cry the man fell back
on his pillow, saying:

"Phyllis--Phyllis! come back--come back!"

Griselda started towards the door, and Leslie Travers caught her, or she
would have fallen down the steep, narrow stairs.

"Take me away--take me away! I cannot bear it! Oh, it is too dreadful!
That face--those eyes--that cry!"

"Yes," he said, carefully guiding her downstairs, and shielding her as
much as possible from the inquisitive stare of the dwellers in the same
house, taking her hand in his, and drawing it into his arm: "You are not
accustomed to such sad sights, the poverty and the squalor."

"It was the man who frightened me. What made him call Phyllis--Phyllis!
that beautiful sacred name, for it was my mother's?"

"He was raving; he fancied he was on the stage. He will not live many
days, and then we will see that the child is cared for."

The "_we_" escaped his lips before he was aware of it; but the time for
reticence was past. He turned into the Abbey, and Griselda made no
resistance. Then with impassioned earnestness Leslie Travers told his
love, and often as the tale is told, it is seldom rehearsed with more
simple manly fervour. For in the reality of his love Leslie Travers
forgot all the flowery and fulsome love epithets which were the fashion
of the day. He did not kneel at her feet and vow he was her slave; he
did not call her by a thousand names of endearment; but he made her feel
perfect confidence in his sincerity. This confidence ever awakes a
response in the heart of a true woman, and makes her ready to trust her
future in his hands who asks to guard it henceforth.

"Yes," she had answered in a low but clear tone; "yes, I thank you for
the kindness you do me."

He tried to stop her, but she went on:

"It _is_ a kindness to take a friendless and penniless orphan to your
heart." Then she looked up at him, and reading in his clear pure eyes
the story his lips had so lately uttered, she added with a smile,
through the April mist of tears in her beautiful eyes: "Yes, it _is_ a
kindness, let me take it as such; but not leave myself your debtor, for
I will give you in return all my heart, and be henceforth to you tender
and true."

He seized her hands in rapture, and kissed them passionately.

"We are in a church," he said; "let us seal our betrothal here, and pray
for God's blessing."

They were hidden from sight as they stood within the entrance of Prior
Bird's Chantry Chapel, and there, hand cla