"O, yes—for ever!" she whispered; and passionately and repeatedly Bothwell's dark and well mustached mouth was pressed on her dewy lip.
Footsteps approached!
He started, and hurriedly led her to a seat; placed her harp close by, raised her hands to his lips with an air in which love and tenderness were exquisitely blended with courtesy and respect, and then hurried away.
Overcome, and trembling with the excitement of this brief interview, Anna bent with closed eyes over her harp for a moment; but becoming suddenly aware that some one stood near her, she started, and the pallor of death and guilt overspread her flushed face when her eyes met those of—Konrad.
CHAPTER VII.
KONRAD.
To lose thee! O, to lose thee! To live on
To see the sun—not thee! Will the sun shine,
Will the birds sing, flowers bloom, when thou art gone?
Desolate—desolate! Thy right hand in mine.
King Arthur.
Konrad's dark blue eyes were regarding her with a peculiar expression, such as she had never before seen them wear. There was an intense sadness in it, mingled with pity and scorn. It was searching and reproachful, too; and, though Anna felt all that single glance conveyed, she never quailed beneath it; but the blood came and went in her changing cheek as she surveyed her indignant lover.
The appearance and bearing of young Konrad were very prepossessing.
During the whole of that day he had been out hunting, and was now returned laden with the spoil of forest and fiord. A doublet of white cloth, trimmed with black fur, slashed with scarlet sarcenet at the breast and sleeves, and adorned with a profusion of silver knobs, fitted tightly to his handsome figure; his trunk hose were fashioned of the same materials, and he wore rough leather boots, and a smart velvet cap adorned by an eagle feather, under which his long hair descended in fair locks upon his shoulders. He was equipped with a crossbow, hunting-knife, and bugle-horn, and a sheaf of short arrows bristled in his baldrick. An immense cock-of-the-wood and a bag of golden plover were slung over one shoulder, balanced on the other by a pouch of seabirds' eggs, taken from their eyries in those impending cliffs that overhang the bay, where, clinging as a fly clings to a wall, he had scrambled and swung fearlessly above the surf; and, chief spoil of the day, he bore upon his shoulder a black fox, which he had slain by a single bolt from his crossbow.