Your dark and shining eye;

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What conquest will it be, sweet nymph, to thee,

If I for sorrow die?

Restore, restore my heart again,

Which thy sweet looks have slain,

Lest that, enforced by your disdain, I sing,

Fye! fye on love! It is a foolish thing!’”

But the lifting of the sorrow was only that it might press more heavily. No more letters came; no message of any kind; none of the pretty love-gages he delighted in giving during the first months of their acquaintance. A gloom more wretched than that of death or sickness settled in the old rooms of Seat-Ambar. William and Brune carried its shadow on their broad, rosy faces into the hay-fields and the wheat-fields. It darkened all the summer days, and dulled all the usual mirth-making of the ingathering feasts. William was cross and taciturn. He loved his sister with all his heart, but he did not know how to sympathize with her. Even mother-love, when in great anxiety, sometimes wraps itself in this unreasonable irritability. Brune understood better. He had suffered from a love-change himself; 65 he knew its ache and longing, its black despairs and still more cruel hopes. He was always on the lookout for Aspatria; and one day he heard news which he thought would interest her. Lady Redware was at the Hall. William had heard it a week before, but he had not considered it prudent to name the fact. Brune had a kinder intelligence.

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“Aspatria,” he said, “Redware Hall is open again. I saw Lady Redware in the village.”

“Brune! Oh, Brune, is he there too?”

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