“By my valor have I won my bride!” “Ah, Kenneth!” she faltered, “thou hast despised my counsels, thou hast mocked at my love; thy path hath been a path of blood, and thy crimes rise mountain-high between thee and thy affianced! Oh, why hast thou done this?” The scales fell from his eyes in that pure presence, and looking back over the guilt of years, he felt appalled by his own sins. “The stars, in their courses, fought against me,”[2] he answered gloomily—“it was my destiny.” “Oh, abandon that fearful error, and cease to burden Fate with thy misdeeds. Thy destiny hath been of thine own choosing. Didst thou not turn a deaf ear to the pleadings of all good angels? Didst thou not yield an easy prey to the devices of thine own heart? For the sake of the future, look back upon the past, and tell me if thou canst not recall the hour when two paths were spread before thee, and thou didst choose thy lot; tell me no more of destiny!” “My lady hath forgotten her meekness as well as her love.” “Kenneth, reproach me not! I have wasted my youth in vigils for thee; I have watched, and wept, and waited, now in hope, and anon in hopelessness, until sorrow shadowed my father’s halls, and mildew settled down on my heart. Now in the depths of my despair I love thee still, but I _dare not_ wed thee! Go in peace; if man may ever meddle with his fate, mine shall be of my own moulding.” “Fashion it as thou wilt,” he answered fiercely, “_I will come to claim thee in the appointed hour!_” * * * * * Fair Lillian sitteth in her husband’s home, but a great shadow lieth athwart the hearth; ’tis the memory of an earlier, wilder, fonder love; and the fierce fame of her warrior, reacheth her ever, terrible as the roar of distant battle. ----- [2] The stars in their courses fought against Sisera. JUDGES, chap. v., verse 20. HOUR II.—_The Consummation._ The princes of the night mounted their flaming steeds and coursed through heaven. Lillian sat in widow’s weeds, and watched them from her great round tower. Suddenly the clang of a mailed heel rung on the winding stair, and her cheek paled—for those halls no longer echoed with martial sounds since Lord Ulric had been gathered home. Near and more near, loud and more loud, and a warrior strode into the apartment, and folded the lady in his embrace! “_I have come!_” Those old, familiar, long beloved tones, how they broke upon the loneliness, thrilling to its centre her sorrow-stricken heart. What marvel if she wept unresistingly on his broad breast, in her agony of surprise. “I have come to claim my bride!” Then was the spell broken, and her soul awoke to a sense of its stern resolves. She freed herself from that passionate embrace, saying, “I may not wed thee, Kenneth.”