CHAPTER VI. " What iâ't we live for f tell life's fairest tale— To eat, to drink, to sleep, love, and enjoy, And then to love no more! To talk of things we know not, and to know Nothing but things not worth the talking of." SIB, R. FANE, JR. " METHINKS," said Adela, as she sat with Maude in the loved twilight conference, " it were a weary thing, to fast and pray as doth my sister Cicely, and look forever on those dull, cold images of stone or pictured saints, whose holiness we can never hope to reach." " Thou thinkest so, dearest, because on the bright scroll of thy future is pictured a living form glowing with youth, and beauty," said Maude ; " but when death shuts out the light of hope, the pencil of love illumines the canvass ever with the image of a saint." " I have never seen a Saxon saint but thee, best one," said Adela, affectionately kissing her cheek. " Cicely worships the memoryr of him who would have wrested the broad realm of England from her father." " And Agatha died for one who loved that father," said Maude, half reproachfully. " I cannot read aright the riddle of life," replied Adela, pensively, " less still the riddle of love. Doth not the heart seek happiness as the flower seeks the light? yet what men call the 'ends life lives for,' wealth and power and dominion, terminate in discontent, despair, and death. No duke of Normandy, since the days of Ron, hath been so successful as William the Conqueror, yet the meanest serf is happier than he : and this love that makes my heart flutter like a joyous bird, has consigned our Agatha to an early grave—immured Cicely in the abhorrent convent— and," she added, with a deprecating glance, " has plucked the last pale rose from the cheek of my lovely Ma^de." 44 HEROINES OP THE CRUSADES.