But her smile grew ashen-gray,
As she knew by the glare of the mad eyes’ stare,
He had been with the Elle-maid gay.
“‘God love thee——God pity thee, O my Ludwig!’
Nor her true arms turned she away.
‘Thou art no sweet woman,’ cried fiercely Ludwig,
‘But a foul Elle-maid gay.
“‘I kiss thee——I slay thee;——I thy Ludwig’:
And the steel flashed bright to the day:
‘Better clasp a dead bride,’ laughed out Ludwig,
‘Than a false Elle-maid gay.
“‘I kissed thee, I slew thee; I——thy Ludwig;
And now will we sleep alway.’
Still fair blooms the woodland where rode Ludwig,
Still there sits the Elle-maid gay.”
The student ceased; and there was a deep silence. Basil’s young sister glanced round fearfully. Isilda moved not; but as the clear tones of Basil’s voice ended, one deep-drawn sigh was heard, as it were the unconscious relief of a full heart.
“You have chosen a gloomy story, Basil,” said the mother, at last.
Her voice broke the spell; and Margareta added,——
“I do not pity that false-hearted knight; his was a just punishment for a heavy sin: for the poor bride to die thus in her youth and happiness,——O, it was very sad!”
“Not so,” said Isilda, and she spoke in a low dreamy tone, as if half to herself. “It was not sad, even to be slain by him she loved, since she died in his arms, having known that he loved her. It was a happy fate.”
There was such an expression of intense feeling in the girl’s face as she spoke, that Margareta looked at her in wondering silence; but Basil gave an involuntary start, as if a new light had broken in upon his mind. The living crimson rushed immediately over Isilda’s face and neck, she seemed shrinking into the earth with shame, and said no more. Basil, too, kept silence. No marvel was it in the timid girl who rarely gave utterance to her thoughts, but that he whose heart was so full of poetry, whose lips were ever brimming over with eloquence, should be dumb,——it was passing strange! The student felt as though there was a finger laid on his lips, an unseen presence compelling him to
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