but that it might take him from his Marie ere his wishes were accomplished, and her earthly happiness, as he thought, secured.  The first attack was but the forerunner of others, sometimes very slight and brief, at others longer and more alarming, rendering Marie more and more determined to keep her fatal secret from him; for it appeared to her that any stronger emotion than customary would be followed by those attacks; and as her love for him seemed to increase in intensity with the anxiety his precarious health occasioned, so did her dread of occasioning him aught of grief.  But how fruitless are our best and wisest resolutions!  One little hour, and every thought was changed.

CHAPTER VI.

  “Oh! praise me not—­
  Look gently on me, or I sink to earth
  Not thus.”

  DE CHATILLON.

It was the custom of the inmates of the Vale of Cedars, once in every year, and generally about the season of Michaelmas, to celebrate a festival, which ordained the erection of a booth or tent of “branches of thick trees,” in which for seven days every meal was taken, and greater part of the day (except the time passed in the little Temple) was spent.  Large branches of the palm and cedar, the willow, acacia, and the oak, cut so as to prevent their withering for the seven days, formed the walls of the tent; their leaves intermingling over head, so as to form a shelter, and yet permit the beautiful blue of the heavens to peep within.  Flowers of every shade and scent formed a bordering within; and bouquets, richly and tastefully arranged, placed in vases filled with scented earth, hung from the branches forming the roof.  Fruit, too, was there—­the purple grape, the ripe red orange, the paler lemon, the lime, the pomegranate, the citron, all of which the vale afforded, adorned the board (which for those seven days was always spread within the tent), intermingled with cakes made by Marie.

This was one of the festivals for which many of the secret race would visit the vale; but it so happened that, this year, Manuel, his child, and their retainers, kept it alone—­a source of disappointment and anxiety to the former, whose health was rapidly (but still to his child almost invisibly) failing.  At the close of the solemn fast which always preceded by five days this festival of rejoicing, he had had a recurrence of his deathlike fits of insensibility, longer and more alarming than usual; but he had rallied, and attributed it so naturally to his long fast, that alarm once more gave place to hope in the heart of his daughter.  Not thus, however, felt her father—­convinced that death could not be long delayed, he but waited for his nephew’s appearance and acknowledged love for his cousin, at once to give her to him, and prepare her for the worst.  Parental anxiety naturally increased with every hour that passed, and Ferdinand appeared not.