HOUR II.—The Consummation.

The princes of the night mounted their flaming steeds and coursed through heaven. Lillian sat in widow’s weeds, and watched them from her great round tower. Suddenly the clang of a mailed heel rung on the winding stair, and her cheek paled—for those halls no longer echoed with martial sounds since Lord Ulric had been gathered home. Near and more near, loud and more loud, and a warrior strode into the apartment, and folded the lady in his embrace!

“I have come!”

Those old, familiar, long beloved tones, how they broke upon the loneliness, thrilling to its centre her sorrow-stricken heart. What marvel if she wept unresistingly on his broad breast, in her agony of surprise.

“I have come to claim my bride!”

Then was the spell broken, and her soul awoke to a sense of its stern resolves. She freed herself from that passionate embrace, saying,

“I may not wed thee, Kenneth.”

“But listen to my pleadings, my long lost one; canst thou not divinely forgive the past, and be my guardian angel for the future? Hast thou ceased to love, or hast thou learned to fear me?”

“Kenneth, thou art accursed of God, and abhorred of men, and yet I fear thee not. Thou wert the lover of my youth, ever fond, ever tender; and thy name, so dreaded in the land thou hast scourged, is to me but a talisman of gentle memories. I fear thee not. But I have walked through life with a strong hand on my heart, curbing its warm impulses, crushing its fond love. It hath plead passionately for thee, but I hearkened not, and by this bitter schooling have I learned to resist even thee.”

“And I, have I not, ’mid sin and sorrow, ’mid wreck of hopes and ruin of soul, preserved undimmed my one bright dream of thee? Have I not sat by a lonely hearth, while thy smile filled the home of my rival with joy? Have I not forborne to tear thee thence, because I would not offer violence to thee or thine? And now wilt thou reject the love which youth hath sanctified, and manhood ripened?”

“Oh, why hast thou not wedded and forgotten me?” she cried, in anguish.

“Because the hope of thy pale waning beauty was dearer to my heart than all the daughters of bloom. Because I would be ever ready for the hour when fate should say, ‘arise, make ready thy bower for thy promised bride;’ that hour has come! Mark the heavens where ’tis written, thou art mine. Once, long ago, we looked upon the night with all its circling stars; thou seest them now, as then, treading their solemn round, unchanged, unchangeable. Not one of all the starry hosts may wander from its appointed pathway; and canst thou, child of destiny, escape thy fate? The hand that guides them, governs thee, and the decrees of the Omnipotent have been, from all eternity, and are immutable.”

“Oh, tell me no more of thy stern, unpitying faith! thou hast imbued my mind with thy belief, until, like the scorpion girt with fire, I have almost turned on myself despairing. I would fain believe that the struggles and strivings of humanity are not without their fruits; that the fervent prayer, the earnest effort, are heard, and heeded; that man may wrestle all night with his Maker, and when the morning breaks, prevail.”^[3]

Very touching was the fierce man’s tenderness, but the lady was strong in her heart’s martyrdom. Then he turned away, saying,

“Thou hast destroyed the hope of a lifetime, and my father’s lore hath failed me. How could I thus misread the stars!”

From the battlement he looked on heaven thus questioning, and the stars grew dim beneath his gaze.

The orb that beamed upon his lady’s birth, sent down its calm, cold ray; his own more fiery planet blazed in lurid light, while an ocean of space rolled between.

“Lost to me!” he murmured.

As he spoke, the red planet shot madly from its sphere, careering athwart the concave like a sword of fire, it rushed from being, and deeper darkness brooded o’er the expanse.

Again his eye sought the milder light of the star he worshiped, when lo! it had been swept from the face of heaven.

“Be it so, lost Pleiad!” cried the lover, and folding in his arms the pallid lady, leaped from the turret, into the abyss below.