ent,
and all must be over; for at the end of the valley was the cliff, a
hundred and fifty feet high. I rushed after her. The sight of the sea
had struck her at once. She uttered a scream, and fell with her forehead
on the horse's neck. Even that movement probably checked him, for he
reared, and before his feet touched the ground again I was close to him;
with a frantic effort I caught his bridle, and swept his head round.
Mariamne fell, voiceless, sightless, and breathless, into my arms. The
spot where she was saved was within a single bound of the precipice.

The hunters now came round us, and all was congratulation. Our escape
was pronounced to be "miraculous;" I was complimented on all kinds of
heroism; and the stranger, evidently the chief personage of the circle,
after giving the glance of a connoisseur at poor Mariamne's still
pallid, yet expressive, countenance, thanked me, "for having allowed him
to breathe at last, which he had not done, he believed, for some
minutes, through terror." Nothing could exceed the graceful interest
which he expressed in my companion's safety. His grooms were sent to
look for assistance in all quarters, and it was not until a carriage had
arrived from the next village, and he had seen Mariamne placed in it,
that he could be persuaded to take his leave. Even in after life, when I
saw him in the midst of the splendour of the world, himself its ruling
star, and heard him so often quoted as

"The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,"

I thought that he never deserved the title more than when I saw him
perform the duties of simple good-nature to two unknown individuals on a
wild heath on the Sussex shore That stranger was the Prince of Wales!

This adventure, by all the laws of romance, should have made me fall in
love with Mariamne, or Mariamne fall in love with me. But reality has
laws of a different kind, and the good fortune of being just in time to
save a lady's life, whether on horseback or on foot, whether in lake or
river, whatever it might be in any other ages, is not necessarily a
pledge of eternal constancy in our times. That she was grateful, I fully
believe, for her nature was innocent and kind; but confession was out of
the question, for neither during our rapid drive home, nor for some days
after, was she capable of uttering one word. Alarm had reduced her to a
state of exhaustion next to death. Her slight frame had been so shaken
that she was as helpless as a c