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AT ST. COLUMBA.
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sage; and though he acknowledged having a great affection for the soldier of the Netherlands, he said so little in his praise, that the lady was quite unprepared to meet an object so conspicuous in every fascination of person and manners. The inflections of his heart-appealing voice reminded her of the sage; his eyes had the same animated tenderness when he addressed her; but all the attractions of youth sat on his brow, fair and polished as her own, and like her own half shaded by chesnut ringlets.

Many days passed. The sage did not reappear. Dulsibella had risen early, and pacing the great hall tried to divert her pensive meditations from the sage and his rival, Lord Glenonan, by admiring the cumbrous magnificence of the furniture, when the young hero joined her. This interview produced the usual effect upon two ingenuous overflowing hearts, and Dulsibella had tacitly assented to her lover's intense solicitation for leave to make a formal application to her father and to Lord Murray, when his Lordship accosted them with significant hints of the predicament in which they respectively stood. In that era of broad facetiousness, courtly language or demeanour had not reached the perfection of modern refinement by many degrees. Dulsibella's complexion had oft been indebted to the Earl of Murray's unspar-