on.

"Ah, would that I could see thee! would that I could look upon a face
that my heart vainly endeavours to delineate!"

"If thou couldst," sighed Lucille, "thou wouldst cease to love me."

"Impossible!" cried St. Amand, passionately. "However the world may find
thee, _thou_ wouldst become my standard of beauty; and I should judge
not of thee by others, but of others by thee."

He loved to hear Lucille read to him, and mostly he loved the
descriptions of war, of travel, of wild adventure, and yet they
occasioned him the most pain. Often she paused from the page as she
heard him sigh, and felt that she would even have renounced the bliss of
being loved by him, if she could have restored to him that blessing, the
desire for which haunted him as a spectre.

Lucille's family were Catholic, and, like most in their station, they
possessed the superstitions, as well as the devotion of the faith.
Sometimes they amused themselves of an evening by the various legends
and imaginary miracles of their calendar; and once, as they were thus
conversing with two or three of their neighbours, "The Tomb of the Three
Kings of Cologne" became the main topic of their wondering recitals.
However strong was the sense of Lucille, she was, as you will readily
conceive, naturally influenced by the belief of those with whom she had
been brought up from her cradle, and she listened to tale after tale
of the miracles wrought at the consecrated tomb, as earnestly and
undoubtingly as the rest.

And the Kings of the East were no ordinary saints; to the relics of
the Three Magi, who followed the Star of Bethlehem, and were the first
potentates of the earth who adored its Saviour, well might the pious
Catholic suppose that a peculiar power and a healing sanctity would
belong. Each of the circle (St. Amand, who had been more than usually
silent, and even gloomy during the day, had retired to his own
apartment, for there were some moments when, in the sadness of his
thoughts, he sought that solitude which he so impatiently fled from at
others)--each of the circle had some story to relate equally veracious
and indisputable, of an infirmity cured, or a prayer accorded, or a sin
atoned for at the foot of the holy tomb. One story peculiarly affected
Lucille; the narrator, a venerable old man with gray locks, solemnly
declared himself a witness of its truth.

A woman at Anvers had given birth to a son, the offspring of an illicit
connection, who came