ons, a device--and that device was
the knot of betrothal, and in the centre of the knot was graven the word
"Edith."

CHAPTER III.

Whether, owing to Hilda's runes, or to the merely human arts which
accompanied them, the Earl's recovery was rapid, though the great loss of
blood he had sustained left him awhile weak and exhausted. But, perhaps,
he blessed the excuse which detained him still in the house of Hilda, and
under the eyes of Edith.

He dismissed the leach sent to him by Vebba, and confided, not without
reason, to the Vala's skill. And how happily went his hours beneath the
old Roman roof!

It was not without a superstition, more characterised, however, by
tenderness than awe, that Harold learned that Edith had been undefinably
impressed with a foreboding of danger to her betrothed, and all that
morning she had watched his coming from the old legendary hill. Was it
not in that watch that his good Fylgia had saved his life? Indeed, there
seemed a strange truth in Hilda's assertions, that in the form of his
betrothed, his tutelary spirit lived and guarded. For smooth every step,
and bright every day, in his career, since their troth had been plighted.
And gradually the sweet superstition had mingled with human passion to
hallow and refine it. There was a purity and a depth in the love of these
two, which, if not uncommon in women, is most rare in men.

Harold, in sober truth, had learned to look on Edith as on his better
angel; and, calming his strong manly heart in the hour of temptation,
would have recoiled, as a sacrilege, from aught that could have sullied
that image of celestial love. With a noble and sublime patience, of
which perhaps only a character so thoroughly English in its habits of
self-control and steadfast endurance could have been capable, he saw the
months and the years glide away, and still contented himself with
hope;--hope, the sole godlike joy that belongs to men!

As the opinion of an age influences even those who affect to despise it,
so, perhaps, this holy and unselfish passion was preserved and guarded by
that peculiar veneration for purity which formed the characteristic
fanaticism of the last days of the Anglo-Saxons,--when still, as Aldhelm
had previously sung in Latin less barbarous than perhaps any priest in
the reign of Edward could command:

"Virginitas castam servans sine crimine carnem
Caetera virtutem vincit praeconia laudi--
Spiritus altithron