They both sat awhile in that kind of quietude which often falls between two who have stirred some deep fountain of emotion. All was so still around them, that the drip and trickle of the little stream which fell from the garden wall into the dark abyss of the gorge, could be distinctly heard as it pattered from one rocky point to another, with a light, lulling sound. Suddenly their revery was disturbed by the shadow of a figure which passed into the moonlight and seemed to have risen from the side of the gorge. A man, enveloped in a dark cloak with a peaked hood, stepped across the moss-grown garden parapet, stood a moment irresolute, then the cloak dropped suddenly from him, and the cavalier appeared in the moonlight before Agnes. He bore in his hand a tall stalk of white lily, with open blossoms and buds and tender fluted green leaves, such as one sees in a thousand pictures of the Annunciation. The moonlight fell full upon his face, revealing his haughty yet beautiful features, agitated by some profound emotion. The monk and the girl were both too much surprised for a moment to utter a sound; and when, after an instant, the monk made a half-movement as if to speak, the cavalier raised his right hand with a sudden authoritative gesture which silenced him. Then turning toward Agnes, he knelt, and kissed the hem of her robe, and laying the lily in her lap, exclaimed, “Holiest and dearest—oh! forget not to pray for me!” He rose again in a moment, and, throwing his cloak around him, sprang over the garden wall, and was heard rapidly descending into the shadows of the gorge. All this passed so quickly that it seemed to both the spectators like a dream. The splendid man, with his jewelled weapons, his haughty bearing and air of easy command, bowing with such solemn humility before the peasant girl, reminded the monk of the barbaric princes in the wonderful legends he had read, who had been drawn by some heavenly inspiration to come and render themselves up to the teachings of holy virgins, chosen of the Lord, in divine solitudes. In the poetical world in which he lived such marvels were possible: there were a thousand precedents for them in that dream-land of the devout, “The Lives of the Saints.” “My daughter,” he said, after looking vainly down the dark shadows to track the path of the stranger, “have you ever seen this man before?” “Yes, uncle; yesterday evening I saw him for the first time, when sitting at my stand at the gate of the city. It was at the Ave Maria; he came up there and asked my prayers, and gave me a diamond ring for the shrine of Saint Agnes, which I carried to the convent.