resumed quickly, "thou knowest that these hopes were but dreams--that
the law ever stood between him and me--and that it was guilt to love
him."

"I knew the law," answered Hilda, "but the law of fools is to the wise
as the cobweb swung over the brake to the wing of the bird. Ye are
sibbe to each other, some five times removed; and therefore an old man
at Rome saith that ye ought not to wed. When the shavelings obey the
old man at home, and put aside their own wives and frillas [137], and
abstain from the wine cup, and the chase, and the brawl, I will stoop
to hear of their laws,--with disrelish it may be, but without scorn.
[138] It is no sin to love Harold; and no monk and no law shall
prevent your union on the day appointed to bring ye together, form and
heart."

"Hilda! Hilda! madden me not with joy," cried Edith, starting up in
rapturous emotion, her young face dyed with blushes, and all her
renovated beauty so celestial that Hilda herself was almost awed, as
if by the vision of Freya, the northern Venus, charmed by a spell from
the halls of Asgard.

"But that day is distant," renewed the Vala.

"What matters! what matters!" cried the pure child of Nature; "I ask
but hope. Enough,--oh! enough, if we were but wedded on the borders
of the grave!"

"Lo, then," said Hilda, "behold, the sun of thy life dawns again!"

As she spoke, the Vala stretched her arm, and through the intersticed