m what
he fancied, though erringly, a sympathy with his own forebodings, and
to lead her young and romantic imagination through the temporary
beguilements of fiction; for Gertrude was yet in the first bloom of
youth, and all the dews of beautiful childhood sparkled freshly from the
virgin blossoms of her mind. And Trevylyan, who had passed some of his
early years among the students of Leipsic, and was deeply versed in the
various world of legendary lore, ransacked his memory for such tales
as seemed to him most likely to win her interest; and often with false
smiles entered into the playful tale, or oftener, with more faithful
interest, into the graver legend of trials that warned yet beguiled them
from their own. Of such tales I have selected but a few; I know not that
they are the least unworthy of repetition,--they are those which many
recollections induce me to repeat the most willingly. Gertrude loved
these stories, for she had not yet lost, by the coldness of the world,
one leaf from that soft and wild romance which belonged to her beautiful
mind; and, more than all, she loved the sound of a voice which every
day became more and more musical to her ear. "Shall I tell you," said
Trevylyan, one morning, as he observed her gloomier mood stealing over
the face of Gertrude,--"shall I tell you, ere yet we pass into the dull
land of Holland, a story of Malines, whose spires we shall shortly
see?" Gertrude's face brightened at once, and as she leaned back in the
carriage as it whirled rapidly along, and fixed her deep blue eyes on
Trevylyan, he began the following tale.

CHAPTER IV. THE MAID OF MALINES.

IT was noonday in the town of Malines, or Mechlin, as the English
usually term it; the Sabbath bell had summoned the inhabitants to
divine worship; and the crowd that had loitered round the Church of St.
Rembauld had gradually emptied itself within the spacious aisles of the
sacred edifice.

A young man was standing in the street, with his eyes bent on the
ground, and apparently listening for some sound; for without raising his
looks from the rude pavement, he turned to every corner of it with an
intent and anxious expression of countenance. He held in one hand a
staff, in the other a long slender cord, the end of which trailed on
the ground; every now and then he called, with a plaintive voice, "Fido,
Fido, come back! Why hast thou deserted me?" Fido returned not; the dog,
wearied of confinement, had slipped from