Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/158

136 fairest things of earth. Henceforth her thoughts shall only be fixed on death and objects of solemn interest.

As she muses thus, slowly treading the little path where she had often strayed with her recreant lover, the tramp of horse’s feet broke on the wood’s stillness. Their clatter reached even her abstracted ears. Looking up with a start, she beheld standing in her path, with steed smoking with the haste with which they rode, Lord Lacy, and his friend Lord Ernsby, a blunt old soldier, whose face Margaret has once before seen.

In a trice Lacy leaps from his horse, and kneeling at her feet, he seizes the hand which she endeavors to withhold from his grasp.

“Am I too late, Margaret?” he cries. “I have ridden with all speed to stop thy purpose. The letter was but a jest to try thy constancy. No word of it was true. Speak to me, sweet one: thou wilt not be a nun?”

“My lord, I am even now on my way to Framlingham. There shall I shortly take the sacred vows. Your letter has killed my heart, It is forever dead to love. Let me go, my lord. Seek not to trouble my thoughts, which now are fixed on things above the earth.”

“Forgive me, Margaret, and take back your vows. You will not for a jest (I confess a cruecruel [sic]