To Burrel the night went by in sleepless restlessness; and, though we would fain see how it flew with Blanche Delaware, we must take up her story in the course of the morning after, when, rising as pale as the night before, she found that the hour, instead of nine--which she had fancied it must be at least--was only seven. Putting on her bonnet, she glided down the old stone staircase, and proceeded into the park; but it was not towards Emberton that she took her way. On the contrary, turning her steps through the wild woodlands that lay at the back of the mansion, she trod very nearly the same path which she had pursued with Henry Burrel during the first days of their acquaintance.
She traced the walk by the bank of the stream. The kingfishers were flitting over the bosom of the river; the waters were pouring on, fretting at the same pebbles, dashing over the same little falls, lying quiet in the same still pools, as when she had last seen them. But the feelings of her heart were changed, and the light, which nature had then borrowed from joy, was now all overshadowed by the clouds of care. As she gazed upon the stream, and the wild banks, and the hawthorn dingles round her, and felt that a bitter change in her own bosom had stripped them of all their beauties, as ruthlessly as the hand of winter itself could have done, the pain was too much, and she wept.
Still she trod her way onward, pondering slowly and gloomily, till she came so near the little glen that had terminated that happy walk with Burrel, that she could not refrain from going on. A few minutes brought her to the spot where the Prior's Well was first visible, and a few minutes more found her standing under the rich carved canopy of gray stone that covered over the fountain.
For several moments she gazed wistfully and mournfully upon the waters, as, with a calm unobtrusive ripple, and a low whispering murmur, they welled from the basin of the fountain, and trickled through the grass and pebbles. "Oh, would to Heaven!" she thought, "that yon calm water did really possess the mysterious power the old legends attribute to it. But two days since, nothing on earth would have made me taste it, though I believed not a word; and now I am almost tempted to drink, though I still believe as little."
As she thought thus, she stretched out her hand to the little iron cup; and, after a short pause, filled it, and gazed upon the water, as it lay pure and clear, with that peculiar cold sparkling limpidity which the old monks so greatly prized in their wells. Her hand shook a little; but, after a single instant's consideration, with a smile which was mingled of sadness and of a sort of gentle scorn, at the drop of credulity that still lay at the bottom of her heart, she was raising the cup to her lips when a hand was laid gently upon her arm.
She started, but without dropping the cup, and, turning round, she saw beside her, Henry Burrel. Pouring the water carefully back into the font, as if every drop were precious, she let go the chain, while, with downcast eyes, and a cheek burning like crimson, she uttered a scarcely audible good-morrow, in answer to some words that she had hardly heard.
Burrel's hand still rested on her arm, while his eyes were fixed upon her face, tenderly, but reproachfully. The action and the look were those of intimacy, but not of presumption; and, indeed, there had been of late a kind of mute language established between Blanche and her lover, in which many a question had been asked, and many a feeling had been acknowledged, which would have expired in shame, had words been the only means of expression, and which gave Burrel some right to enquire into the change he could not but perceive too plainly.
"You were about to drink, Miss Delaware!" he said. "But if you taste of the enchanted fountain, I must drink also; for Heaven knows, then, I shall have more need of the waters of oblivion than you have!"
He spoke with a smile; but there are smiles in the world more melancholy than a world of sighs; and his was so full of pain, anxiety, and disappointment, that Blanche, as she turned away, made the only answer in her power--by tears. The drops from her eyes fell thick, and as her left hand rested on the little carved border of the stone font, over which her head still hung, partially averted to hide the deep and varying feelings that passed across her face, the tears dimpled the clear still waters; and though Burrel, as he stood, could not see her eyes, he perceived that she was weeping bitterly. His fingers, which had rested lightly on her arm to prevent her from drinking the water, now glided down and circled round her hand, clasping upon it with a degree of gentle firmness.
"Miss Delaware," he said, "for Heaven's sake, tell me, have my hopes been all in vain?--Have I, like a presumptuous fool, dreamed of happiness far greater than I deserve to possess? And do you now, by the striking change which your demeanour towards me has undergone, intend to rebuke my boldness in fancying that you might ever become mine; and to crush the hopes which your former kindness inspired?"