voice was gallant and tender, "under
whose but yours?"

As the baronet said this, he bent above her hand, and raised it to his
lips.

Lady Blandish felt that she had been wooed and asked in wedlock. She did
not withdraw her hand. The baronet's salute was flatteringly reverent. He
deliberated over it, as one going through a grave ceremony. And he, the
scorner of women, had chosen her for his homage! Lady Blandish forgot
that she had taken some trouble to arrive at it. She received the
exquisite compliment in all its unique honey-sweet: for in love we must
deserve nothing or the fine bloom of fruition is gone.

The lady's hand was still in durance, and the baronet had not recovered
from his profound inclination, when a noise from the neighbouring
beechwood startled the two actors in this courtly pantomime. They turned
their heads, and beheld the hope of Raynham on horseback surveying the
scene. The next moment he had galloped away.

CHAPTER XIV

All night Richard tossed on his bed with his heart in a rapid canter, and
his brain bestriding it, traversing the rich untasted world, and the
great Realm of Mystery, from which he was now restrained no longer.
Months he had wandered about the gates of the Bonnet, wondering, sighing,
knocking at them, and getting neither admittance nor answer. He had the
key now. His own father had given it to him. His heart was a lightning
steed, and bore him on and on over limitless regions bathed in superhuman
beauty and strangeness, where cavaliers and ladies leaned whispering upon
close green swards, and knights and ladies cast a splendour upon savage
forests, and tilts and tourneys were held in golden courts lit to a
glorious day by ladies' eyes, one pair of which, dimly visioned,
constantly distinguishable, followed him through the boskage and dwelt
upon him in the press, beaming while he bent above a hand glittering
white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a May night.

Awhile the heart would pause and flutter to a shock: he was in the act of
consummating all earthly bliss by pressing his lips to the small white
hand. Only to do that, and die! cried the Magnetic Youth: to fling the
Jewel of Life into that one cup and drink it off! He was intoxicated by
anticipation. For that he was born. There was, then, some end in
existence, something to live for! to kiss a woman's hand, and die! He
would leap from the couch, and rush to pen and paper to relieve his
swarming sensations.