joy that beamed over her features at the miraculous help which she fully believed to have been afforded her, banished every trace of her previous terror.
Soon, however, on learning from us what had happened at the Ravens' Cliff, and recognizing, as we did also, in her late experience a confirmation of the blood-guiltiness of her wild lover, she was seized with a profound and peculiar emotion. She became pale as death, trembling in every limb, and threw herself upon her knees, where she long remained in fervent prayer.
Could the miller, Guiller, have had some grounds, then, for rallying her about this wild, repulsive, wicked youth? What relations could there possibly be between him and this pure and maidenly creature? A few words, however, exchanged upon a later occasion with the priest whose acquaintance I had made at Ravens' Cliff, afforded me the only explanation conceivable. Her feeling was a complex one, consisting in part of womanly compassion for one whom all the world, and perhaps with good cause, avoided; in part, of a certain dread of the youth's savage strength, not entirely free, it might be, from a germ of unconscious admiration of it; in part, of blended piety and vanity, such as one often meets with in more refined society. She had believed herself elected, by the assistance and to
