"Isabel, Isabel, what is this?" pleaded the young man, astonished at the abrupt change.
"Stop!" she said, waving him back. "Tempt me no more, I cannot bear it!"
Still he pressed toward her, grieved and anxious. He had not observed the words of the music, and her change of manner was inexplicable.
"Listen to me, Isabel!"
She waved him back, and walking toward the high altar fell upon her knees before it, and there, touching the sculptured leaves that had occupied a human life five hundred years before, she uttered a solemn vow. The words fell in whispers from her white lips, her forehead was one moment uplifted to heaven. She arose and stood before her lover, cold and pale as the marble she had touched.
Then the music swelled out again in a slow, plaintive strain, as if it were moaning over the burial of a dead hope. Those who had gathered for worship in the chapel, glided away; the tapers were extinguished, and through the gathering darkness Frederick Farnham and Isabel Chester walked forth into the world again.
Isabel had made a vow never to marry the son of her father's murderer. It was a rash act, for even then she had not the courage to tell Frederick of the oath she had taken. Oh, Isabel! that vow may prove like that of Jepthah yet—only it is your own hand that gives, and your own heart that receives the blow.
CHAPTER XXXV.
SISTER ANNA
Ah, we never could resist her,
Since the day that she was born;
For we loved that winsome sister
As we loved the opening morn.