he girl shivered a little, and stole her hand into
her lover's, and they began to talk about the far different place where
she should live; his beautiful palace, far away in the sunny country
beyond the sea. She was never weary of hearing about the new place and
new life that she was going to, and all the beauty and happiness that
were going to be hers.

So time went on, until at last the day before the marriage-day came.
Eileen had been showing her lover all her ornaments; she had a great
number of very precious ones, and, to please him and amuse herself, she
had been putting them all on, loading herself with armlets, and
bracelets, and heavy chains of gold, such as the old Irish princesses
used to wear, till she looked as gorgeous as a princess herself.

It was a sunny summer day, and she sat thinking to herself, "My married
life will begin so soon now--the new, beautiful, strange life--and I
will wear these ornaments in the midst of it; but where everything else
is so lovely, will he think me then as lovely as he does now?"

Presently she glanced up, with a little shyness and a little vanity,
just to see if he was looking at and thinking of her; but as she lifted
up her head, instead of finding that his eyes were resting on her, she
found----

Well, she found that the knight was certainly not thinking of her one
bit. He was sitting staring fixedly at one corner of the apartment, with
his lips working in the oddest fashion; twitching this way and that, and
parting and showing his teeth, while he was clawing with his hands the
chair on which he sat.

"Dear me!" said Eileen rather sharply and pettishly, "what is the matter
with you?"

Eileen spoke pretty crossly; for as she had on various previous
occasions seen the knight conduct himself in this sort of way, her
feeling was less of alarm at the sight of him than simply of annoyance
that at this moment, when she herself had been thinking of him so
tenderly, he could be giving his attention to any other thing. "What is
the matter with you?" she said; and she raised herself in her chair and
turned round her head to see if she could perceive anything worth
looking at in that corner into which the knight was staring almost as if
the eyes would leap out of his head.

"Why, there's nothing there but a mouse!" she said contemptuously, when
she had looked and listened for a moment, and heard only a little faint
scratching behind the tapestry.

"No, no, I believe not;