This feeling had been ripened by their subsequent familiar intercourse, and was increased on Adrian's side by the feeling, that in convincing Montreal of the policy of withdrawing from the Roman territories, he had obtained an advantage that well repaid whatever danger and delay he had undergone.
The sigh, and the altered manner of Montreal, did not escape Adrian, and he naturally connected it with something relating to her whose music had been its evident cause.
"Yon lovely dame," said he, gently, "touches the lute with an exquisite and fairy hand, and that plaintive air seems to my ear as of the minstrelsy of Provence." "It is the air I taught her," said Montreal, sadly, "married as it is to indifferent words, with which I first wooed a heart that should never have given itself to me! Ay, young Colonna, many a night has my boat been moored beneath the starlit Sorgia that washes her proud father's halls, and my voice awaked the stillness of the waving sedges with a soldier's serenade.

Sweet memories! bitter fruit!" "Why bitter?
ye love each other still." "But I am vowed to celibacy, and Adeline de Courval is leman where she should be wedded dame.

Methinks I fret at that thought even more than she,--dear Adeline!" "Your lady, as all would guess, is then nobly born ?" "She is," answered Montreal, with a deep and evident feeling which, save in love, rarely, if ever, crossed his hardy breast.

"She is! our tale is a brief one:--we loved each other as children: Her family was wealthier than mine: We were separated.

I was given to understand that she abandoned me.