d of leaves, and the bird-songs, and wearied
with the agitations of the morning, her head lay back against the end of
the sculptured fountain, the spindle slowly dropped from her hand, and
her eyes were closed in sleep, the murmur of the fountain still sounding
in her dreams. In her dreams she seemed to be wandering far away among
the purple passes of the Apennines, where she had come years ago when
she was a little girl; with her grandmother she pushed through old
olive-groves, weird and twisted with many a quaint gnarl, and rustling
their pale silvery leaves in noonday twilight. Sometimes she seemed to
carry in her bosom a wounded eagle, and often she sat down to stroke it
and to try to give it food from her hand, and as often it looked upon
her with a proud, patient eye, and then her grandmother seemed to shake
her roughly by the arm and bid her throw the silly bird away;--but then
again the dream changed, and she saw a knight lie bleeding and dying in
a lonely hollow,--his garments torn, his sword broken, and his face pale
and faintly streaked with blood; and she kneeled by him, trying in vain
to stanch a deadly wound in his side, while he said reproachfully,
"Agnes, dear Agnes, why would you not save me?" and then she thought
he kissed her hand with his cold dying lips; and she shivered and
awoke,--to find that her hand was indeed held in that of the cavalier,
whose eyes met her own when first she unclosed them, and the same voice
that spoke in her dreams said, "Agnes, dear Agnes!"

For a moment she seemed stupefied and confounded, and sat passively
regarding the knight, who kneeled at her feet and repeatedly kissed her
hand, calling her his saint, his star, his life, and whatever other
fair name poetry lends to love. All at once, however, her face flushed
crimson red, she drew her hand quickly away, and, rising up, made a
motion to retreat, saying, in a voice of alarm,--

"Oh, my Lord, this must not be! I am committing deadly sin to hear you.
Please, please go! please leave a poor girl!"

"Agnes, what does this mean?" said the cavalier. "Only two days since,
in this place, you promised to love me; and that promise has brought me
from utter despair to love of life. Nay, since you told me that, I have
been able to pray once more; the whole world seems changed for me: and
now will you take it all away,--you, who are all I have on earth?"

"My Lord, I did not know then that I was sinning. Our dear Mother knows
I sa