Oh, resolutions, resolutions! How that heart, which was to be so tranquil, beat, when her uncle rode away, and she felt herself left with him she loved, to pass the hours almost as they would! Heaven knows how they flew. Chartley was often with her. He did not shut himself in his chamber. He did not ride out to hunt, nor walk forth to meditate alone. At first he conversed with her, as they had done at their meeting in the abbey, gaily, cheerfully, with a vein of thought running through the merriment, and a touch of feeling softening the whole. But they were sometimes left alone together; and gradually they began to call up the memories of the past, to talk of scenes and incidents which had occurred, and words which had been spoken during the long adventurous night they had passed in the forest. It was dangerous ground; they felt it shake beneath them; but yet they would not move away. Their hearts thrilled as they spoke. Iola, with the eye of memory, saw Chartley sitting at her feet; and he, in fancy, felt her breath fanning his cheek as her head drooped upon his shoulder in sleep. Oh, how treacherous associations will open the gates of the heart to any enemy that desires to enter! They approached nearer and nearer to subjects which they had determined to avoid; they even spoke of them in circuitous and ambiguous phrases. The words which they uttered did not express their full meaning, but the tones and the looks did; and, by the time that the sun had sunk to within half an hour's journey of the horizon, Iola and Chartley knew that they loved each other, as well as if they had spoken and vowed it a thousand times. She was agitated, much agitated, it is true, but perhaps less so than he was; and to see why, we must look for a moment into their hearts. Iola felt that in loving him she was doing no wrong, that the contract which bound her to Lord Fulmer was altogether void and invalid, that marriages in infancy, where that mutual and reasonable consent is absent, upon which every contract must be based, were altogether unlawful; and that therefore, morally and religiously, she was as free as if her relations had never unjustly made a promise in her name. It may be that she had been easily convinced--it may be that love for one and disliking for another had smoothed the way for such conviction; but still she was _convinced_; and no consciousness of doing wrong added weight to other emotions. She might contemplate the future with dread; she might gaze upon the coming days as upon a wide sea of tumultuous waves, through which she could see no track, beyond which appeared no shore; and she might tremble lest the billows should overwhelm her. But she felt confident in the protection of Heaven, and sure that she was doing nought to forfeit it.