Why don’t he come?

It was a splendid landscape. Far away before the eye stretched a wide, undulating country, checkered with lordly mansions, extensive woodlands, and here and there a quiet little village peeping out from amidst the verdant hills; while away on the verge of the horizon glittered a majestic river, which, winding hither and thither among the uplands, burst at length into view in a flood of glorious light, that lay like a shield of burnished silver in the distance.

Nor was the foreground of the scene less beautiful. Art had there been taxed to rival nature in loveliness. Terraces sinking one beneath another; a verdant lawn that seemed like velvet; rich, old lordly balustrades skirting the garden at your feet; and beyond, open glades, and clumps of forest trees thrown together in apparent confusion, but to produce which the utmost skill had been tasked, evinced at once the taste and opulence, of Lord Deraine, the owner of that rich domain. Such was the scene upon which two beings gazed on a lovely summer afternoon, in the year 16—.

One of these was a youth, just verging into manhood, dressed in a dark, plain suit, with a deep lace collar, and cuffs of the same material. He had apparently been singing, and accompanying himself on the guitar; for his instrument was still held idly in his hand, as he sat at the feet of a lady, into whose face he was looking up with a rapt intensity of gaze, which told that the soul of the page—for such he seemed—was in every glance.

And well might his emotion toward that lovely being be one of unmixed love; for never did a more beautiful creature gaze upon a summer landscape. Tall, stately, with dark lustrous eyes, and a port that might have become a queen, Isabel Mowbray, was a being formed to be loved with an intensity such as this world rarely witnesses. As she now stood gazing out upon the landscape, with one hand shading her brow, and the other thrown back, and resting on the balustrade, thus displaying her snowy neck and bust, and her matchless figure to the best advantage, she seemed a being too beautiful for aught but a poet’s imagination.

“You are silent, this afternoon, cousin,” at last said the youth, breaking a silence which had lasted for several minutes, “what are you looking at, Isabel?”

The maiden made no reply, but still gazed down the park. She was apparently lost in thought.

“Shall I sing again for you?” said the boy, in his low, sweet voice, looking up more devotedly than ever into the maiden’s face, “you used to like to hear me sing, you know, Isabel.”

“Oh! Henry is it you?” said the beauty, looking down, and half blushing, as if detected in something she wished to conceal, “sing by all means, my pretty page and coz. Sing me that old lay of the troubadour, and here Wyn,” and she called playfully to a beautiful greyhound reposing at the feet of the boy, “come here and let me talk to you, while Henry sings.”

An expression of gratified joy—of joy such as is rarely seen, except in the countenances of those who love—illumined the whole face of the boy as the maiden thus spoke—and taking up his guitar, he sang the words of an olden lay, which has now passed, with many a fair lip that once warbled it, into oblivion.

Gazing up into the face of the maiden as he sang, the youth appeared to have forgotten that aught else existed on earth besides the object of his adoration,—while the caresses lavished upon his greyhound, but more than all the occasional smiles which Isabel bestowed upon himself, filled his whole soul with a delicious emotion, such as is known only to us when we fancy our first love is returned. But had he not been misled by his own blind admiration, he might have seen much in her conduct to dissipate his delusion; for scarcely a minute would elapse, without Isabel casting an anxious glance, down the avenue of the park, and once her lips moved unconsciously, and even the page might have heard her murmur, had he listened, “I wonder where he can be?” But appearing to awake to her indiscretion, the maiden suddenly ceased gazing, and turning to Henry, said,

“A thousand, thousand thanks, sweet coz. You sing, to-night, sweeter than ever. But there if Wyn—the saucy fellow—has not run off with my shawl.”

The eyes of the youth lighted up with pleasure, and the blood mounted even to his brow, at this encomium,—and exclaiming,

“Stay—I will win back the truant,” he bounded gaily down the terrace after the playful hound.

The maiden followed him with her eyes, and sighed, “Poor Henry.” In those two words what a volume of hopeless love and years of anguish for the youth were spoken.