into delicious tension on her form, yet with my soul kindled into all that wild uncontrollable love which had been the accumulation of years of passionate imagining, I stood for some moments as motionless as the rock out of which I appeared to grow.  It seemed as though I had not the power to think or act, so fully was every faculty of my being filled with the consciousness that I at length gazed upon her I was destined to love for ever.

“It was this utter immobility on my own part, that ensured me a continuance of the exquisite happiness I then enjoyed.  The first movement of the startled girl had been to fly towards her dwelling, which stood at a short distance, half imbedded in the same clustering roses and honey-suckles that adorned her bank of moss; but when she remarked my utter stillness, and apparent absence of purpose, she checked the impulse that would have directed her departure, and stopped, half in curiosity, half in fear, to examine me once more.  At that moment all my energies appeared to be restored; I threw myself into an attitude expressive of deep contrition for the intrusion of which I had been unconsciously guilty, and dropping on one knee, and raising my clasped hands, inclined them towards her in token of mingled deprecation of her anger, and respectful homage to herself.  At first she hesitated,—­then gradually and timidly retrod her way to the seat she had so abruptly quitted in her alarm.  Emboldened by this movement, I made a step or two in advance, but no sooner had I done so than she again took to flight.  Once more, however, she turned to behold me, and again I had dropped on my knee, and was conjuring her, with the same signs, to remain and bless me with her presence.  Again she returned to her seat, and again I advanced.  Scarcely less timid, however, than the deer, which followed her every movement, she fled a third time,—­a third time looked back, and was again induced, by my supplicating manner, to return.  Frequently was this repeated, before I finally found myself at the feet, and pressing the hand—­(oh God! what torture in the recollection!)—­yes, pressing the hand of her for whose smile I would, even at that moment, have sacrificed my soul; and every time she fled, the classic disposition of her graceful limbs, and her whole natural attitude of alarm, could only be compared with those of one of the huntresses of Diana, intruded on in her woodland privacy by the unhallowed presence of some daring mortal.  Such was your mother, Clara de Haldimar; yes, even such as I have described her was Clara Beverley.”

Again Wacousta paused, and his pause was longer than usual, as, with his large hand again covering his face, he seemed endeavouring to master the feelings which these recollections had called up.  Clara scarcely breathed.  Unmindful of her own desolate position, her soul was intent only on a history that related so immediately to her beloved mother, of whom all that she had hitherto known was, that she was a native