y, I will
return willingly: but if once I slip out through a loop-hole----" She
paused a moment, and then added, singing,--

The love that follows fain
Will never its faith betray:
But the faith that is held in a chain
Will never be found again,
If a single link give way.

The melody acted irresistibly on the harmonious propensities of the
friar, who accordingly sang in his turn,--

For hark! hark! hark!
The dog doth bark,
That watches the wild deer's lair.
The hunter awakes at the peep of the dawn,
But the lair it is empty, the deer it is gone,
And the hunter knows not where.

Matilda and the friar then sang together,--

Then follow, oh follow! the hounds do cry:
The red sun flames in the eastern sky:
The stag bounds over the hollow.
He that lingers in spirit, or loiters in hall,
Shall see us no more till the evening fall,
And no voice but the echo shall answer his call:
Then follow, oh follow, follow:
Follow, oh follow, follow!

During the process of this harmony, the baron's eyes wandered from his
daughter to the friar, and from the friar to his daughter again, with
an alternate expression of anger differently modified: when he looked
on the friar, it was anger without qualification; when he looked on
his daughter it was still anger, but tempered by an expression of
involuntary admiration and pleasure. These rapid fluctuations of the
baron's physiognomy--the habitual, reckless, resolute merriment in the
jovial face of the friar,--and the cheerful, elastic spirits that played
on the lips and sparkled in the eyes of Matilda,--would have presented a
very amusing combination to Sir Ralph, if one of the three images in
the group had not absorbed his total attention with feelings of intense
delight very nearly allied to pain. The baron's wrath was somewhat
counteracted by the reflection that his daughter's good spirits
seemed to show that they would naturally rise triumphant over all
disappointments; and he had had sufficient experience of her humour to
know that she might sometimes be led, but never could be driven. Then,
too, he was always delighted to hear her sing, though he was not at all
pleased in this instance with the subject of her song. Still he would
have endured the subject for the sake of the melody of the treble, but
his mind was not sufficiently attuned to unison to relish the harmony
of the bass. The friar's accompaniment put him out of all p