Elizabeth followed him with her eyes; she saw the smile--that luminous, eloquent smile, with which Barbara greeted the youth: a smile that no human being ever saw to question the woman's beauty afterwards. The tears trembling in her eyes, fired up like diamonds. She dashed them upon the air with a sweep of her hand, and turned away humbled, haughty, and almost heart-broken. It will be a long time, Norman Lovel, before that girl asks pardon of you again; she is almost ready to scoff at herself for loving you; her foot presses the tessellated floor of that hall with the tread of a queen. She looked forth from the window of her chamber, and saw them walking together; Norman, her lover, and the strange lady. He was evidently listening to her as she conversed, for his face was turned upon her with a look of absorbing attention, and it brightened eloquently, though he did not smile--the talk seemed too earnest and serious for that. She could not remember the time when he had looked at _her_ with such devotion. Poor child! her heart was sick with jealousy--and of whom? They walked together till the new moon rose, and hung like a golden sickle over the trees; then they moved quietly towards the house, and Elizabeth heard the lady retreat to her own room, while Lovel wandered off into the grounds, without once glancing up at the window where she stood. How bitterly she began to hate the woman who, without youth or a tithe of her own rare beauty, had taken possession of a heart which had been so completely hers. CHAPTER XVIII. GATHERING ROSES AND THORNS.