One of these was a youth, just verging into manhood, dressed in a dark, plain suit, with a deep lace collar, and cuffs of the same material. He had apparently been singing, and accompanying himself on the guitar; for his instrument was still held idly in his hand, as he sat at the feet of a lady, into whose face he was looking up with a rapt intensity of gaze, which told that the soul of the page—for such he seemed—was in every glance. And well might his emotion toward that lovely being be one of unmixed love; for never did a more beautiful creature gaze upon a summer landscape. Tall, stately, with dark lustrous eyes, and a port that might have become a queen, Isabel Mowbray, was a being formed to be loved with an intensity such as this world rarely witnesses. As she now stood gazing out upon the landscape, with one hand shading her brow, and the other thrown back, and resting on the balustrade, thus displaying her snowy neck and bust, and her matchless figure to the best advantage, she seemed a being too beautiful for aught but a poet’s imagination. “You are silent, this afternoon, cousin,” at last said the youth, breaking a silence which had lasted for several minutes, “what are you looking at, Isabel?” The maiden made no reply, but still gazed down the park. She was apparently lost in thought. “Shall I sing again for you?” said the boy, in his low, sweet voice, looking up more devotedly than ever into the maiden’s face, “you used to like to hear me sing, you know, Isabel.” “Oh! Henry is it you?” said the beauty, looking down, and half blushing, as if detected in something she wished to conceal, “sing by all means, my pretty page and coz. Sing me that old lay of the troubadour, and here Wyn,” and she called playfully to a beautiful greyhound reposing at the feet of the boy, “come here and let me talk to you, while Henry sings.” An expression of gratified joy—of joy such as is rarely seen, except in the countenances of those who love—illumined the whole face of the boy as the maiden thus spoke—and taking up his guitar, he sang the words of an olden lay, which has now passed, with many a fair lip that once warbled it, into oblivion.