Such is the New Forest now, and such it was eight centuries ago, on a bright sunny morning, towards the end of summer. The hour was still early, for the dew yet sparkled in the grass, or pattered down from the foliage as the wind stirred among the forest branches. The scene was one of the loveliest the chace afforded—a bright glade embosomed in the most silent depths of the forest. The whole of this open space was carpeted with the thickest and greenest grass, varying in hue, at every breath of the balmy wind over the undulated surface. On one side, the glade was bounded by a gentle elevation, covered with stately oaks, whose giant branches, spreading out far and wide, buried their trunks in the obscurity of a constant twilight—and on the other three sides the ground either extended itself in a plain, or sloped so gently off, that the descent was nearly imperceptible. Thousands of wild flowers spangled the surface of the glade, some flaunting proudly on the air, and some modestly hiding under the long grass, yet all sending forth the most delicious perfume—while innumerable birds, of every variety of plumage, hopped from twig to twig, or skimmed across the glade, filling the air with untold harmonies,—and high in the heaven, a solitary lark, lingering there long after his fellows had departed, poured forth his lay with such sweet, such liquid harmony, that a stranger, unaccustomed to his song, and unable to distinguish his tiny form far up in the sunny ether, might well have fancied those unrivalled notes the breathings of an unseen cherubim.
Such was the scene on which there now gazed two beings, both beautiful, but one surpassingly so. The elder of the two might have been one and thirty, and both his face and figure were moulded in the noblest style of manly beauty. His broad brow, chiselled features, and commanding port, bespoke him one born to rule, although the simple and somewhat mean garb he wore argued that he was not rich in this world’s goods. The attire of his companion was richer, but less gay, and she wore the veil of a novice. Her face, however, made up in loveliness for whatever absence of ornament there was in her dress, and indeed she might well have challenged the world to produce her rival. The fair delicate skin through which the blue veins could be seen meandering, the snowy brow that seemed made for the temple of the loveliest and purest thoughts, the golden hair that lay in wreathes upon the forehead, and the blue eye whose azure depths seemed to conceal mysteries as pure and rapturing as those of heaven, made up a countenance of overpowering beauty, even without that expression, so high and seraphic, which beamed with her every word, and threw over each lineament of her face a loveliness almost divine. Her figure was like that of a sylph, yet full and rounded in every limb; and beneath her dress peeped forth one of the most delicate feet that ever trod green sward. She was perhaps eighteen, though she might have been younger. She sat now on a low bank, at the very edge of the forest, while her companion reclined at her feet, holding one of her tiny hands in his broad palm, and gazing up into her eyes with a look of the deepest, yet most respectful passion. Nor were the maiden’s orbs averted from his gaze, for ever and anon she would twine her fingers playfully yet half sadly in his locks, and return his look with all a woman’s tenderness.