Her garb of ceremony laid aside, her lovely shape scantily veiled by a single robe of spotless linen, her auburn tresses flowing in unrestrained luxuriance almost to her feet, if she had been a creature of perfect human beauty, when viewed in all the pomp of royal pageantry, she now appeared a being of supernatural loveliness. Her small white feet, unsandalled, glided over the rich carpet with a grace which a slight degree of fancy might have deemed the motion peculiar to the inhabitants of another world. For an instant, ere she turned to her repose, she leaned against the carved mullions of the window, and gazed pensively, and it might be sadly, upon the garden, where she had so lately parted from the unhappy youth, whose life was thus embittered by that very feeling which, above all others, should have been its consolation. Withdrawing her eyes from the moonlit scene, she knelt before the lamp and the shrine which it illuminated, and her whispered orisons arose pure as the source from which they flowed; the prayers of a weak and humble mortal, penitent for every trivial error, breathing all confidence to Him who alone can protect or pardon; the prayers of a queen for her numerous children, and last, and holiest of all, a woman’s prayers for her unfortunate admirer. Yes, she prayed for Chastelar, that strength might be given to him from on high, to bear the crosses of a miserable life, and that by Divine mercy the hopeless love might be uprooted from his breast. The words burst passionately from her lips, her whole frame quivered with the excess of her emotion, and the big tears fell like rain from her uplifted eyes. While she was yet in the very flood of passion a sigh was breathed, so clearly audible, that the conviction flashed like lightning on her soul, that this most secret prayer was listened to by other ears than those of heavenly ministers. Terror, acute terror took possession of her mind, banishing, by its superior violence, every less engrossing idea. She snatched the lamp from its niche, waved it slowly around the chamber, and there, in the most hallowed spot of her widowed chamber, a spy upon her unguarded moments, stood a dark figure. Even in that moment of astonishment and fear, as if by instinct, the beautiful instinct of purely female modesty, she snatched a velvet mantle from the seat on which it had been cast aside, and veiled her person even before she spoke--“O God! it is De Chastelar!” “Sweet queen,” replied the intruder, “bright, beautiful ruler of my destinies, pardon--”