To herself, following closely upon the vanquished foe, her mysterious shadowy tormentor, there came a fresh anxiety and misery, which long refused to be banished. So safe, so happy had she felt in her love for Percival and in the assurance of his own, that till now the thought had never occurred to her that perhaps in his secret heart he might rather be loosed from the spiritual fetters which bound them one to the other, that, sweet though those fetters were to herself, and the only joy left her on earth, they might perchance be to the injury of his future happiness. Might he not one day, like Sir Tristram, find her image in his heart replaced by some yet fairer vision, or one at least more attainable? Was it fair and right that she should seek to bind him ever to herself by this bond of spiritual love, which he might one day surely wish to exchange to his own good and happiness for a blessed earthly union? Her whole heart shrank from the bare contemplation of such a possibility, and as night after night she pondered the matter in the silent darkness, and strove with agonised prayers and tears to gain courage to speak to him on the morrow the words which would involve such bitter self-sacrifice, her spirit rebelled against the thought of further suffering, and she cried aloud in the stillness of her chamber, "Oh, God, I cannot! His love is all I have on earth, and without it I must die! He loves me and lives too in my love. I cannot speak to him words which may suggest a thought he has not yet dreamed, yet which, when once suggested, may slowly but surely work in his mind until he sees their wisdom! Nay, I cannot tell him I am willing to let him go, and see another snatch one day the bliss I have forsworn! Yet to me our mutual sacrifice is easier than to him, since I know it to be the will of God that I should never wed, and I dare not fight against His will; but to him it is surely a hard task, which only my selfishness imposes, since it is but his love to me which bids him take up this cross of loneliness. For him no divine fiat has gone forth, as for me, to forswear all earthly bliss, and it is but my selfish, cowardly heart which shrinks from bidding him seek the joys of home which others crave, and which would surely cheer him on his path of duty! yet he is mine--mine these five years past and more--and I cannot let him go!" So in the secret pain of a conflict hitherto undreamed, and all unsuspected by him she loved, Lady Shanno grew white and wan within the walls of her castle; and while she wept and prayed in the bitterness of her spirit, the chaplain, marvelling why her light footstep had ceased to come and go in the village, and why, in her grief at her father's death, she must needs refuse admittance to him, her truest friend and comforter, went daily to pray for her in his church on the hillside, kneeling long before the altar in silent supplication for her welfare, and for a continual blessing upon those