and evident feeling which, save
in love, rarely, if ever, crossed his hardy breast. "She is! our tale is
a brief one:--we loved each other as children: Her family was wealthier
than mine: We were separated. I was given to understand that she
abandoned me. I despaired, and in despair I took the cross of St. John.
Chance threw us again together. I learned that her love was
undecayed. Poor child!--she was even then, sir, but a child! I,
wild,--reckless--and not unskilled, perhaps, in the arts that woo and
win. She could not resist my suit or her own affection!--We fled. In
those words you see the thread of my after history. My sword and
my Adeline were all my fortune. Society frowned on us. The Church
threatened my soul. The Grand Master my life. I became a knight of
fortune. Fate and my right hand favoured me. I have made those who
scorned me tremble at my name. That name shall yet blaze, a star or a
meteor, in the front of troubled nations, and I may yet win by force
from the Pontiff the dispensation refused to my prayers. On the same
day, I may offer Adeline the diadem and the ring.--Eno' of this;--you
marked Adeline's cheek!--Seems it not delicate? I like not that
changeful flush,--and she moves languidly,--her step that was so
blithe!"

"Change of scene and the mild south will soon restore her health," said
Adrian; "and in your peculiar life she is so little brought in contact
with others, especially of her own sex, that I trust she is but seldom
made aware of whatever is painful in her situation. And woman's love,
Montreal, as we both have learned, is a robe that wraps her from many a
storm!"

"You speak kindly," returned the Knight; "but you know not all our cause
of grief. Adeline's father, a proud sieur, died,--they said of a broken
heart,--but old men die of many another disease than that! The mother, a
dame who boasted her descent from princes, bore the matter more sternly
than the sire; clamoured for revenge,--which was odd, for she is as
religious as a Dominican, and revenge is not Christian in a woman,
though it is knightly in a man!--Well, my Lord, we had one boy, our
only child; he was Adeline's solace in my absence,--his pretty ways were
worth the world to her! She loved him so, that, but he had her eyes and
looked like her when he slept, I should have been jealous! He grew up in
our wild life, strong and comely; the young rogue, he would have been a
brave knight! My evil stars led me to Milan, where I