How was it, then, that thus differing--thus unlike in mind and feature--the high-souled Mary and the shrinking, soft-eyed Margaret should, almost simultaneously, have set their hearts on one object? Was it that, under the handsome exterior of her soldier-cousin, Philip de Candela, the elder sister recognised a spirit similar to her own? And was it that the pliant mind of Margaret, putting forth a host of tendrils--impulses, affections, sympathies--craved some object for support, something to cling to and weave themselves around, encircling what they garlanded? Was it in the harder nature of the soldier these budding tendrils found, as it were, a massive trunk wooing their embrace and strengthening their growth? Was it that the elder loved him for the perils he had undergone in Palestine and in France, the exciting scenes in which he had conspicuously borne a brave man's part, and for the spirit of daring and adventure by which he had been influenced in his busy brief career? We may know that it was so; that continued intercourse confirmed and ripened love; that Mary's ears were seldom regaled with tales of war and chivalry, while the songs of Provence were carolled with a frequency and fervour most gratifying, it would seem, to the happy, hopeful Margaret; and that, in short, the soldier and his soft-eyed cousin plighted their troth, and then irrevocably sealed it with a sacred union. The ceremonial was performed by St Monan, a hermit or religious recluse belonging to the Monastery of Pittenweem, which was sheltered in a recess amongst the banks, walls, and crevices at the west end of the village of the same name, with a dusky-coloured mass of hard whinstone overhanging it behind, and a stair or gully winding past it in front. Haste and secresy could be purchased then as now, and Philip and his bride were ferried across the frith, and landed at North Berwick, hours ere their lengthened absence had been noted by the elder sister as an unusual circumstance. How fierce and violent a storm of passion then swelled within the disappointed sister's breast--how from her heart she cursed them bitterly, bridegroom and bride--how vowed an unmitigable hatred to them both--how every soft and womanly feeling seemed utterly extinct--how in their stead arose an intense, consuming thirst to be avenged--how, in fact, her whole nature seemed changed, and how she moodily immured herself within her Castle of Abercrombie, day after day, week after week, brooding upon the scornful slight which had been put upon her love, and upon the cunning, as she deemed it, of the sister who had supplanted her--it were a charity to the infirmities of our common nature to touch upon but lightly, and so pass on to after incidents.