could be uttered. 'A most singular wench,' said he to himself; 'and by this hand, as discreet as she is fair-featured— Certes, shame it were to offer her scathe or dishonour! She makes similes too, though somewhat savouring of her condition. Had she but read Euphues, and forgotten that accursed mill and shieling-hill, it is my thought that her converse would be broidered with as many and as choice pearls of compliment, as that of the most rhetorical lady in the court of Feliciana. I trust she means to return to bear me company.'
But that was no part of Mysie's prudential scheme. It was then drawing to dusk, and he saw her not again until the next morning, when the horses were brought to the door that they might prosecute their journey.
But our story here necessarily leaves the English knight and his page, to return to the Tower of Glendearg.
Chapter XXX
You call it an ill angel—it may be so;
But sure I am, among the ranks which fell,
'Tis the first fiend e'er counselFd man to rise,
And win the bliss the sprite himself had forfeited.
Old Play.
We must resume our narrative at the period when Mary Avenel was conveyed to the apartment which had been formerly occupied by the two Glendinnings, and when her faithful attendant, Tibbie, had exhausted herself in useless attempts to compose and to comfort her. Father Eustace also dealt forth with well-meant kindness those apophthegms and dogmata of consolation, which friendship almost always offers to grief, though they are uniformly offered in vain. She was at length left to indulge in the desolation of her own sorrowful feelings. She felt as those who, loving for the first time, have lost what they loved, before time and repeated calamity have taught them that every loss is to a certain extent reparable or endurable.
Such grief may be conceived better than it can be described, as is well known to those who have experienced
