“Ordener Guldenlew is very unfortunate, noble lady, if you reckon him among the number of your persecutors; and yet he is very fortunate to possess a place in your prayers.” “Oh, no,” said Ethel, troubled and alarmed by his cold manner, “no, I did not pray for him. I do not know what I did, nor what I do. As for the viceroy’s son, I detest him; I do not know him. Do not look at me so sternly; have I offended you? Can you not forgive a poor prisoner,--you who spend your days in the society of some fair and noble lady, free and happy like yourself?” “I, Countess!” exclaimed Ordener. Ethel burst into tears; the young man flung himself at her feet. “Did you not tell me,” she continued, smiling through her tears, “that your absence seemed to you short?” “Who, I, Countess?” “Do not call me countess,” said she, gently; “I am no longer a countess to any one, and far less to you.” The young man sprang up, and could not help clasping her to his heart in convulsive delight. “Oh, my adored Ethel, call me your own Ordener! Tell me,”--and his ardent glances rested on her eyes wet with tears,--“tell me, do you love me still?” The young girl’s answer went unheard, for Ordener, carried away by his emotions, snatched from her lips with her reply that first favor, that sacred kiss, which in the sight of God suffices to make two lovers man and wife. Both were speechless, because the moment was one of those solemn ones, so rare and so brief in this world, when the soul seems to feel something of celestial bliss. These instants when two souls thus converse in a language understood by no other are not to be described; then all that is human is hushed, and the two immaterial beings become mysteriously united for life in this world and eternity in the next. Ethel slowly withdrew from Ordener’s arms, and by the light of the moon each gazed into the other’s face with ecstasy; only, the young man’s eye of fire flashed with masculine pride and leonine courage, while the maiden’s downcast face was marked by that modesty and angelic shame which in a virgin beauty are always blended with all the joys of love. “Were you trying to avoid me just now,” she said at last, “here in this corridor, my Ordener?” “Not to avoid you. I was like the unfortunate blind man who is restored to sight after the lapse of long years, and who turns away from the light’s first radiance.”