When he had departed, Flemming opened the lattice of one of the windows. The moon had risen, and silvered the dark outline of the nearest hills; while, afar off, the snowy summits of the Jungfrau and the Silver-Horn shone like a white cloud in the sky. Close beneath the windows was a flower-garden; and the breath of the summer night came to him with dewy fragrance. There was a grateful seclusion about the place. He blessed the happy accident, which gave him such a lodging, and fell asleep that night thinking of the nuns, who once had slept in the same quiet cells; but neither wimpled nun nor cowled monk appeared to him in his dreams; not even the face of Mary Ashburton; nor did he hear her voice.
[CHAPTER IV. THE EVENING AND THE MORNING STAR.]
Old Froissart tells us, in his Chronicles, that when King Edward beheld the Countess of Salisbury at her castle gate, he thought he had never seen before so noble nor so fair a lady; he was stricken therewith to the heart with a sparkle of fine love, that endured long after; he thought no lady in the world so worthy to be beloved, as she. And so likewise thought Paul Flemming, when he beheld the English lady in the fair light of a summer morning. I will not disguise the truth. She is my heroine; and I mean to describe her with great truth and beauty, so that all shall be in love with her, and I most of all.
Mary Ashburton was in her twentieth summer. Like the fair maiden Amoret, she was sitting inthe lap of womanhood. They did her wrong, who said she was not beautiful; and yet
"she was not fair,
Nor beautiful;--those words express her not.
But O, her looks had something excellent,
That wants a name!"
Her face had a wonderful fascination in it. It was such a calm, quiet face, with the light of the rising soul shining so peacefully through it. At times it wore an expression of seriousness,--of sorrow even; and then seemed to make the very air bright with what the Italian poets so beautifully call the lampeggiar dell' angelico riso,--the lightning of the angelic smile.
And O, those eyes,--those deep, unutterable eyes, with "down-falling eyelids, full of dreams and slumber," and within them a cold, living light, as in mountain lakes at evening, or in the river of Paradise, forever gliding,