subdued voice, "I promise to obey you."

As if a weight were lifted from his heart, Aram now brightened at once
into himself in his happiest mood. He poured forth a torrent of grateful
confidence, of buoyant love, that soon swept from the remembrance of the
blushing and enchanted Madeline, the momentary fear, the sudden
chillness, which his look had involuntarily stricken into her mind. And
as they now wound along the most lonely part of that wild valley, his arm
twined round her waist, and his low but silver voice pouring magic into
the very air she breathed--she felt perhaps a more entire and unruffled
sentiment of present, and a more credulous persuasion of future,
happiness, than she had ever experienced before. And Aram himself dwelt
with a more lively and detailed fulness, than he was wont, on the
prospects they were to share, and the security and peace which retirement
would instill into their mode of life.

"Is it not," said he, with a lofty triumph that we shall look from our
retreat upon the shifting passions, and the hollow loves of the distant
world? We can have no petty object, no vain allurement to distract the
unity of our affection: we must be all in all to each other; for what
else can there be to engross our thoughts, and occupy our feelings here?

"If, my beautiful love, you have selected one whom the world might deem a
strange choice for youth and loveliness like yours; you have, at least,
selected one who can have no idol but yourself. The poets tell you, and
rightly, that solitude is the fit sphere for love; but how few are the
lovers whom solitude does not fatigue! they rush into retirement, with
souls unprepared for its stern joys and its unvarying tranquillity: they
weary of each other, because the solitude itself to which they fled,
palls upon and oppresses them. But to me, the freedom which low minds