The "_we_" escaped his lips before he was aware of it; but the time for reticence was past. He turned into the Abbey, and Griselda made no resistance. Then with impassioned earnestness Leslie Travers told his love, and often as the tale is told, it is seldom rehearsed with more simple manly fervour. For in the reality of his love Leslie Travers forgot all the flowery and fulsome love epithets which were the fashion of the day. He did not kneel at her feet and vow he was her slave; he did not call her by a thousand names of endearment; but he made her feel perfect confidence in his sincerity. This confidence ever awakes a response in the heart of a true woman, and makes her ready to trust her future in his hands who asks to guard it henceforth.
"Yes," she had answered in a low but clear tone; "yes, I thank you for the kindness you do me."
"It _is_ a kindness to take a friendless and penniless orphan to your heart." Then she looked up at him, and reading in his clear pure eyes the story his lips had so lately uttered, she added with a smile, through the April mist of tears in her beautiful eyes: "Yes, it _is_ a kindness, let me take it as such; but not leave myself your debtor, for I will give you in return all my heart, and be henceforth to you tender and true."
He seized her hands in rapture, and kissed them passionately.
"We are in a church," he said; "let us seal our betrothal here, and pray for God's blessing."
They were hidden from sight as they stood within the entrance of Prior Bird's Chantry Chapel, and there, hand clasped in hand, the young lovers knelt and silently prayed for God's blessing.
As they rose, Griselda looked round, and a blast of chill air came over her from the opening of a side door. She shuddered, and said:
"Yes; cold and damp. Let us hasten out into the sunshine."
"Some old woman, I dare say, who comes to dust and clean," he answered, as they walked down the nave, surrounded, as it there was, with many tombs, and the walls crowded with tablets in memory of the dead.
Lady Jane Waller's stately monument, and Bishop Montague's, were then, as now, conspicuous; and Griselda paused for a moment by the recumbent figure of the Lady Jane.
As she did so, a figure, well known and dreaded, was seen coming from behind the monument.