It was but a short period before the commencement of our narrative that Eleanor Byron was really in love, and for the first time; for though her cousin Oliver, as she usually called him, had stormed, and perchance carried the outworks, yet the citadel was impregnable and unapproached. But she knew not that it was love. A soft and pleasing impression stole insensibly upon her, then dejection and melancholy. Her heart was vacant, and she sighed for an object, and for its possession. It was a silly wish, but so it was, gentle reader; and beware thou fall not in love with thine own dreams, for sure enough it was but a vision, bright, mysterious, and bewitching, that enthralled her. Love weaves his chains of the gossamer's web, as well as of the unyielding adamant; and both are alike binding and inextricable. She saw neither form nor face in her visions, and yet the impalpable and glowing impression stole upon her senses like an odour, or a strain of soft and soul-thrilling music. Her heart was wrapped in a delirium of such voluptuous melody, that she chided the morning when she awoke, and longed for night and her own forgetfulness. Night after night the vision was repeated; and when her lover came, it was as though some chord of feeling had jarred, some tie were broken, some delicious dream were interrupted, and she turned from him with vexation and regret. He chided her caprice, which he endured impatiently, and with little show of forbearance. This did not restore him to her favour, nor render him more winning and attractive; so that the invisible gallant, a rival he little dreamt of, was silently occupying the heart once destined for his own. One evening, Ralph, in pursuance of the commands he had received, arrayed in his best doublet, his brown hose, and a huge waist or undercoat, beneath which lay a heavy and foreboding heart, made his appearance at the house of Sir Nicholas Byron, an irregular and ugly structure of lath and plaster, well ribbed with stout timber, situated in a sheltered nook near the edge of the Beil, a brook running below Belfield, once an establishment of the renowned knights of St John of Jerusalem, or Knights Templars. Ralph was ushered into the lady's chamber; and she, as if expecting some more distinguished visitant, looked with an eye of disappointment and impatience upon the intruder as he made his homely salutation. "Thine errand?" inquired she. "Verily, a fool's, lady," replied Ralph, "and a thriftless one, I fear me, into the bargain." "Stay thy tongue. Yet I bethink me now," said she, looking earnestly at him, "thou art from my cousin: a messenger from him, I trow." "Nay," said the ambiguous hind, "'tis from other guess folk, belike; but--who--I--Like enough that the Lady Eleanor will go a fortune-hunting with such a simpleton as I am." "Go with thee?" said the lady in amazement.