"I cannot. Do not wind the links around me thus, lest they gall my spirit; lest I feel the fetters, and wish them broken!"
"Then I swear," said Mortimer, vehemently, "no hand but thine shall wear it!"
He raised his arm, and the next moment the ring would have been hurled into the gulf, but ere it fell he cast another glance at his mistress. Her heart was full. The emotion she sought to quell quivered convulsively on her lip. He seized her hand; but when he looked again upon the ring it was broken!
By what a strange and mysterious link are the finest and most subtle feelings connected with external forms and appearances! By what unseen process are they wrought out and developed; their hidden sources, the secret avenues of thought and emotion, discovered—called forth by circumstances the most trivial and unimportant! Adeline turned pale; and Mortimer himself shuddered as he beheld the omen. But another train of feelings had taken possession of her bosom; or rather her thoughts had acquired a new tendency by this apparently casual circumstance; and true to the bent and disposition of our nature, now that the slighted good was in danger of being withdrawn, she became anxious for its possession. She received the token. A slight crack upon its rim was visible, but this fracture did not prevent its being retained on the hand.
After this brief development their walk was concluded. They breathed no vows. Mortimer would not again urge her. A lock of hair only was exchanged; and shortly the last adieu was on their lips, and the broad deck of the vessel beneath his feet, whence he saw the tall cliff sink down into the ocean, and with it his hopes, that seemed to sink for ever into the same gulf!
Some few years afterwards, on a still evening, about the same time of the year, a boat was lowered from a distant vessel in the offing. Three men pulled ashore as the broad full moon rose up, red and dim, from the mist that hung upon the sea. The roll of the ocean alone betokened its approach. Its melancholy murmur alone broke the universal stillness. The lights came out one by one from the village casements. The cattle were housed, and the curs had crept to the hearth, save some of the younger sort, who at intervals worried themselves, fidgeting about, and making a mighty show of activity and watchfulness.
One of the passengers stepped hastily on shore. He spoke a few words to the rowers, who threw their oars into the boat, fastening her to the rocks. Afterwards they betook themselves to a tavern newly trimmed, where, swinging from a rude pole, hung the "sign" of a ship—for sign it could only be called—painted long ago by some self-initiated and village-immortalised artist, whose production had once been the wonder of the whole neighbourhood.
A roaring blaze revealed the whole interior, where pewter cups and well-scoured trenchers threw their bright glances upon all who wooed these dangerous allurements at "The Ship."
But the individual whom the rowers had put ashore withstood these tempting devices. He strode rapidly up the path, and paused not until he approached the cliff where the agony of one short hour had left its deep furrows for ever on his memory.
The incidents of that memorable day were then renewed with such vividness that, on a sudden, writhing and dismayed, he hurried forward in the vain hope, it might seem, of flying from the anguish he could not control.