"
"Nay," answered a voice within her. "I sent thee not home. I gave
thee to him to whom thou didst belong. He hath brought thee home.
What said the vision? 'Take her. She is thine own. I have but kept
her for thee.'"
Yet Hugh knew naught of this gracious message--knew naught of the
vision which had given her to him. Until to-night she had felt it
impossible to tell him of it. Now she longed that he should share with
her the wonder.
She sought her couch, but sleep would not come. The moonlight was too
bright; the room too sweetly familiar. Moreover it seemed but
yesterday that she had parted from Hugh, in such an ecstasy of love and
sorrow, up on the battlements.
A great desire seized her to mount to those battlements, and to stand
again just where she had stood when she bade him farewell.
She rose.
Among the garments put ready for her use, chanced to be the robe of
sapphire velvet which she had worn on that night.
She put it on; with jewels at her breast and girdle. Then, with the
mantle of ermine falling from her shoulders, and her beautiful hair
covering her as a veil, she left her chamber, passed softly along the
passage, found the winding stair, and mounted to the ramparts.
As she stepped out from the turret stairway, she exclaimed at the
sublime beauty of the scene before her; the sleeping world at midnight,
bathed in the silvery light of the moon; the shadows of the firs, lying
like black bars across the road to the Castle gate.
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