“It is not so bad, as it looks,” said the landlord, knocking at a small door, in the main building.  “The Bailiff lives in one part of it.”

A servant girl, with a candle in her hand, opened the door, and conducted Flemming and Berkley to the chamber which had been engaged.  It was a large room on the lower floor, wainscoted with pine, and unpainted.  Three lofty and narrowwindows, with leaden lattices and small panes, looked southward towards the valley of Lauterbrunnen and the mountains.  In one corner was a large square bed, with a tester and checked curtains.  In another, a huge stove of painted tiles, reaching almost to the ceiling.  An old sofa, a few high-backed antique chairs, and a table, completed the furniture of the room.

Thus Flemming took possession of his monkish cell and dormitory.  He ordered tea, and began to feel at home.  Berkley passed the evening with him.  On going away he said;

“Good night!  I leave you to the care of the Virgin and all the Saints.  If the ghost of any old monk comes back after his prayer-book, my compliments to him.  If I were a younger man, you certainly should see a ghost.  Good night!”

When he had departed, Flemming opened the lattice of one of the windows.  The moon had risen, and silvered the dark outline of the nearest hills; while, afar off, the snowy summits of the Jungfrau and the Silver-Horn shone like a white cloud in the sky.  Close beneath the windows was a flower-garden; and the breath of the summer night came to him with dewy fragrance.  There was a grateful seclusion about the place.  He blessed the happy accident, which gave him such a lodging, and fell asleep that night thinking of the nuns, who once had slept in the same quiet cells; but neither wimpled nun nor cowled monk appeared to him in his dreams; not even the face of Mary Ashburton; nor did he hear her voice.

CHAPTER IV.  THE EVENING AND THE MORNING STAR.

Old Froissart tells us, in his Chronicles, that when King Edward beheld the Countess of Salisbury at her castle gate, he thought he had never seen before so noble nor so fair a lady; he was stricken therewith to the heart with a sparkle of fine love, that endured long after; he thought no lady in the world so worthy to be beloved, as she.  And so likewise thought Paul Flemming, when he beheld the English lady in the fair light of a summer morning.  I will not disguise the truth.  She is my heroine; and I mean to describe her with great truth and beauty, so that all shall be in love with her, and I most of all.

Mary Ashburton was in her twentieth summer.  Like the fair maiden Amoret, she was sitting inthe lap of womanhood.  They did her wrong, who said she was not beautiful; and yet

“she was not fair,

Nor beautiful;—­those words express her not.

But O, her looks had something excellent,

That wants a name!”