to seek its accustomed
pleasures, that it will clutch them in the interval of a suspended
grief, though sure to return. Her cousin was gone for a time; he could
not cross in these paths of the wood; and, oh happy thought! she would
lie on the bosom of her Kirkpatrick, and breathe forth, uninterrupted,
love's sweet tale, rendered sweeter and dearer by the grief with which
it was shaded.

The evening fell that night beautiful and serene. No vapour clouded the
"silver sheen," and no breath of wind rustled a leaf on the trees.

"Hail to ye, bright queen!" ejaculated Helen, as she folded her mantle
round her, and was on the eve of seeking the wood; "once more light me
to my lover, if, after this meeting, you should for ever hide your face
among the curtains of heaven."

And, breathing quick with the rising expectation of being enclosed in
his arms, she issued from the house, and sought the well-known loaning
that led to the burying-ground. Her grief had sunk for a time amidst the
swelling impulses of her passion; and it was not till she had been
pressed to his bosom, her brow kissed by his burning lips, and
deep-drawn sighs exhausted the ardour of a first embrace after so long a
separation, that one single thought of the cruelty of her situation
arose in her mind. They sat on the tumulus where they had sat often
before. The gravestones around them lay serene in a flood of moonlight;
the soft "buller" of the wimpling Kirtle was all that disturbed the
silence of the night; calmly there reposed the dead of many generations;
if their lives were ended, their griefs, too, were past; and Mary of the
Le', whose grey monument reflected clearly the moon's light, was free
from the anguish which, in struggling sighs, came from the bosom of her
who was _yet_ above the green mound. Helen told her lover all the
extraordinary circumstances of her situation. She wept at every turn of
a new difficulty, and Adam's eyes were also suffused with tears; he
pressed her again to his breast, and bade her be of better heart, for
that better days were coming on the wings of time.

"I confess," he said, "my dear love, that I am unable to understand the
conduct of that dark-minded man; but what can he do, if my Helen should
yet redeem her error, and make this necessary disclosure? That is alone
the cure of our pain. Oh, Helen! what a load of evil might have been
averted from our heads by the exercise of a little self-command!"

"I see it, I feel it,