ould seize the poet, and the harp was
swept to the heroism of one who had neither palfreys nor garments to
bestow in guerdon of his applause.

The moments when she listened to the praises of her lover became
gradually more and more dear to the high-born Edith, relieving the
flattery with which her ear was weary, and presenting to her a subject
of secret contemplation, more worthy, as he seemed by general report,
than those who surpassed him in rank and in the gifts of fortune. As her
attention became constantly, though cautiously, fixed on Sir Kenneth,
she grew more and more convinced of his personal devotion to herself and
more and more certain in her mind that in Kenneth of Scotland she beheld
the fated knight doomed to share with her through weal and woe--and the
prospect looked gloomy and dangerous--the passionate attachment to which
the poets of the age ascribed such universal dominion, and which its
manners and morals placed nearly on the same rank with devotion itself.

Let us not disguise the truth from our readers. When Edith became aware
of the state of her own sentiments, chivalrous as were her sentiments,
becoming a maiden not distant from the throne of England--gratified as
her pride must have been with the mute though unceasing homage rendered
to her by the knight whom she had distinguished, there were moments
when the feelings of the woman, loving and beloved, murmured against the
restraints of state and form by which she was surrounded, and when she
almost blamed the timidity of her lover, who seemed resolved not to
infringe them. The etiquette, to use a modern phrase, of birth and rank,
had drawn around her a magical circle, beyond which Sir Kenneth might
indeed bow and gaze, but within which he could no more pass than an
evoked spirit can transgress the boundaries prescribed by the rod of a
powerful enchanter. The thought involuntarily pressed on her that she
herself must venture, were it but the point of her fairy foot, beyond
the prescribed boundary, if she ever hoped to give a lover so reserved
and bashful an opportunity of so slight a favour as but to salute her
shoe-tie. There was an example--the noted precedent of the "King's
daughter of Hungary," who thus generously encouraged the "squire of low
degree;" and Edith, though of kingly blood, was no king's daughter, any
more than her lover was of low degree--fortune had put no such extreme
barrier in obstacle to their affections. Something, however,