It is long ere they speak in open tones.

“O happy day when we met!”

What says the voice of one, the soul of the other echoes.

“O glorious heaven looking down on us!”

Their souls are joined, are made one for evermore beneath that bending benediction.

“O eternity of bliss!”

Then the diviner mood passes, and they drop to earth.

“Lucy! come with me to-night, and look at the place where you are some day to live.  Come, and I will row you on the lake.  You remember what you said in your letter that you dreamt?—­that we were floating over the shadow of the Abbey to the nuns at work by torchlight felling the cypress, and they handed us each a sprig.  Why, darling, it was the best omen in the world, their felling the old trees.  And you write such lovely letters.  So pure and sweet they are.  I love the nuns for having taught you.”

“Ah, Richard!  See! we forget!  Ah!” she lifts up her face pleadingly, as to plead against herself, “even if your father forgives my birth, he will not my religion.  And, dearest, though I would die for you I cannot change it.  It would seem that I was denying God; and—­oh! it would make me ashamed of my love.”

“Fear nothing!” He winds her about with his arm.  “Come!  He will love us both, and love you the more for being faithful to your father’s creed.  You don’t know him, Lucy.  He seems harsh and stern—­he is full of kindness and love.  He isn’t at all a bigot.  And besides, when he hears what the nuns have done for you, won’t he thank them, as I do?  And—­oh!  I must speak to him soon, and you must be prepared to see him soon, for I cannot bear your remaining at Belthorpe, like a jewel in a sty.  Mind!  I’m not saying a word against your uncle.  I declare I love everybody and everything that sees you and touches you.  Stay! it is a wonder how you could have grown there.  But you were not born there, and your father had good blood.  Desborough!—­here was a Colonel Desborough—­never mind!  Come!”

She dreads to.  She begs not to.  She is drawn away.

The woods are silent, and then—­

“What think you of that for a pretty pastoral?” says a very different voice.

Adrian reclined against a pine overlooking the fern-covert.  Lady Blandish was recumbent upon the brown pine-droppings, gazing through a vista of the lower greenwood which opened out upon the moon-lighted valley, her hands clasped round one knee, her features almost stern in their set hard expression.

They had heard, by involuntarily overhearing about as much as may be heard in such positions, a luminous word or two.

The lady did not answer.  A movement among the ferns attracted Adrian, and he stepped down the decline across the pine-roots to behold heavy Benson below; shaking fern-seed and spidery substances off his crumpled skin.

“Is that you, Mr. Hadrian?” called Benson, starting, as he puffed, and exercised his handkerchief.