th a
slight sigh. "But somehow or other, the strains that once pleased
my fancy now go too directly to my heart. So, though I still welcome
jongleur and minstrel, I bid them sing their newest conceits. I cannot
wish ever again to hear the poetry I heard when I was young!"

"Pardon me," said Adrian, with great interest, "but fain would I have
dared, though a secret apprehension prevented me hitherto,--fain would
I have dared to question you of that lovely lady, with whom, seven
years ago, we gazed at moonlight upon the odorous orange-groves and rosy
waters of Terracina."

Montreal turned away his face; he laid his hand on Adrian's arm, and
murmured, in a deep and hoarse tone, "I am alone now!"

Adrian pressed his hand in silence. He felt no light shock at thus
learning the death of one so gentle, so lovely, and so ill-fated.

"The vows of my knighthood," continued Montreal, "which precluded
Adeline the rights of wedlock--the shame of her house--the angry
grief of her mother--the wild vicissitudes of my life, so exposed to
peril--the loss of her son--all preyed silently on her frame. She did
not die (die is too harsh a word!), but she drooped away, and glided
into heaven. Even as on a summer's morn some soft dream fleets across
us, growing less and less distinct, until it fades, as it were, into
light, and we awaken--so faded Adeline's parting spirit, till the
daylight of God broke upon it."

Montreal paused a moment, and then resumed: "These thoughts make the
boldest of us weak sometimes, and we Provencals are foolish in these
matters!--God wot, she was very dear to me!"

The Knight bent down and crossed himself devoutly, his lips muttered a
prayer. Strange as it may seem to our more enlightened age, so martial
a garb did morality then wear, that this man, at whose word towns had
blazed and torrents of blood had flowed, neither adjudged himself, nor
was adjudged by the majority of his contemporaries, a criminal. His
order, half monastic, half warlike, was emblematic of himself.
He trampled upon man, yet humbled himself to God; nor had all his
acquaintance with the refining scepticism of Italy shaken the sturdy and
simple faith of the bold Provencal. So far from recognising any want
of harmony between his calling and his creed, he held that man no true
chevalier who was not as devout to the Cross as relentless with the
sword.

"And you have no child save the one you lost?" asked Adrian, when he
observed the wonte