During this conversation Elsie had left the garden and gone a little way down the gorge, to have a few moments of gossip with an old crony. The light of the evening sky had gradually faded away, and the full moon was pouring a shower of silver upon the orange-trees. As Agnes sat on the parapet, with the moonlight streaming down on her young, spiritual face, now tremulous with deep suppressed emotion, the painter thought he had never seen any human creature that looked nearer to his conception of a celestial being.
They both sat awhile in that kind of quietude which often falls between two who have stirred some deep fountain of emotion. All was so still around them, that the drip and trickle of the little stream which fell from the garden wall into the dark abyss of the gorge could well be heard as it pattered from one rocky point to another, with a slender, lulling sound.
Suddenly the reveries of the two were disturbed by the shadow of a figure which passed into the moonlight and seemed to rise from the side of the gorge. A man enveloped in a dark cloak with a peaked hood stepped across the moss-grown garden parapet, stood a moment irresolute, then the cloak dropped suddenly from him, and the Cavalier stood in the moonlight before Agnes. He bore in his hand a tall stalk of white lily, with open blossoms and buds and tender fluted green leaves, such as one sees in a thousand pictures of the Annunciation. The moonlight fell full upon his face, revealing his haughty yet beautiful features, agitated by some profound emotion. The monk and the girl were both too much surprised for a moment to utter a sound; and when, after an instant, the monk made a half-movement as if to address him, the cavalier raised his right hand with a sudden authoritative gesture which silenced him. Then turning toward Agnes, he kneeled, and kissing the hem of her robe, and laying the lily in her lap, "Holiest and dearest," he said, "oh, forget not to pray for me!" He rose again in a moment, and, throwing his cloak around him, sprang over the garden wall, and was heard rapidly descending into the shadows of the gorge.
All this passed so quickly that it seemed to both the spectators like a dream. The splendid man, with his jewelled weapons, his haughty bearing, and air of easy command, bowing with such solemn humility before the peasant girl, reminded the monk of the barbaric princes in the wonderful legends he had read, who had been drawn by some heavenly inspiration to come and render themselves up to the teachings of holy virgins, chosen of the Lord, in divine solitudes. In the poetical world in which he lived all such marvels were possible. There were a thousand precedents for them in that devout dream-land, "The Lives of the Saints."
"My daughter," he said, after looking vainly down the dark shadows upon the path of the stranger, "have you ever seen this man before?"
"Yes, uncle; yesterday evening I saw him for the first time, when sitting at my stand at the gate of the city. It was at the Ave Maria; he came up there and asked my prayers, and gave me a diamond ring for the shrine of Saint Agnes, which I carried to the Convent to-day."
"Behold, my dear daughter, the confirmation of what I have just said to thee! It is evident that our Lady hath endowed thee with the great grace of a beauty which draws the soul upward towards the angels, instead of downward to sensual things, like the beauty of worldly women. What saith the blessed poet Dante of the beauty of the holy Beatrice?—that it said to every man who looked on her, 'Aspire!'[A] Great is the grace, and thou must give special praise therefor."
[Footnote A: I cannot forbear quoting Mr. Norton's beautiful translation of this sonnet in the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1859:—
"So gentle and so modest doth appear
My lady when she giveth her salute,
That every tongue becometh trembling mute,
Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare,
And though she hears her praises, she doth, go
Benignly clothed with humility,
And like a thing come down she seems to be
From heaven to earth, a miracle to show.
So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh her,
She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyes
Which none can understand who doth not prove.
And from her lip there seems indeed to move
A spirit sweet and in Love's very guise,
Which goeth saying to the soul, 'Aspire!'">[
"I would," said Agnes, thoughtfully, "that I knew who this stranger is, and what is his great trouble and need,—his eyes are so full of sorrow. Giulietta said he was the King's brother, and was called the Lord Adrian. What sorrow can he have, or what need for the prayers of a poor maid like me?"