attend it. Did I not believe that all would end well, by the Holy Rood he should not have her; but she may see things with different eyes—she may shrink from becoming the wife of an exile, a wanderer without a home: yet that need never be."
York little guessed the projects of his royal friend. Love, in its most subtle guise, had insinuated itself into his soul, becoming a very portion of himself. That part of our nature, which to our reflections appears the most human, and yet which forms the best part of humanity, is our desire of sympathy; the intense essence of sympathy is love. Love has been called selfish, engrossing, tyrannic—as the root, so the green leaf that shoots from it—love is a part of us—it is our manifestation of life; and poisonous or sweet will be the foliage, according to the stock. When we love, it is our aim and conclusion to make the object a part of ourselves—if we are self-willed and evilly inclined, little good can arise; but deep is the fount of generous, devoted, godlike feeling, which this silver key unlocks in gentle hearts. Richard had found in the Lady Katherine a magic mirror, which gave him back himself, arrayed with a thousand alien virtues; his soul was in her hands, plastic to her fairy touch, and tenderness and worship and wonder took his heart, ere passion woke, and threw a chain over these bosom guests, so that they could never depart. A mild, yet golden light dawned upon his soul, and beamed from it, lighting up creation with splendour—filling his mind with mute, yet entrancing melody. He walked in a dream; but far from being rendered by his abstraction morose or inattentive to others, never had he been so gay, never so considerate and amiable. He felt that, beneath the surface of his life, there was the calm and even the bliss of Paradise; and his lightest word or act must be, by its grace and benevolence, in concord with the tranquil spirit that brooded over his deeper-hidden self. All loved him the better for the change, save Frion; there was something in him that the wily Frenchman did not understand; he went about and about, but how could this man of "low-thoughted care" understand the holy mysteries of love.
Katherine accompanied her father to Gordon Castle, in Aberdeenshire. Where was the light now, that had made a summer noon in Richard's soul? There was memory: it brought before him her cherub-face, her voice, the hours when at her side he had poured out his overbrimming soul in talk—not of love, but of ideas, feelings, imaginations he had never spoken before. Two days passed, and by that time he had collected a whole volume of things he wished to say—and she was far: then hope claimed entrance to his heart, and with her came a train he dreamt not
