other's arms before. Lonely and
nervous, she slipped into a white dressing-gown, and sat down by the
window to watch the full moon sailing above the purple peaks of the
mountain range, and listening in a sort of terror for the monk's cough;
but the excitement of the day induced speedy sleep.

How long she rested there in the moonlight, sleeping heavily, like a
weary child tired of playing, she could not tell, only that suddenly she
started wide awake in terror, feeling as if a cold, icy hand had pressed
her warm bosom, turning her cold as death.

Springing to her feet, she found she was not alone, for in the broad
glare of the moonlight she saw by her side the tall form of a man gowned
in a long black robe girdled with a rosary of beads, while his
close-shaven face shone ghastly white under his black skull-cap, and the
dull, fixed eyes had the awful stare of death.

With a piercing cry, Dainty sprang past the midnight visitant, rushed to
the door, and throwing it open, bounded into the corridor, flying with
terror-winged feet toward her cousin's room. Then she pounded on the
door, shrieking, piteously:

"For God's sake, let me in!"

The door opened so quickly that Dainty, leaning against it, lost her
balance, and fell blindly forward into the arms of the man who had
opened it--Lovelace Ellsworth, who had not yet retired, because his
heart and mind were so full of her he knew he could not sleep.

CHAPTER V.

"ONLY A DREAM."

"Ah, sweet, thou little knowest how
I wake and passionate watches keep;
And yet while I address thee now,
Methinks thou smilest in thy sleep.
'Tis sweet enough to make me weep,
That tender thought of love and thee,
That while the world is hushed in sleep,
Thy soul's perhaps awake to me."

It was almost midnight, yet Love Ellsworth's lamp still burned dimly as
he sat by his open window in the flood of white moonlight, going over
and over in his mind the events of the day, unable to turn his thoughts
from the artless little beauty who had charmed him so.

He was five-and-twenty, and he had had his little fancies and
flirtations, like most young men of his age, but this was the first time
that his heart had been really touched.

Love's glamour was upon him, and he could not rest or sleep for thinking
of shy, winsome Dainty, whose charms had wiled the heart from his
breast, so that it was with difficulty he had refrained from declaring
hi