"He has named her," gasped the wretched Eulelia“ ah ! my royal mistress, where is the grief which may be mated with mine?"

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Here, maiden,” replied the mistress of the Saxon, laying her almost-transparent hand on her heart" here is a woe beyond all other woes; mark you not its impress?" and she pointed with solemn gesture to her sunken eye and wasted cheek.

"And has your highness indeed loved one as false as De Lacy ?" asked the maiden, awed into calmer sorrow by the manner of her royal mistress.

"He that I have loved," cried the princess, enthusiastically, as she clasped her hands over her white vest, "knows not dishonour. Ere many days, and mine will be a widowed heart; and my love, and he who awoke it, will sink to the grave together." She paused for a moment, and then, heedless of the alarm of her attendant, she added-" I would that I could waste away into a flower-a little

flower so mean, that none would stoop to gather me, and I would blossom upon his grave; but we are taught that these things may not be; yet last night I dreamt that it was even thus."

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My dear, my royal mistress," sobbed the maiden, who could have better brooked the wildest sorrow than this fearful calm, "beseech you, smile not so wildly."

"Who talks of smiles ?" asked the princess; "could you look into this heart, you would see it so full of sorrow, that it has no place for smiles-and who would. smile here? here, where tears and sighs are man's only heritage and woman's dowry, and where each has his bitter portion meted to him with his rank; truly may the churl smile, for his portion could be but scant; but at court, who may smile at court? not the monarch, for he languishes for conquest, and weeps his failure; not the churchman, for he toils for place and power, and bewails that fate outspeeds ambition; not the courtier, for

he sighs for preference, and laments over the triumph of a rival; not the daughters of plenty, for like you, my poor Eulelia, they are betrothed to falsehood, or, like me, to death."

As the princess ceased speaking, she parted with her small fingers the dark tresses of her attendant, and then resumed-" It is indeed so; yet to look on this smooth young brow, who would think that it bore the stamp of sorrow? it is truly too fair for the foot-print of suffering; grief should have tarried, my gentle maiden, till it might have found a restingplace amid the wrinkles of age; it is too rapid in its passage, and recks not of the -beauty it destroys. Ah! why, why did not nature, when she gave loveliness to woman, deny to her a heart? then indeed had she revelled in all the joy of beauty, nor known a care, save of its decline; then had she smiled on all alike, even as the glorious sun, which recks not who basks in its bright beams; but now, now, the creature of affection, the child of hope,

she sickens through existence, without a joy, save the first transient dream of youth, which shoots with meteor flash across her soul, and withers up her happiness."

The lady Eulelia replied only by a long and acquiescent sigh, and again the royal sufferer painfully continued-" Remember you not, maiden, when I taught you, even in the morn of love, to hope little from its noon; said I not truly? and yet you answered my foreboding with a smile of confidence and peace; where is it now? alas! buried amid the ruins of life's smiling spring, like the little plant, which, at the year's birth, bore the scented violet, lost beneath the yellow entombing leaves of its decline! even like nature's reflection, the earth, is the heart of woman; it has its spring of promise, when hope timidly puts forth her tender buds; it has also its transient summer, when, for awhile, the heart revels in all the fullness of almost certain triumph; then comes an autumn of slow, wasting

disappointment; leaf by leaf, and link by link, the flowery wreaths of summer and of love decay together, and form, alas! too meet a prelude for their dark, spiritless, uncheering winter."

CHAP. XI.

"O most delicate fiend!.

Who is't can read a woman? Is there more ?"

Negociation.

THE day passed, and the evening banquet crowded the board of the Palatine Tower; the nobles were alive to the revel, and while some indeed laughed "the heart's laugh," others there were who dressed their features to the fashion of the hour, and forced the smile of hilarity to conceal the soul's own sorrow; but the former fell gaily on the ear, like the free and cheery notes of the wild bird pealing its