“My Lillian, let us look upon the night,” cried Kenneth—and he led her forth beneath the stars. They smiled upon the maid, and crowned her forehead with their beams, and her beauty grew as lofty and mysterious as their own.
The pair walked in silence, for each bosom throbbed heavily, with its burden of unspoken love; they walked in silence, for youth was in flushing, and they heeded not the speeding hours.
First Kenneth spoke, for man must act while woman muses, and the spells of night oppressed him.
“Look, Lillian, on the shining orbs above us, circling their mysterious round! Knowest thou, the starry firmament is a vast prophecy of things to be? Yon burning record of the decrees of fate rolls its stupendous riddles in mighty round, and mock our earnest inquiry. The learning of the Magi, the ‘Persians starry wit,’ may catch but faint and far-off glimpses of the truths they blazon yet conceal. The boasted lore of the Chaldean, reads but imperfectly their dim revealings, while the Gheber, wiser in his ignorance than either, bows in worship to the celestial mysteries he presumeth not to compass or comprehend.”
There was a majesty and gloom in the boy’s conceptions that charmed and oppressed fair Lillian; and, as woman is prone to do, she turned from all the rolling worlds of which he spoke, to the deep, silent, and no less enigmatical world of her own heart.
He looked again upon the heavens on which was written, as he believed, the fate of nations, while her meek eyes followed his, striving to read from the jeweled scroll, her own doom.
“Kenneth,” she cried, abruptly, and in awe, “I feel that I am approaching a crisis in my fate!”
“Thy fate, sweet one, is also written in letters of light above us. I am not deeply versed in heavenly lore, but from thy presentiment and mine, I read a crisis is at hand. Seest thou yon pale orb,” he continued, raising his hand aloft, “my father told me once it shone upon thy birth, and from that hour it has been the object of my vigil and study; so pale, so pure, it seemeth like thy fair face set in heaven. Of late methought it shone with sadder beam, and wandered from its track. See!” he cried with a shout, “it journeys the skies, side by side, with yon red-eyed planet.”
Lillian raised her soft eyes, and met the lurid glare of the blood-red star.
“What orb is that?” she inquired, with a shudder, clinging closer to Kenneth’s side.