e
noble words wherein Sir Lancelot tells the Lily Maid how he will dower
her when she weds some worthy knight, but that he can do no more for
her.

Was it a dream that she should sit there listening to those words from
his lips--she had fancied him Sir Lancelot without stain, and herself
Elaine? There was a sense of unreality about it; she would not have been
surprised at any moment to awake and find herself in the pretty
drawing-room at Marine Terrace--all this beautiful fairy tale a
dream--only a dream. The musical voice ceased at last; and it was to her
as though some charm had been broken.

"Do you like poetry, Miss Darrell?" inquired Sir Vane.

"Yes," she replied; "it seems to me part of myself. I cannot explain
clearly what I mean, but when I hear such grand thoughts read, or when I
read them for myself, it is to me as though they were my own."

"I understand," he responded--"indeed I believe that I should understand
anything you said. I could almost fancy that I had lived before, and had
known you in another life."

Then Lady St. Lawrence said something about Sea View, and they left
fairy-land for a more commonplace sphere of existence.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

REDEEMED BY LOVE.

"If anything can redeem her, it will be love." So Miss Hastings had said
of Pauline long months ago, when she had first seen her grand nature
warped and soured by disappointment, shadowed by the fierce desire of
revenge. Now she was to see the fulfillment of her words.

With a nature like Pauline's, love was no ordinary passion; all the
romance, the fervor, the poetry of her heart and soul were aroused. Her
love took her out of herself, transformed and transfigured her, softened
and beautified her. She was not of those who could love moderately, and,
if one attachment was not satisfactory, take refuge in another. For such
as her there was but one love, and it would make or mar her life.

Had Sir Vane St. Lawrence been merely a handsome man she would never
have cared for him; but his soul and mind had mastered her. He was a
noble gentleman, princely in his tastes and culture, generous, pure,
gifted with an intellect magnificent in itself, and cultivated to the
highest degree of perfection. The innate nobility of his character at
once influenced her. She acknowledged its superiority; she bowed her
heart and soul before it, proud of the very chains that bound her.

How small and insignificant everything else now appeared! Even