And you, sweet summer--Flora? Summer. I'd be called, And for no other reason than I would, Not Flora, no, nor Maud, but Mary-Jane. Courtier [to Peasant-girl]. Sweet lowland lass--alas, without a lad!-- Will you be of us and yourself re-christen. Peasant-girl. I harboured here to shun a horrid man Whom I saw, like a pirate, bearing down To rob me of a dance. I'll sport with you. Courtier. What name, then, lassie?--Effie, Jeanie, Katie? Peasant-girl. No; call me May Montgomery, if you please. Courtier. What? May Montgomery! Why choose that name? None of the rest have been extravagant To take a surname's luxury. May. Let me-- Nay, for I will: I'll not be in the fashion: And it will be a pleasing penance, too. Courtier. A pleasing penance! Can you tell us how? May. I scarcely like. But, sir, I like your play, Because I would be called Montgomery. Courtier. Then, May Montgomery, tell us your romance. May. Alas, the speed I have to tell my tale Is slow as melancholy thoughts can be, That strike as often as a passing-bell: A bitter-sweet confession I must make. O ladies, do not fit your faces, pray, For some iniquity! Sadly, 'tis this. In Paris, where I lived a year ago, A youth fell sick in love for worthless me: I marvel now, though then I thought it due: Yet love creates, being a divinity, What it affects; and his most holy love Inspired poor me with beauty not my own, Though still I wonder that what grace I have Could be enriched with such induement sweet As he cast over it; for at that time He lacked his passion's courage, so he wrote A tender tale whose heroine was me, But metamorphosed to a deity. The book is throbbing like his fiery heart; This I have learned with memorising it: And now it is my only orison, My only literature, my only joy. I lull myself to sleep low-murmuring it, And in my dreams its sweetest scenes enact; I waken smiling in his tender arms, And sob to find mine clasped about myself. After his book he came to hear his doom: Trembling he stood: I, wanton, doomed us both-- Him to his grave, for then I loved him not; Myself, to love him now most hopelessly. And May Montgomery in his book I am: Pray, call me so; it is a lovely name. Courtier. And is your lover dead? May. I fear it, sir. Courtier. Now, are we named anew, all except me. How will you call me? Come, give me a name. What in his story is your lover hight? May. Earl Edmund; and the whisper went that he By right was lord of many lands and towers In Scotland here: but that I do not know. Courtier. I pray you, bid me take that name. May. O no! Earl Edmund! That were blasphemy!--But yes! I will be glad to speak it out aloud. Edmund. Speak it, I pray, as often as you choose.-- Well, I am tired of barring up this door. So, on the morrow, by the stroke of noon