With a heightened colour in her cheek, and a charming timidity in her eye, she approached, and, touching his arm, said—
"Christina told me thou wert here, Konrad; and wouldst thou go without one greeting—one farewell—to me?"
Her accents sank into his inmost soul; he trembled beneath her touch, and felt all his resolution melting fast away.
"Unkind Konrad!" said she, with one of her sad but most winning smiles, "is this the friendship thou didst vow to me at Westeray?"
"I have learned, Anna, that love can never be succeeded by friendship. It runs to the other extreme—the impulses of the human heart cannot pause midway."
"Heaven forbid!" replied Konrad, clasping his hands; "hate thee, Anna? oh no!"
His eyes were full of the sweetness and ardour of the days of their first love, and Anna’s filled with tears.
"I have long wished," she faltered, in a low and broken voice, while seating herself on the bench of one of those deeply-recessed windows near them—"I have long wished to see thee once more," she repeated, without raising her timid eyes, "to implore—not thy pardon, dear Konrad, for that I have no right to expect—but—but that thou wilt not remember me with bitterness"——
Konrad muttered something—he knew not what.
"I feel, Konrad, that I owe thee much for all I have made thee suffer; and I have now seen the worth and faith of thy heart when contrasted with mine own, and I blush for my weakness—my wickedness—my folly. Thou mayest deem this unwomanly—indelicate; but in love we are equal, and why may not one make reparation as the other—I as well as thou? I have lived, I say, to learn the value of the heart that loved me so well, and which, in a moment of frenzy—infatuation—O, dearest Konrad! call it what thou wilt—I forsook for another—another who betrayed me by a semblance of religious rites—oh! spare me the rest!" ....
"Anna," said Konrad, in a choking voice, as he rose to retire—but, instead, drew nearer to her; "though my eye may be hollow, my cheek pale, and my heart soured and saddened, its first sentiment for thee hath never altered. Anna—Anna, God knoweth that it hath not! For all thou hast made me endure for the past two years—from my heart—from my soul, I forgive thee, and I pray that thou mayest be happy. Anna—dearest Anna—I am going far away from the hills and woods of Bergen, to join the Lubeckers, or perhaps the Knights of Rhodes in their warfare in the distant East, for I have doomed myself to exile; but I still regard thee as I did, when we were in yon far isle of Westeray—as my sister—as my friend. As we first met in this old castle hall, when thou wert but a guileless girl and I a heedless boy, so shall we now part. All is forgotten—all is forgiven. And now—farewell; may the mother of God bless thee!"