walked round and round the dark lake, now together in loving concert, with arms entwined after the fashion of mortal damsels, now blending mysteriously into one radiant being, around whom played the sweet strains of invisible harp-strings, but who, on his approach, fell headlong into the black water, with resounding splash, and was lost to view, while ever from the watery depths sounded those same mysterious harp-strings, now wailing as in bitter woe over the drowned maiden. CHAPTER XVIII. THE GIPSY'S HAUNT. "Love is ... the passion of soul for soul, an exchange of ideals, a response of depth to depth of human life."--_Essay on_ BROWNING (_Quarterly Review_). Percival Vere awoke next morning to a consciousness that some subtle change had come over his being, and after a day spent in some pleasant mountain rambling with Lady Bryn Afon and her fair attendant, during which sunny hours he made profounder study of the river-maiden than she had any idea of, he found himself utterly unable to settle his mind to any other kind of study, when, in the cool of the evening, he gathered his books around him and strove to turn his thoughts into severer channels. At length, in desperation over his own want of strength of mind, he gathered two or three of his unopened volumes under his arm and wandered out over the mountain-side, to inquire within himself as to the strange tumult of new feelings, which possessed him all the more overwhelmingly because he had as yet had none of those experiences of them so common to youth; and as he climbed the steep mountain-paths, he reasoned severely with himself on the weakness of permitting the witchery of a midnight vision so to throw its mocking glamour over his senses as to make him succumb thus easily to its mortal resemblance. It was quite true that no maiden yet had e'er had power to take his heart by storm; not that he had been at any time guilty of a lack of chivalrous feelings towards the fair sex, or of lack of due admiration for their peculiar virtues and graces, but that these very virtues, only imperfectly realised in any of the fair ones with whom he had as yet come in contact, had but served to heighten his idea of their possible perfection, and to raise his ideal woman to a pinnacle which, as Lady Rosamond loved to remind him, might perchance ever rear itself aloft in his imagination only, and be impossible for any poor mortal woman to attain. Moreover, so wholly had his heart and mind been given up since his early youth to his preparation for the duties of his sacred calling, and especially for those sterner duties which must lie in his path with regard to that vice which he had for some years past felt himself imperiously called upon to combat, that