tenderness than awe, that Harold learned that Edith had been
undefinably impressed with a foreboding of danger to her betrothed,
and all that morning she had watched his coming from the old legendary
hill. Was it not in that watch that his good Fylgia had saved his
life? Indeed, there seemed a strange truth in Hilda's assertions,
that in the form of his betrothed, his tutelary spirit lived and
guarded. For smooth every step, and bright every day, in his career,
since their troth had been plighted. And gradually the sweet
superstition had mingled with human passion to hallow and refine it.
There was a purity and a depth in the love of these two, which, if not
uncommon in women, is most rare in men.

Harold, in sober truth, had learned to look on Edith as on his better
angel; and, calming his strong manly heart in the hour of temptation,
would have recoiled, as a sacrilege, from aught that could have
sullied that image of celestial love. With a noble and sublime
patience, of which perhaps only a character so thoroughly English in
its habits of self-control and steadfast endurance could have been
capable, he saw the months and the years glide away, and still
contented himself with hope;--hope, the sole godlike joy that belongs
to men!

As the opinion of an age influences even those who affect to despise
it, so, perhaps, this holy and unselfish passion was preserved and
guarded by that peculiar veneration for purity which formed the
characteristic fanaticism of the last days of the Anglo-Saxons,--when
still, as Aldhelm had previously sung in Latin less barbarous than
perhaps any priest in the reign of Edward could command:

"Virginitas castam servans sine crimine carnem