athen, thy love descended upon me, and in it, the smile of God! In
that love my spirit awoke, and was baptised: every thought that has risen
from earth, and lost itself in heaven, was breathed into my heart by
thee! Thy creature and thy slave, hadst thou tempted me to sin, sin had
seemed hallowed by thy voice; but thou saidst 'True love is virtue,' and
so I worshipped virtue in loving thee. Strengthened, purified, by thy
bright companionship, from thee came the strength to resign thee--from
thee the refuge under the wings of God--from thee the firm assurance that
our union yet shall be--not as our poor Hilda dreams, on the perishable
earth,--but there! oh, there! yonder by the celestial altars, in the land
in which all spirits are filled with love. Yes, soul of Harold! there
are might and holiness in the blessing the soul thou hast redeemed and
reared sheds on thee!"

And so beautiful, so unlike the Beautiful of the common earth, looked the
maid as she thus spoke, and laid hands, trembling with no human passion,
on that royal head-that could a soul from paradise be made visible, such
might be the shape it would wear to a mortal's eye! Thus, for some
moments both were silent; and in the silence the gloom vanished from the
heart of Harold, and, through a deep and sublime serenity, it rose
undaunted to front the future.

No embrace--no farewell kiss--profaned the parting of those pure and
noble spirits--parting on the threshold of the grave. It was only the
spirit that clasped the spirit, looking forth from the clay into
measureless eternity. Not till the air of night came once more on his
brow, and the moonlight rested on the roofs and fanes of the land
entrusted to his charge, was the man once more the human hero; not till
she was alone in her desolate chamber, and the terrors of the coming
battle-field chased the angel from her thoughts was the maid inspired,
once more the weeping woman.

A little after sunrise the abbess, who was distantly akin to the house of
Godwin, sought Edith, so agitated by her own fear, that she did not
remark the trouble of her visitor. The supposed miracle of the sacred
Image bowing over the kneeling King, had spread dismay through the
cloisters of both nunnery and abbey; and so intense was the disquietude
of the two brothers, Osgood and Ailred, in the simple and grateful
affection they bore their royal benefactor, that they had obeyed the
impulse of their tender credulous hearts, and