"I do! I do!" cried William Seymour, pressing his eager and burning lips upon her hand,--"I do! I do, Arabella! better than anything else on earth." "Well, then, peace!" she said, "peace! for your sake and for mine; for nothing is so hopeless on earth as the love we feel." _We feel!_ The confession was made! the words were spoken; and, though Seymour feared to urge her farther then, they sunk into his heart, a sweet solace for the years to come. Poor Arabella Stuart! If she thought, by the walk along that gentle stream, through those soft fields, amidst the old trees waving over head, listening to the voices of the birds, feeling the tender air of spring, talking over a thousand subjects, in which the ever-present impression of their love was only repressed in words to find utterance in vague and fanciful allusions,--if she thought by such means to cure her lover or herself of the disastrous passion which he had so boldly, she so timidly, acknowledged, alas! she was very, very much mistaken. Like the spirit of the Universal Deity of the Pagans, their love was all around them in everything they saw, or heard, or felt, in every word they uttered, unseen, but powerful, throughout the whole creation. Yet she thought she was seeking safety; and her spirits rose in the unconsciousness of danger, and the certainty of present happiness. Thus, when, some time after, they were joined by the master of the mansion, there was nothing whatsoever in her manner to show that she had been agitated or alarmed; and when they returned to the early dinner of those days, her heart seemed so light, that one might have thought not a drop of royal blood was running in her veins. "You are very gay," said William Seymour, in a tone almost reproachful, as they entered the hall. "So gay," she answered, "that I could sit down and sing;--but I fancy cold Sir Harry West," she continued, turning playfully to the old knight, "whose heart no fair lady could ever bring into tune with her own, has not an instrument of music in all his house--no virginals, no lute?" "Nay," replied the old knight, "you do me great injustice, fairest lady. I have all my life been the devoted servant of bright eyes. 'Tis but that I have loved them all so well, I never could be such a niggard of my heart as to bind myself to one; and, as to instruments of music--that sweetest of all the many modes of poetry--though virginals, God bless the mark! with their dull tinkling, I have none, yet I possess a lute in my own chamber, such as all the rest of England cannot boast, framed with great skill in Venice, by the famous Mallesini, who taught me how to use it, too, when I was in the City of the Sea, and used to serenade all the Venetian dames."