of which so many are scattered about the highways of the world--both the
lovers had involuntarily watched; and now as they withdrew their eyes,--
those eyes settled on each other,--Lucy's swam in tears.

"To be loved and tended by the one I love," said Clifford, in a low
voice, "I would walk blind and barefoot over the whole earth!"

Lucy sighed very gently; and placing her pretty hands (the one clasped
over the other) upon her knee, looked down wistfully on them, but made no
answer. Clifford drew his chair nearer, and gazed on her, as she sat;
the long dark eyelashes drooping over her eyes, and contrasting the ivory
lids; her delicate profile half turned from him, and borrowing a more
touching beauty from the soft light that dwelt upon it; and her full yet
still scarcely developed bosom heaving at thoughts which she did not
analyze, but was content to feel at once vague and delicious. He gazed,
and his lips trembled; he longed to speak; he longed to say but those
words which convey what volumes have endeavoured to express and have only
weakened by detail,--"_I love._" How he resisted the yearnings of his
heart, we know not,--but he did resist; and Lucy, after a confused and
embarrassed pause, took up one of the poems on the table, and asked him
some questions about a particular passage in an old ballad which he had
once pointed to her notice. The passage related to a border chief, one
of the Armstrongs of old, who, having been seized by the English and
condemned to death, vented his last feelings in a passionate address to
his own home--his rude tower--and his newly wedded bride. "Do you
believe," said Lucy, as their conversation began to flow, "that one so
lawless and eager for bloodshed and strife as this robber is described
to be, could be so capable of soft affections?"

"I do," said Clifford, "because he was not sensible that he was as