to themselves, sauntering off with a devil-me-carish air. Fillide speaks
now, and looks up at the scholar's face with arch invitation. He shakes
his head; Fillide laughs, and her laugh is silvery. She points to a gay
mountaineer, who is tripping up to her merrily. Why does Glyndon feel
jealous? Why, when she speaks again, does he shake his head no more? He
offers his hand; Fillide blushes, and takes it with a demure coquetry.
What! is it so, indeed! They whirl into the noisy circle of the
revellers. Ha! ha! is not this better than distilling herbs, and
breaking thy brains on Pythagorean numbers? How lightly Fillide bounds
along! How her lithesome waist supples itself to thy circling arm!
Tara-ra-tara, ta-tara, rara-ra! What the devil is in the measure that
it makes the blood course like quicksilver through the veins? Was there
ever a pair of eyes like Fillide's? Nothing of the cold stars there! Yet
how they twinkle and laugh at thee! And that rosy, pursed-up mouth that
will answer so sparingly to thy flatteries, as if words were a waste of
time, and kisses were their proper language. Oh, pupil of Mejnour! Oh,
would-be Rosicrucian, Platonist, Magian, I know not what! I am ashamed
of thee! What, in the names of Averroes and Burri and Agrippa and Hermes
have become of thy austere contemplations? Was it for this thou didst
resign Viola? I don't think thou hast the smallest recollection of the
elixir or the Cabala. Take care! What are you about, sir? Why do you
clasp that small hand locked within your own? Why do you--Tara-rara
tara-ra tara-rara-ra, rarara, ta-ra, a-ra! Keep your eyes off those
slender ankles and that crimson bodice! Tara-rara-ra! There they go
again! And now they rest under the broad trees. The revel has whirled
away from them. They hear--or do they not hear--the laughter at the
distance? They see--or if they have their eyes about them, they SHOULD
see--couple after couple gliding by, love-talking and love-looking. But
I will lay a wager, as they sit under that tree, and the round sun goes
down behind the mountains, that they see or hear very little except