The boy proceeded on his way with an undefinable sentiment of approval in his bosom. Some instinct had prompted him, notwithstanding all his preconceived notions of horror at the abandonment of the young Ellets to the power of the Lady of the Rock, to accede to Lucy’s proposal that he would supply her place in her daily visits to that mysterious being; and so far from feeling any reproaches of conscience in remembering that he had given her his promise to that effect, he rather enjoyed all the elation of spirit experienced by one who generously sacrifices himself to suspicion for a noble cause. Something in Lucy Ellet’s manner convinced him that feelings of the same kind had actuated her conduct in this strange affair, and he thought of her now more with admiration than with reproach. “Yet what,” said he to himself, startled at the change a half an hour had wrought in his views, “if this approbation of myself and Miss Ellet be only a suggestion of the arch tempter to place me in his power?” But no, the idea was dismissed in a moment as incompatible with his feelings of satisfaction in what he had pledged himself to undertake. Stanley rose at sunrise on the following morning, for the purpose of commencing the fulfillment of his promise. Seeking the willow-tree in the garden, he found the little basket prepared for him, and assuming the charge of it, set out upon his walk. He speedily turned into the winding path indicated by Lucy Ellet, and pursued his way. The morning beams were just breaking, and their light glanced upon the dewy grass beneath his feet, and caused it to sparkle as though his tread were upon myriads of diamonds. The waking birds were chanting their matin lays, and the insects humming in every brake and dingle. Every thing gave promise of one of those days in the latter end of May when spring seems resolved to triumph over summer, by contrasting her superiority in beauty and freshness with that sultry season so soon to appear, at the same time that she might almost vie with the latter in the genial heat of her noontide sun.