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 attempt
to follow or to trace the object of such romantic attachment;
that he thought of her as of a deity, who, having deigned to show