Adrian bowed and left her. She was still sitting with her hands clasped round one knee, gazing towards the dim ray-strewn valley. "An odd creature!" muttered the wise youth. "She's as odd as any of them. She ought to be a Feverel. I suppose she's graduating for it. Hang that confounded old ass of a Benson! He has had the impudence to steal a march on me!" The shadow of the cypress was lessening on the lake. The moon was climbing high. As Richard rowed the boat, Lucy sang to him softly. She sang first a fresh little French song, reminding him of a day when she had been asked to sing to him before, and he did not care to hear. "Did I live?" he thinks. Then she sang to him a bit of one of those majestic old Gregorian chants, that, wherever you may hear them, seem to build up cathedral walls about you. The young man dropped the sculls. The strange solemn notes gave a religious tone to his love, and wafted him into the knightly ages and the reverential heart of chivalry. Hanging between two heavens on the lake: floating to her voice: the moon stepping over and through white shoals of soft high clouds above and below: floating to her voice--no other breath abroad! His soul went out of his body as he listened. They must part. He rows her gently shoreward. "I never was so happy as to-night," she murmurs. "Look, my Lucy. The lights of the old place are on the lake. Look where you are to live." "Which is your room, Richard?" He points it out to her. "O Richard! that I were one of the women who wait on you! I should ask nothing more. How happy she must be!" "My darling angel-love. You shall be happy; but all shall wait on you, and I foremost, Lucy." "Dearest! may I hope for a letter?" "By eleven to-morrow. And I?" "Oh! you will have mine, Richard." "Tom shall wait for it. A long one, mind! Did you like my last song?" She puts her hand quietly against her bosom, and he knows where it rests. O love! O heaven! They are aroused by the harsh grating of the bow of the boat against the shingle. He jumps out, and lifts her ashore. "See!" she says, as the blush of his embrace subsides--"See!" and prettily she mimics awe and feels it a little, "the cypress does point towards us. O Richard! it does!" And he, looking at her rather than at the cypress, delighting in her arch grave ways-- "Why, there's hardly any shadow at all, Lucy. She mustn't dream, my darling! or dream only of me." "Dearest! but I do." "To-morrow, Lucy! The letter in the morning, and you at night. O happy to-morrow!" "You will be sure to be there, Richard?" "If I am not dead, Lucy." "O Richard! pray, pray do not speak of that. I shall not survive you." "Let us pray, Lucy, to die together, when we are to die. Death or life, with you! Who is it yonder? I see some one--is it Tom? It's Adrian!" "Is it Mr. Harley?" The fair girl shivered. "How dares he come here!" cried Richard.