had they shaken it to the very core, there are

pulses that would have defied them!" " but one,

"If there be ONE," she replied,

that throbs generously, save me from those that beat but for my destruction! Let not thy hand, Raymond, of all others, drag me to it! deal with me as with a sister,-a sister threatened with such wrongs as should pour liquid fire into a brother's veins! Be true to me in word and deed! hide not from me the face of ruin itself: say, why am I now recalled to my father's tottering earldom? Tell me the mystery,—a dark and strange one, if I read aright, between thee and yonder seeming nun?"

"For your own peace, lady," said Raymond, "ask not that-it is an evil omen that ye have thus met!"

"I knew a Raymond once," she replied, "who would have laughed at omens. In him mystery had no share; open as day, I could have read his inmost heart better than any breviary. Were it HE who stood before me, I should not fear to journey hence, under the double cloud of night and ignorance—I should have beheld sadly, but calmly, every coming evil-I should have felt,

that in a changing world, there was yet one Being unchanged towards Constance de Mowbray!"

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Now, by every hope that is most dear to me!" exclaimed the Squire, "I am yet that Raymond-that self-same Raymond! Outwardly, changing years have indeed wrought upon me, as upon all-roughened the smooth cheekclouded the tranquil brow-perchance, thrown heedfulness upon the once reckless lip; but in heart, lady, in true and constant heart, I am unchanged as yonder changeless heavens! There is no peril, Constance, that for a glance-a breath of thine, I would not rush upon, shieldless and weaponless! but were the lifting of a finger coupled with dishonour, that finger would I NOT lift! no, not for the monarchy of a hundred realms! Enough, then, that in me, it were foul dishonour to reveal the mystery of yonder seeming nun. It is the secret of one whose very name I cannot breathe to thee without a base betrayal of my trust.'

"It were alike shame, dishonour, misery, to doubt thee!" said Constance, with deep emotion

Raymond," she continued, "it seems but as the flitting of a summer since thou and I, children alike in years and thoughts, were happy playmates in the halls of Bamborough; and

She paused, and gazed upon him with all the ingenuous ardour of early feeling; forgetful that even to that involuntary admiration, pure and natural as it was, the very lapse of years that kindled it, had opposed, at length, as the world judges, the colder wisdom, the prudery, and the refinement of advancing womanhood. A sense of this, and of having, both by words, and the more potent eloquence of looks, betrayed an emotion so flattering to its object, flashed suddenly upon her, and awoke embarrassment, too obvious for even an attempt to colour or conceal.

She resumed her self-possession, however, and continued ;

"Yet, even for this remembrance-remembrance of a time so pure and happy, I will have trust in thee, Raymond, firm as a castle's base! But never more, oh, never! shall the rich promise in boyhood of honour, valour, knightly

courtesy, of stainless faith and lofty daring, of all that graces chivalry; never shall the promise of these awaken in my bosom the hope of a generous manhood, if thou, Raymond, art not as true to me in my hour of need as ever yet was avenging man to oppressed woman! Fast and darkly that hour approaches! if it shall find thee cold, false, or craven

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"Then, Constance" exclaimed Cœur d'Acier with enthusiasm, fling to the winds all trust in youth or age, in deed or word! Be it from thence the blackest warrant of all infamy-the last, worst brand of the world's scorn, even upon the vilest and the basest, to name them but in one breath with that master-caitiff who forsook Constance de Mowbray ! but till then-"

"Till then," repeated Constance, and with a look which might have made cowardice and treachery disclaim their nature, she extended to him as warm and beautiful a hand as ever made human lip proud with its touch! For Raymond not to have pressed it rapturously to his, would have savoured rather of the heroism of a saint than of a child of knighthood; one, too, whose nature was of the torrid, and not the

temperate zone of the passions. It was rapidly withdrawn; but he saw that the action did not spring from affected delicacy, or the pride of conscious beauty. He marked her quick and apprehensive glance at the windows which overlooked their conference, and it seemed as if the wild words of the nun rang again in his ear

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or touch of hand or lip." He almost expected to see the sharp lineaments of the Abbess at one of those melancholy apertures, attenuated by indignation to their most ghastly length, and scowling anathemas upon the profanation of her dedicated limits by their worldly emotion.

A like vision, probably, floated before Constance. "The Lady Abbess," she said, "" will yield us scant leisure for this conference.-Tell me of Bamborough, Raymond,—of my father,— how fares it with De Mowbray?"

"Well," replied the Squire, with an almost mechanical unconsciousness of what he uttered.

"In health," continued the lady, "but not in fortunes! No, Raymond, seek not, even in kindness to affirm it. I have had warning of a tempest fast gathering in my father's earldomfast gathering, and soon to burst. Whisperings