hand, and, as she felt its touch, her firmness forsook her,
her head drooped upon her bosom, and she burst into an agony of tears.

"Oh, Sibyll, forgive me! Smile on me again, Sibyll!" exclaimed Hastings,
subdued and melted. But, alas! the heart once bruised and galled
recovers itself but slowly, and it was many minutes before the softest
words the eloquent lover could shape to sound sufficed to dry those
burning tears, and bring back the enchanting smile,--nay, even then the
smile was forced and joyless. They walked on for some moments, both in
thought, till Hastings said: "Thou lovest me, Sibyll, and art worthy of
all the love that man can feel for maid; and yet, canst thou solve me
this question, nor chide me that I ask it, Dost thou not love the world
and the world's judgments more than me? What is that which women call
honour? What makes them shrink from all love that takes not the form and
circumstance of the world's hollow rites? Does love cease to be love,
unless over its wealth of trust and emotion the priest mouths his empty
blessing? Thou in thy graceful pride art angered if I, in wedding thee,
should remember the sacrifice which men like me--I own it fairly--deem
as great as man can make; and yet thou wouldst fly my love if it wooed
thee to a sacrifice of thine own."

Artfully was the question put, and Hastings smiled to himself in
imagining the reply it must bring; and then Sibyll answered, with the
blush which the very subject called forth,

"Alas, my lord, I am but a poor casuist, but I feel that if I asked thee
to forfeit whatever men respect,--honour and repute for valour, to be
traitor and dastard,--thou couldst love me no more; and marvel you if,
when man woos woman to forfeit all that her sex holds highest,--to be in
woman what dastard and traitor is in man,--she hears her conscience
and her God speak in a louder voice than can come from a human lip? The
goods and pomps of the world we are free to sacrifice, and true love
heeds and counts them not; but true love cannot sacrifice that which
makes up love,--it cannot sacrifice the right to be loved below; the
hope to love on in the realm above; the power to pray with a pure soul
for the happiness it yearns to make; the blessing to seem ever good and
honoured in the eyes of the one by whom alone it would be judged. And
therefore, sweet lord, true love never contemplates this sacrifice; and
if once it believes itself truly loved, it trusts with a fearle