were her sentiments, becoming a maiden not distant from the
throne of England--gratified as her pride must have been with the
mute though unceasing homage rendered to her by the knight whom
she had distinguished, there were moments when the feelings of
the woman, loving and beloved, murmured against the restraints of
state and form by which she was surrounded, and when she almost
blamed the timidity of her lover, who seemed resolved not to
infringe them. The etiquette, to use a modern phrase, of birth
and rank, had drawn around her a magical circle, beyond which Sir
Kenneth might indeed bow and gaze, but within which he could no
more pass than an evoked spirit can transgress the boundaries
prescribed by the rod of a powerful enchanter. The thought
involuntarily pressed on her that she herself must venture, were
it but the point of her fairy foot, beyond the prescribed
boundary, if she ever hoped to give a lover so reserved and
bashful an opportunity of so slight a favour as but to salute her
shoe-tie. There was an example--the noted precedent of the
"King's daughter of Hungary," who thus generously encouraged the
"squire of low degree;" and Edith, though of kingly blood, was no
king's daughter, any more than her lover was of low degree
--fortune had put no such extreme barrier in obstacle to their
affections. Something, however, within the maiden's bosom--that
modest pride which throws fetters even on love itself forbade
her, notwithstanding the superiority of her condition, to make
those advances, which, in every case, delicacy assigns to the
other sex; above all, Sir Kenneth was a knight so gentle and
honourable, so highly accomplished, as her imagination at least
suggested, together with the strictest feelings of what was due
to himself and to her, that however constrained her attitude
might be while receiving his adorations, like the image of some