"Now?" reiterated the abbot.
"Now, or it may be never!"
"Oh, what is this you say?" said Murielle, shrinking closer to the abbot.
"The solemn, the sad, the earnest, but the loving truth, dear Murielle," urged Gray, his eyes and heart filling as he spoke with passion and tenderness.
Much more followed, but they spoke rapidly and briefly, for time was precious.
"You will end all this by wedding me, my beloved," said Gray in her ear, as he pressed her to his breast, and stifled her reply by kisses. "Then at midnight we shall leave Bommel together for the sea-coast, from thence to Scotland and the king! Say that you will become my wife—here are the altar, the church, the priest, and his missal—here even the ring. Oh, say that you will, for with life I cannot separate from you again!"
"My love for you," sobbed Murielle, "is stronger than my destiny——"
"Nay, 'tis destiny that makes you love me."
Her tears fell fast, but her silence gave consent.
The abbot felt all the force of his kinsman's arguments, and the more so that they were added to his own previous fears and convictions. He wisely conceived that the marriage of Murielle to Gray would prove the most irremovable barrier to the proposed matrimonial alliance between Douglas and the duke of Albany. He was aware that by the performance of such a ceremony, he would open an impassable gulf between himself and his lord and chief; but he felt that he owed a duty to the king, James II., in saving him from a coalition so formidable as a union between the adherents of the outlawed prince and rebellious peer; a duty to Murielle, in saving her from becoming the hapless tool of a conspiracy, the victim of a roué husband and a ruinous plot; and a duty to his kinsman and friend, whom he had every desire to protect and serve.