Gertrude had not as yet the presentiments that filled the soul ofTrevylyan. She thought too little of herself to know her danger, andthose hours to her were hours of unmingled sweetness. Sometimes, indeed,the exhaustion of her disease tinged her spirits with a vague sadness,an abstraction came over her, and a languor she vainly struggledagainst. These fits of dejection and gloom touched Trevylyan to thequick; his eye never ceased to watch them, nor his heart to soothe.Often when he marked them, he sought to attract her attention from whathe fancied, though erringly, a sympathy with his own forebodings, andto lead her young and romantic imagination through the temporarybeguilements of fiction; for Gertrude was yet in the first bloom ofyouth, and all the dews of beautiful childhood sparkled freshly from thevirgin blossoms of her mind. And Trevylyan, who had passed some of hisearly years among the students of Leipsic, and was deeply versed in thevarious world of legendary lore, ransacked his memory for such talesas seemed to him most likely to win her interest; and often with falsesmiles entered into the playful tale, or oftener, with more faithfulinterest, into the graver legend of trials that warned yet beguiled themfrom their own. Of such tales I have selected but a few; I know not thatthey are the least unworthy of repetition,--they are those which manyrecollections induce me to repeat the most willingly. Gertrude lovedthese stories, for she had not yet lost, by the coldness of the world,one leaf from that soft and wild romance which belonged to her beautifulmind; and, more than all, she loved the sound of a voice which everyday became more and more musical to her ear. "Shall I tell you," saidTrevylyan, one morning, as he observed her gloomier mood stealing overthe face of Gertrude,--"shall I tell you, ere yet we pass into the dullland of Holland, a story of Malines, whose spires we shall shortlysee?" Gertrude's face brightened at once, and as she leaned back in thecarriage as it whirled rapidly along, and fixed her deep blue eyes onTrevylyan, he began the following tale.
The Pilgrims of the Rhine Page 21
