gained the hillock,
and while his thoughtful eyes were bent on the ground, he felt his arm
seized tenderly--turned--and beheld Edith's face full of unutterable and
anxious love.

With that love, indeed, there was blended so much wistfulness, so much
fear, that Harold exclaimed:

"Soul of my soul, what hath chanced? what affects thee thus?"

"Hath no danger befallen thee?" asked Edith falteringly, and gazing on
his face with wistful, searching eyes. "Danger! none, sweet trembler,"
answered the Earl, evasively.

Edith dropped her eager looks, and clinging to his arm, drew him on
silently into the forest land. She paused at last where the old
fantastic trees shut out the view of the ancient ruins; and when, looking
round, she saw not those grey gigantic shafts which mortal hand seemed
never to have piled together, she breathed more freely.

"Speak to me," then said Harold, bending his face to hers; "why this
silence?"

"Ah, Harold!" answered his betrothed, "thou knowest that ever since we
have loved one another, my existence hath been but a shadow of thine; by
some weird and strange mystery, which Hilda would explain by the stars or
the fates, that have made me a part of thee, I know by the lightness or
gloom of my own spirit when good or ill shall befall thee. How often, in
thine absence, hath a joy suddenly broke upon me; and I felt by that joy,
as by the smile of a good angel, that thou hast passed safe through some
peril, or triumphed over some foe! And now thou askest me why I am so
sad;--I can only answer thee by saying, that the sadness is cast upon me
by some thunder gloom on thine own destiny."

Harold had sought Edith to speak of his meditated journey, but seeing her
dejection he did not dare; so he drew her to his breast, and chid her
soothingly for her vain apprehensions. But Edith would not be comforted;
there seemed something weighing on her mind and struggling to her lips,
not accounted for merely by sympathetic forebodings; and at length, as he
pressed her to tell all, she gathered courage and spoke:

"Do not mock me," she said, "but what secret, whether of vain folly or of
meaning fate, should I hold from thee? All this day I struggled in vain
against the heaviness of my forebodings. How I hailed the sight of Gurth
thy brother! I besought him to seek thee--thou hast seen him."

"I have!" said Harold. "But thou wert about to tell me of something more
than this dejection."

"Well," resu