And the answer struck home to the native and original heroism of the
listener's nature, before debased into the cynic sourness of worldly
wisdom. Never had Katherine herself more forcibly recalled to
Hastings the pure and virgin glory of his youth.

"Oh, Sibyll!" he exclaimed passionately, and yielding to the impulse
of the moment,--"oh, that for me, as to me, such high words were said!
Oh, that all the triumphs of a life men call prosperous were excelled
by the one triumph of waking such an ambition in such a heart!"

Sibyll stood before him transformed,--pale, trembling, mute,--and
Hastings, clasping her hand and covering it with kisses, said,--

"Dare I arede thy silence? Sibyll, thou lovest me--O Sibyll, speak!"

With a convulsive effort, the girl's lips moved, then closed, then
moved again, into low and broken words.

"Why this, why this? Thou hadst promised not to--not to--"

"Not to insult thee by unworthy vows! Nor do I. But as my wife." He
paused abruptly, alarmed at his own impetuous words, and scared by the
phantom of the world that rose like a bodily thing before the generous
impulse, and grinned in scorn of his folly.

But Sibyll heard only that one holy word of WIFE, and so sudden and so
great was the transport it called forth, that her senses grew faint
and dizzy, and she would have fallen to the earth but for the arms
that circled her, and the breast upon which, now, the virgin might