when silvered bridles and silvery laughs rang out with a low, fitful music: when the dark dells, whenever a sunbeam shot through, grew light with shimmer of gold and jewels, or with sheen of minever and brocade; when ever and anon a bugle sounded--discreetly distant--not to recall the lost or the laggards, but just to remind them that they were supposed to be hunting the deer. Pity that almost all these romances ended so drearily! We might learn a lesson, if we would; but we "hear and do not fear." The modern knight's riding suit is russet or grey--perhaps, at the richest, of sable velvet; a scarlet neck-ribbon or the plumes of a tropical bird are the most gorgeous elements in his companion's amazonian apparel; but I fear the tone of their dress is about the only thing which is really sobered and subdued. People will go on lingering till they lose their party, and looking till they lose their hearts, and whispering till they lose their heads, to the end of time; though all these years have not abated one iota of the retribution allotted those who "love not wisely but too well;" though many miserable men, since Tristram, have dwined away under a wound that would never heal, tended by a wife that they could never like, thirsting for the caress of "white hands beyond the sea," and for a whisper that they heard--never, or only in the death-pang; though many sinners, since Launcelot, have grovelled in vain remorse on the gravestone of their last love or their first and firmest friend. Certainly, none of these considerations could trouble the cousins' pleasant ride; for every word that passed between them was perfectly innocent and authorized; they had, so to speak, been "blessed by the priest" before they started. When Helen came down (rather late) to dinner, her face was so changed and radiant with happiness that it made "my lady's" for the rest of the evening unusually pensive and grave. Some such ideas shot across her as were in the cruel step-mother's mind, when she stopped those who bore out the seeming corpse to its burial, saying-- Drap the het lead on her breast, And drap it on her chin; For mickle will a maiden do, To her true love to win. CHAPTER VIII. CROESUS COMETH.