rock the cry re-echoed, in low, lingering tones of imploring agony, till the very atmosphere seemed ringing with the musical accents of the name--"Shanno, Shanno!" Primrose trembled from head to foot, and pressing her cold hands upon her throbbing brow convulsively, drew back, shuddering, from the water's edge. "It is Percival's voice!" she murmured. "It is his spirit sent to call me back from my self-chosen grave! Ah, God, Thou hast hid Thy face from me, but Thou hast made me hear Thy voice, through Thy servant's cry in the darkness to his beloved! I will live, not die for thee, Percival." And as the last faint echo of the mysterious tones was borne away in sad music on the faint night breeze, she flung herself upon the ground, and burst into an agony of bitter weeping, so terrible that the sobs seemed to rend the slight girlish form in twain. But that outlet to their misery saved the poor bursting heart and brain, and at length the storm of agony spent itself, and she rose, exhausted, but in her right mind, and calm, with a strange new sense of peace and rest. The first faint flush of early dawn appeared in the eastern sky, and Primrose sat still upon the cold ground, and watched it spread its golden wings over the dark horizon, and unfold one by one its faint rose leaves upon the mountain peaks, feeling too utterly worn out in mind and body for thought or movement. At last she slowly crept once more to the edge of the lake, and looked again into the black waters, but this time with a strong and steadfast gaze. "Your voice has saved me, sweetheart," she murmured softly. "Your holy soul could not watch mine fling itself away for ever from you and from my God, and keep silence! You loved the immortal maiden, Percival;--now it must be an immortal love only that you shall ever bear me. For us no mortal tie can ever be, and we must needs love as the angels in heaven, 'who neither marry nor are given in marriage.' Here, where you first loved me, sweetheart, and where I first saw your face, I vow to you and to God that though you shall never call me by the sweet name of wife, yet I will be true to you through life and through eternity. And in that world, which I have so nigh forfeited by the deed from which your voice has saved me, our love will but shine the brighter for our present sacrifice. Oh, God, give me strength to keep my vow, and not to suffer his pleadings to overcome me, and forgive me for this my great sin and wickedness!" Long Primrose knelt by the water's edge in silent, agonised prayer and wrestling, and the sun was high in the heavens when at last she turned her weary feet homewards, and crept, unobserved, into the farm, and up the staircase to her chamber. And there, in that still and darkened chamber, Lady Bryn Afon kept watch for many long days and nights over her unconscious form, sometimes tossing restlessly to and fro in the delirium of the fever brought on by her long exposure