Such was the scene on which there now gazed two beings, both beautiful, but one surpassingly so. The elder of the two might have been one and thirty, and both his face and figure were moulded in the noblest style of manly beauty. His broad brow, chiselled features, and commanding port, bespoke him one born to rule, although the simple and somewhat mean garb he wore argued that he was not rich in this world’s goods. The attire of his companion was richer, but less gay, and she wore the veil of a novice. Her face, however, made up in loveliness for whatever absence of ornament there was in her dress, and indeed she might well have challenged the world to produce her rival. The fair delicate skin through which the blue veins could be seen meandering, the snowy brow that seemed made for the temple of the loveliest and purest thoughts, the golden hair that lay in wreathes upon the forehead, and the blue eye whose azure depths seemed to conceal mysteries as pure and rapturing as those of heaven, made up a countenance of overpowering beauty, even without that expression, so high and seraphic, which beamed with her every word, and threw over each lineament of her face a loveliness almost divine. Her figure was like that of a sylph, yet full and rounded in every limb; and beneath her dress peeped forth one of the most delicate feet that ever trod green sward. She was perhaps eighteen, though she might have been younger. She sat now on a low bank, at the very edge of the forest, while her companion reclined at her feet, holding one of her tiny hands in his broad palm, and gazing up into her eyes with a look of the deepest, yet most respectful passion. Nor were the maiden’s orbs averted from his gaze, for ever and anon she would twine her fingers playfully yet half sadly in his locks, and return his look with all a woman’s tenderness. “Yes, sweet one,” said the hunter, as if continuing a conversation, “I have sometimes, during our separation for the last six long months, almost desponded, especially when I heard how urgent my brother was that you should wed his favorite Warren, and when I reflected that your aunt, the good abbess Christiana, was so hostile to my suit. But I did you injustice, dear one, and thus,” and he kissed the hands of his companion again and again, “I sue for pardon. God only knows,” he added in a sadder tone, “whether I shall ever have my rights. They sneer at me now as a landless prince, and that purse-proud Surrey hath no better name for me than Deer’s-foot, because I am not always able to follow the hunt with a steed. But so long as thou art true to me, sweet Maud, all these will be as nothing; and the time may come when we shall yet be happy.”