t me. Do with me as you will--I will obey you--go
anywhere, and, worst of all, behold you wed another; ay, stand by, if
you desire it, and look on the ceremony, and try to forget that you once
promised me that I should be yours, and yours only."

"You speak more wisely, Ellen; and you will think more calmly upon it
when the present grief of your grandmother's death passes off."

"Oh, that is no grief, now, Guy," was the rather hasty reply. "That is
no grief now: should I regret that she has escaped these tidings--should
I regret that she has ceased to feel trouble, and to see and shed
tears--should I mourn, Guy, that she who loved me to the last, in spite
of my follies and vices, has ceased now to mourn over them? Oh, no! this
is no grief, now; it was grief but a little while ago, but now you have
made it matter of rejoicing."

"Think not of it,--speak no more in this strain, Ellen, lest you anger
me."

"I will not--chide me not--I have no farther reproaches. Yet, Guy, is
she, the lady you are about to wed--is she beautiful, is she young--has
she long raven tresses, as I had once, when your fingers used to play in
them?" and with a sickly smile, which had in it something of an old
vanity, she unbound the string which confined her own hair, and let it
roll down upon her back in thick and beautiful volumes, still black,
glossy and delicately soft as silk.

The outlaw was moved. For a moment his iron muscles relaxed--a gentler
expression overspread his countenance, and he took her in his arms. That
single, half-reluctant embrace was a boon not much bestowed in the
latter days of his victim, and it awakened a thousand tender
recollections in her heart, and unsealed a warm spring of gushing
waters. An infantile smile was in her eyes, while the tears were flowing
down her cheeks.

But, shrinking or yielding, at least to any great extent, made up very
little of the character of the dark man on whom she depended; and the
more than feminine weakness of the young girl who hung upon his bosom
like a dying flower, received its rebuke, after a few moments of
unwonted tenderness, when, coldly resuming his stern habit, he put her
from his arms, and announced to her his intention of immediately taking
his departure.

"What," she asked, "will you not stay with me through the night, and
situated as I am?"

"It is impossible; even now I am waited for, and should have been some
hours on my way to an appointment which I must not b