Alas! I had forgotten that he was old, for I saw not his progress to decay; and now, save my faithless dog, I was utterly alone, till I came hither and found _thee_." Lucille stooped down to caress the dog; she blessed the desertion that had led him to a friend who never could desert.
But however much, and however gratefully, St.Amand loved Lucille, her power availed not to chase the melancholy from his brow, and to reconcile him to his forlorn condition.
"Ah, would that I could see thee! would that I could look upon a face that my heart vainly endeavours to delineate!" "If thou couldst," sighed Lucille, "thou wouldst cease to love me." "Impossible!" cried St.Amand, passionately.

"However the world may find thee, _thou_ wouldst become my standard of beauty; and I should judge not of thee by others, but of others by thee." He loved to hear Lucille read to him, and mostly he loved the descriptions of war, of travel, of wild adventure, and yet they occasioned him the most pain.

Often she paused from the page as she heard him sigh, and felt that she would even have renounced the bliss of being loved by him, if she could have restored to him that blessing, the desire for which haunted him as a spectre.
Lucille's family were Catholic, and, like most in their station, they possessed the superstitions, as well as the devotion of the faith.
Sometimes they amused themselves of an evening by the various legends and imaginary miracles of their calendar; and once, as they were thus conversing with two or three of their neighbours, "The Tomb of the Three Kings of Cologne" became the main topic of their wondering recitals.
However strong was the sense of Lucille, she was, as you will readily conceive, naturally influenced by the belief of those with whom she had been brought up from her cradle, and she listened to tale after tale of the miracles wrought at the consecrated tomb, as earnestly and undoubtingly as the rest.
And the Kings of the East were no ordinary saints; to the relics of the Three Magi, who followed the Star of Bethlehem, and were the first potentates of the earth who adored its Saviour, well might the pious Catholic suppose that a peculiar power and a healing sanctity would belong.

Each of the circle (St.Amand, who had been more than usually silent, and even gloomy during the day, had retired to his own apartment, for there were some moments when, in the sadness of his thoughts, he sought that solitude which he so impatiently fled from at others)--each of the circle had some story to relate equally veracious and indisputable, of an infirmity cured, or a prayer accorded, or a sin atoned for at the foot of the holy tomb.

One story peculiarly affected Lucille; the narrator, a venerable old man with gray locks, solemnly declared himself a witness of its truth.
A woman at Anvers had given birth to a son, the offspring of an illicit connection, who came into the world deaf and dumb.