'My brother!' 'Well, my sister.' 'O,' she said, 'What do you here? and in this dress? and these? Why, who are these? a wolf within the fold! A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me! A plot, a plot, a plot, to ruin all!' 'No plot, no plot,' he answer'd.

Wretched boy,

How saw you not the inscription on the gate,
LET NO MAN ENTER IN ON PAIN OF DEATH?'
And if I had,' he answer'd, who could think
The softer Adams of your Academe,

O sister, Sirens tho' they be, were such
As chanted on the blanching bones of men?'
'But you will find it otherwise,' she said.
You jest; ill jesting with edge-tools! my vow
Binds me to speak, and O that iron will,
That axelike edge unturnable, our Head,
The Princess! Well then, Psyche, take my life,
And nail me like a weasel on a grange
For warning; bury me beside the gate,
And cut this epitaph above my bones:
Here lies a brother by a sister slain,

All for the common good of womankind.'
'Let me die too,' said Cyril, having seen
And heard the Lady Psyche.'

I struck in:

'Albeit so mask'd, madam, I love the truth; Receive it, and in me behold the Prince Your countryman, affianced years ago

To the Lady Ida. Here, for here she was,

And thus

what other way was left?

- I came.'

'O sir, O Prince, I have no country, none; but none. Whate'er I was

If

any,

this ;

Disrooted, what I am is grafted here.

Affianced, sir? love-whispers may not breathe
Within this vestal limit, and how should I,
Who am not mine, say, live? The thunderbolt
Hangs silent; but prepare. I speak, it falls.'
'Yet pause,' I said: 'for that inscription there,
I think no more of deadly lurks therein,
Than in a clapper clapping in a garth,

To scare the fowl from fruit; if more there be,
If more and acted on, what follows? war;
Your own work marr'd; for this your Academe,
Whichever side be victor, in the halloo
Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass
With all fair theories only made to gild
A stormless summer.' 'Let the Princess judge
Of that,' she said: farewell, sir and to you.
I shudder at the sequel, but I go.'

• Are you that Lady Psyche,' I rejoin'd,
The fifth in line from that old Florian,
Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall-
The gaunt old baron with his beetle brow
Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights-
As he bestrode my grandsire, when he fell,
And all else fled? we point to it, and we say,
The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold,

But branches current yet in kindred veins.'
'Are you that Psyche,' Florian added; 'she
With whom I sang about the morning hills,
Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly,
And snared the squirrel of the glen? are you
That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow,
To smooth my pillow, mix the foaming draught
Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read
My sickness down to happy dreams? are you
That brother-sister Psyche, both in one?
You were that Psyche, but what are you now?'
"You are that Psyche,' Cyril said, ' for whom
I would be that forever which I seem,

Woman, if I might sit beside your feet,
And glean your scatter'd sapience.'

Then once more,

'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I began,
That on her bridal morn before she past
From all her old companions, when the king
Kiss'd her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties
Would still be dear beyond the southern hills;
That were there any of our people there
In want or peril, there was one to hear
And help them? look! for such are these and I.'
• Are you that Psyche,' Florian ask'd, 'to whom,
In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn
Came flying while you sat beside the well?
The creature laid his muzzle on your lap

And sobb'd, and you sobb'd with it, and the blood

Was sprinkled on your kirtle, and you wept.
That was fawn's blood, not brother's, yet you

wept.

O, by the bright head of my little niece,

You were that Psyche, and what are you now ?' "You are that Psyche,' Cyril said again,

The mother of the sweetest little maid That ever crow'd for kisses.'

L

"Out upon it!'

She answer'd, 'peace! and why should I not play
The Spartan Mother with emotion, be

The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind?
Him you call great; he for the common weal,
The fading politics of mortal Rome,

As I might slay this child, if good need were,
Slew both his sons; and I, shall I, on whom
The secular emancipation turns

Of half this world, be swerved from right to

save

A prince, a brother? a little will I yield.

Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you.

O, hard when love and duty clash! I fear
My conscience will not count me fleckless; yet-
Hear my conditions: promise - otherwise

You perish as you came, to slip away

To-day, to-morrow, soon. It shall be said,

These women were too barbarous, would not learn; They fled, who might have shamed us.

all.'

Promise,

What could we else, we promised each; and she, Like some wild creature newly-caged, commenced A to-and-fro, so pacing till she paused

By Florian; holding out her lily arms

Took both his hands, and smiling faintly said:
"I knew you at the first; tho' you have grown
'I
You scarce have alter'd. I am sad and glad
To see you, Florian. I give thee to death,
My brother! it was duty spoke, not I.
My needful seeming harshness, pardon it.
Our mother, is she well?'

With that she kiss'd

His forehead, then, a moment after, clung
About him, and betwixt them blossom'd up
From out a common vein of memory

Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth,
And far allusion, till the gracious dews
Began to glisten and to fall; and while

They stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice,
'I brought a message here from Lady Blanche.'
Back started she, and turning round we saw
The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood,
Melissa, with her hand upon the lock,
A rosy blonde, and in a college gown,
That clad her like an April daffodilly-
Her mother's color with her lips apart,
And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes,
As bottom agates seen to wave and float
In crystal currents of clear morning seas.