“I intended,” said he, at length, as he pressed her hand to his lips; “I intended to beg your forgiveness for my extreme rudeness on yesterday. I was overcome, beside myself; and now, when I would utter the words of my supplication, they stick in my throat. I am tossed like a leaf, before you; and here I sit trembling like a child, beneath your touch. I feel in my inmost heart the sweetness of your sympathy. I go, and but for the treasure of that sweetness my heart would wither in its desolation. I dare not speak to you of love, for your troth is another’s. At least, in mercy, vouchsafe to me one glimpse of the Elysium denied me!” He folded her once more to his heart; indistinctly she heard in spasmodic whispers: _life—soul—dearest_—and he was gone. The nobler nature was triumphant; and Ella, overcome by his generosity and her now unquenchable love, wept long and bitterly. She turned from side to side in her loneliness, gazed into the heavens, upon the wide landscape, until the tears blinded her. Then she bent her head upon the trellis where he had leaned; her dark hair hung in loose locks upon the branching vines, and she moaned in very bitterness. That night she thought of Roderick, and for a moment compared him with Count Frederick. What a contrast! His very name, his only inheritance from his forefathers, was essentially plebeian, rustic. Ackerman! Roderick Ackerman, the husbandman! She had never thought of that before! She, the daughter of a noble house, could never bear that name! Her dreams were not those of pleasure only, for Roderick stood all night, a horrid phantom, between her impatient love and its unlawful object. Next morning she did not quiet her mind with the reflection, that she was not responsible for her dreams; and her midnight dreams, pleasure and displeasure, were her daylight reveries.