"Love me," comes the blushing whisper, and the duet gives place to dumb variations, performed equally in concert. It is resumed. "You are fond of the knights, Lucy. Austin is as brave as any of them.--My own bride! Oh, how I adore you! When you are gone, I could fall upon the grass you tread upon, and kiss it. My breast feels empty of my heart--Lucy! if we lived in those days, I should have been a knight, and have won honour and glory for you. Oh! one can do nothing now. My lady-love! My lady-love!--A tear?--Lucy?" "Dearest! Ah, Richard! I am not a lady." "Who dares say that? Not a lady--the angel I love!" "Think, Richard, who I am." "My beautiful! I think that God made you, and has given you to me." Her eyes fill with tears, and, as she lifts them heavenward to thank her God, the light of heaven strikes on them, and she is so radiant in her pure beauty that the limbs of the young man tremble. "Lucy! O heavenly spirit! Lucy!" Tenderly her lips part--"I do not weep for sorrow." The big bright drops lighten, and roll down, imaged in his soul. They lean together--shadows of ineffable tenderness playing on their thrilled cheeks and brows. He lifts her hand, and presses his mouth to it. She has seen little of mankind, but her soul tells her this one is different from others, and at the thought, in her great joy, tears must come fast, or her heart will break--tears of boundless thanksgiving. And he, gazing on those soft, ray-illumined, dark-edged eyes, and the grace of her loose falling tresses, feels a scarce-sufferable holy fire streaming through his members. It is long ere they speak in open tones. "O happy day when we met!" What says the voice of one, the soul of the other echoes. "O glorious heaven looking down on us!" Their souls are joined, are made one for evermore beneath that bending benediction. "O eternity of bliss!" Then the diviner mood passes, and they drop to earth. "Lucy! come with me to-night, and look at the place where you are some day to live. Come, and I will row you on the lake. You remember what you said in your letter that you dreamt?--that we were floating over the shadow of the Abbey to the nuns at work by torchlight felling the cypress, and they handed us each a sprig. Why, darling, it was the best omen in the world, their felling the old trees. And you write such lovely letters. So pure and sweet they are. I love the nuns for having taught you." "Ah, Richard! See! we forget! Ah!" she lifts up her face pleadingly, as to plead against herself, "even if your father forgives my birth, he will not my religion. And, dearest, though I would die for you I cannot change it. It would seem that I was denying God; and--oh! it would make me ashamed of my love."