een wanting, there was the glimmer of that matchless ruby ring on that
snow-white finger, whose invaluable worth Kenneth would yet have prized
less than the slightest sign which that finger could have made; and,
veiled too, as she was, he might see, by chance or by favour, a stray
curl of the dark tresses, each hair of which was dearer to him a hundred
times than a chain of massive gold. It was the lady of his love! But
that she should be here--in the savage and sequestered desert--among
vestals, who rendered themselves habitants of wilds and of caverns, that
they might perform in secret those Christian rites which they dared
not assist in openly; that this should be so, in truth and in reality,
seemed too incredible--it must be a dream--a delusive trance of the
imagination. While these thoughts passed through the mind of Kenneth,
the same passage, by which the procession had entered the chapel,
received them on their return. The young sacristans, the sable nuns,
vanished successively through the open door. At length she from whom he
had received this double intimation passed also; yet, in passing, turned
her head, slightly indeed, but perceptibly, towards the place where he
remained fixed as an image. He marked the last wave of her veil--it was
gone--and a darkness sunk upon his soul, scarce less palpable than that
which almost immediately enveloped his external sense; for the last
chorister had no sooner crossed the threshold of the door than it shut
with a loud sound, and at the same instant the voices of the choir were
silent, the lights of the chapel were at once extinguished, and Sir
Kenneth remained solitary and in total darkness. But to Kenneth,
solitude, and darkness, and the uncertainty of his mysterious situation
were as nothing--he thought not of them--cared not for them--cared for
nought in the world save the flitting vision which had just glided past
him, and the tokens of her favour which she had bestowed. To grope on
the floor for the buds which she had dropped--to press them to his lips,
to his bosom, now alternately, now together--to rivet his lips to the
cold stones on which, as near as he could judge, she had so lately
stepped--to play all the extravagances which strong affection suggests
and vindicates to those who yield themselves up to it, were but the
tokens of passionate love common to all ages. But it was peculiar to the
times of chivalry that, in his wildest rapture, the knight imagined of
no at