ep sigh; then lapsed into a reverie so
profound, that she failed to hear the tramp of a horse now rapidly
approaching, and to note the change to sudden silence, caused by
its stopping at the postern. But there, transfixed with wonder and
admiration, and looking like a bronze equestrian statue at the
gate, now, mounted, sat gazing the lately flying horseman of the
road, the champion of the morning on those grounds, and contemplated
the figure on the verandah; then, dismounting, tied his steed, and
vaulting over the fence, swiftly approached across the lawn; till,
as if suddenly aware of being on holy ground, he paused, and stood
with reverential aspect and clasped hands, eagerly bending towards
her as if in adoration. Thus engaged, as stands in ecstasy some
newly arrived pilgrim before a shrine, he stood enrapt; whilst she
remained as moveless as a carved angel leaning over a cathedral
aisle, and, with her eyes fixed on vacancy, at length mournfully
exclaimed: "Sad, sad, so sad!--yet why am I so sad? No denser
grows the mystery around my birth; and if knight errants yet live,
rescuing maids, or he is a wandering god, and here is Arcadia, why
should that make me grieve? It is true that he is handsome--and
yet what of that?--most men are handsome in the eyes of maids. But
he appears the paragon of men. Is he indeed not all a man should
be? Where were the blemish, the exception; who shall challenge
nature, saying, in his form, that here she has given too little,
there too much?--Ah, me! I am not happy, yet I should be so."

"Can I have heard aright, or do I dream?" gasped out the stranger.

"A knight, a god;" she continued, yet musing; "oh, he came hither
like a knight of old, or as an angry angel sent to scatter
fiends;--or, rather, like the lightning he arrived, out of the
storm cloud of I know not where. Where is he now? whence was he?
who is he? what? Alas, I know nothing of where, nor who, nor what,
nor whence he is; all that I know is, I am strangely sad; and that
such perfection was not made for me."

"Is this not Stillyside?" enquired the listener, "or do I wander
in some spirit-land; lost, lost;--oh, so luxuriously lost! She,
too, seems lost--lost in a reverie, and all forlorn. I'll speak to
her;--and yet I fear to speak, I fear to breathe, lest the undulating
air should burst this, and prove it to be but a bubble. Yet she
breathes, she spoke, and oh, such words! Words, be at my command;
I will address her, for