she had
twisted a scarf round her long dress, she stood still as a stone before
me, holding in one hand a lighted coil of waxtaper, and in the other a
silver goblet. I held my own lamp close to her, as if she had been a
figure of marble, and she did not stir. There was no breach of propriety
then, to scare the Poor Relation with and breed scandal out of. She had
been "warned in a dream," doubtless suggested by her waking knowledge and
the sounds which had reached her exalted sense. There was nothing more
natural than that she should have risen and girdled her waist, and
lighted her taper, and found the silver goblet with "Ex dono pupillorum"
on it, from which she had taken her milk and possets through all her
childish years, and so gone blindly out to find her place at the
bedside,--a Sister of Charity without the cap and rosary; nay, unknowing
whither her feet were leading her, and with wide blank eyes seeing
nothing but the vision that beckoned her along.--Well, I must wake her
from her slumber or trance.--I called her name, but she did not heed my
voice.

The Devil put it into my head that I would kiss one handsome young girl
before I died, and now was my chance. She never would know it, and I
should carry the remembrance of it with me into the grave, and a rose
perhaps grow out of my dust, as a brier did out of Lord Lovers, in memory
of that immortal moment! Would it wake her from her trance? and would
she see me in the flush of my stolen triumph, and hate and despise me
ever after? Or should I carry off my trophy undetected, and always from
that time say to myself, when I looked upon her in the glory of youth and
the splendor of beauty, "My lips have touched those roses and made their
sweetness mine forever"? You think my cheek was flushed, perhaps, and my
eyes were glittering with this midnight flash of opportunity. On the
contrary, I believe I was pale, very pale, and I know that I trembled.
Ah, it is the pale passions that are the fiercest,--it is the violence of
the chill that gives the measure of the fever! The fighting-boy of our
school always turned white when he went out to a pitched battle with the
bully of some neighboring village; but we knew what his bloodless cheeks
meant,--the blood was all in his stout heart,--he was a slight boy, and
there was not enough to redden his face and fill his heart both at once.

Perhaps it is making a good deal of a slight matter, to tell the internal
conflicts