ear and apprehension, in which
there mingled some strange troubled gleams of happiness. "Well, then, I
will. Ah! I hope it is no sin."

"Believe me, dearest, it is not," said the knight. "Say it again,--say,
that I may hear it,--say, 'If ever I am man's wife, I will be
thine,'--say it, and I will go."

"Well, then, my Lord, if ever I am man's wife, I will be thine," said
Agnes. "But I will be no man's wife. My heart and hand are promised
elsewhere. Come, now, my Lord, your word must be kept."

"Let me put this ring on your finger, lest you forget," said the
cavalier. "It was my mother's ring, and never during her lifetime heard
anything but prayers and hymns. It is saintly, and worthy of thee."

"No, my Lord, I may not. Grandmother would inquire about it. I cannot
keep it; but fear not my forgetting: I shall never forget you."

"Will you ever want to see me, Agnes?"

"I hope not, since it is not best. But you do not go."

"Well, then, farewell, my little wife! farewell, till I claim thee!"
said the cavalier, as he kissed her hand, and vaulted over the wall.

"How strange that I _cannot_ make him understand!" said Agnes, when he
was gone. "I must have sinned, I must have done wrong; but I have been
trying all the while to do right. Why would he stay so and look at me so
with those deep eyes? I was very hard with him,--very! I trembled for
him, I was so severe; and yet it has not discouraged him enough. How
strange that he would call me so, after all, when I explained to him
I never could marry!--Must I tell all this to Father Francesco? How
dreadful! How he looked at me before! How he trembled and turned away
from me! What will he think now? Ah, me! why must I tell _him_? If I
could only confess to my mother Theresa, that would be easier. We have a
mother in heaven to hear us; why should we not have a mother on earth?
Father Francesco frightens me so! His eyes burn me! They seem to burn
into my soul, and he seems angry with me sometimes, and sometimes looks
at me so strangely! Dear, blessed Mother," she said, kneeling at the
shrine, "help thy little child! I do not want to do wrong: I want to do
right. Oh that I could come and live with thee!"

Poor Agnes! a new experience had opened in her heretofore tranquil life,
and her day was one of conflict. Do what she would, the words that
had been spoken to her in the morning would return to her mind, and
sometimes she awoke with a shock of guilty surprise at finding s