her husband); and she was glad her pet stag
had been wounded, since it had been the means of procuring her such
happiness. She was not cruel enough to take pleasure in the sufferings
of the poor animal; for she would nurse it, and it would soon be well
again; but she could not help rejoicing in its disaster, since that
circumstance had been the cause of my finding her out, and loving her
even as she loved me. And all this was said with her head reclining on
my chest, and her beautiful countenance irradiated with a glow that had
something divine in the simplicity of purpose it expressed.

"On my demanding to know whether it was not her face I had seen at the
opening in the cliff, she replied that it was. Her stag often played
the truant, and passed whole hours away from her, rambling beyond the
precincts of the solitude that contained its mistress; but no sooner
was the small silver bugle, which she wore across her shoulder, applied
to her lips, than 'Fidelity' (thus she had named him) was certain to
obey the call, and to come bounding up the line of cliff to the main
rock, into which it effected its entrance at a point that had escaped
my notice. It was her bugle I had heard in the course of my pursuit of
the animal; and, from the aperture through which I had effected my
entrance, she had looked out to see who was the audacious hunter she
had previously observed threading a passage, along which her stag
itself never appeared without exciting terror in her bosom. The first
glimpse she had caught of my form was at the moment when, after having
sounded my own bugle, I cleared the chasm; and this was a leap she had
so often trembled to see taken by 'Fidelity,' that she turned away and
shuddered when she saw it fearlessly adventured on by a human being. A
feeling of curiosity had afterwards induced her to return and see if
the bold hunter had cleared the gulf, or perished in his mad attempt;
but when she looked outward from the highest pinnacle of her rocky
prison, she could discover no traces of him whatever. It then occurred
to her, that, if successful in his leap, his progress must have been
finally arrested by the impassable rock that terminated the ridge; in
which case she might perchance obtain a nearer sight of his person.
With this view she had removed the bushes enshrouding the aperture;
and, bending low to the earth, thrust her head partially through it.
Scarcely had she done so, however, when she beheld me immedia