mournful paleness. "It is not as thou sayest. So has thy love
sheltered me from the world--so utter was my youth's ignorance or my
heart's oblivion of the stern laws of man, that when it pleased thee
that we should love each other, I could not believe that that love was
sin; and that it was sin hitherto I will not think;--now it hath
become one."

"No, no!" cried Harold; all the eloquence on which thousands had hung,
thrilled and spell-bound, deserting him in that hour of need, and
leaving to him only broken exclamations,--fragments, in each of which
has his heart itself seemed shivered; "no, no,--not sin!--sin only to
forsake thee.--Hush! hush!--This is a dream--wait till we wake! True
heart! noble soul!--I will not part from thee!"

"But I from thee! And rather than thou shouldst be lost for my sake--
the sake of woman--to honour and conscience, and all for which thy
sublime life sprang from the hands of Nature--if not the cloister, may
I find the grave!--Harold, to the last let me be worthy of thee; and
feel, at least, that if not thy wife--that bright, that blessed fate
not mine!--still, remembering Edith, just men may say, 'She would not
have dishonoured the hearth of Harold!'"

"Dost thou know," said the Earl, striving to speak calmly, "dost thou
know that it is not only to resign thee that they demand--that it is
to resign thee, and for another?"

"I know it," said Edith; and two burning tears, despite her strong and
preternatural self-exaltation, swelled from the dark fringe, and
rolled slowly down the colourless cheek, as she added, with proud
voice, "I know it: but that other is not Aldyth, it is England! In