SCENE 1. The end of the Yew-tree Avenue under Mildred's window. A light seen through a central red pane.

(Enter Tresham through the trees.) Again here! But I cannot lose myself. The heath-the orchard-I have traversed glades

And dells and bosky paths which used to lead

Into green wild-wood depths, bewildering My boy's adventurous step. And now they tend

Hither or soon or late; the blackest shade Breaks up, the thronged trunks of the trees ope wide,

And the dim turret I have fled from, fronts

Again my step; the very river put
Its arm about me and conducted me

(The light is placed above in the purple pane.)

And see, my signal rises, Mildred's star! I never saw it lovelier than now It rises for the last time. If it sets, 'Tis that the re-assuring sun may dawn. (As he prepares to ascend the last tree of the avenue, Tresham arrests his arm.) Unhand me--peasant, by your grasp! Here's gold.

'T was a mad freak of mine. I said I'd pluck

A branch from the white-blossomed shrub beneath

The casement there. Take this, and hold

Exactly as, in curious dreams I've had How felons, this wild earth is full of, look

When they're detected, still your kind has looked!

The bravo holds an assured countenance, The thief is voluble and plausible,

But silently the slave of lust has crouched When I have fancied it before a man. Your name!

Mert. I do conjure Lord Tresham-ay,

Kissing his foot, if so I might prevail-
That he for his own sake forbear to ask
My name! As heaven's above, his
future weal

Or woe depends upon my silence! Vain!
I read your white inexorable face.
Know me, Lord Tresham!

Tres.

My lord—

How young he is'

Mert. Lord Tresham, I am very young.

and yet

I have entangled other lives with mine. Do let me speak, and do believe my speech!

At her first menace, that they bade her strike,

And stood and laughed her subtlest skill to scorn.

Oh, 't is not so with me! The first woe fell,

And the rest fall upon it, not on me: Else should I bear that Henry comes not? -fails

Just this first night out of so many nights?

Loving is done with. Were he sitting

now,

As so few hours since, on that seat, we'd love

No more contrive no thousand happy ways

To hide love from the loveless, any more. I think I might have urged some little point

In my defence, to Thorold; he was breathless

For the least hint of a defence: but no, The first shame over, all that would might fall.

No Henry! Yet I merely sit and think The morn's deed o'er and o'er. I must have crept

Out of myself. A Mildred that has lost Her lover-oh, I dare not look upon Such woe! I crouch away from it! "T is she,

Mildred, will break her heart, not I! The world

Forsakes me: only Henry's left meleft?

When I have lost him, for he does not come,

And I sit stupidly... Oh Heaven,

break up

This worse than anguish, this mad

apathy,

Tres. He bade me tell you.

Mil.
What I do forbid
Your utterance of! So much that you
may tell

And will not-how you murdered him but, no!

You'll tell me that he loved me, never

Tres. You cannot, Mildred! for the harsh

words, yes:

Of this last deed Another 's judge; whose doom

I wait in doubt, despondency and fear.