rom
becoming completely distraught."

"I will send a woman to her," said the lieutenant. "The girl, if so she
be, and no boy would rave so, hath been too long alone. We are but rude
nurses for such sorrow. Truly it grieves me that one so young should meet
with so much of misery."

And he left the apartment.

CHAPTER XXVI

A FELLOW PRISONER

A merciful illness prostrated Francis for many weeks, and when at length
she crept slowly toward health, the winter had passed and spring was
abroad in the land. Her convalescence was tedious, owing to a settled
melancholy utterly unlike her usual buoyant disposition, which had taken
possession of her. Upon one point only did a gleam of her native spirit
flash forth. This was when Mrs. Shelton, the wife of one of the keepers,
brought her the apparel suitable to her sex.

"Nay; vex me not with them, good mistress," exclaimed Francis. "'Twas by
my father's command that I donned this attire, and, by my faith, I will
exchange it for no other until he bids me."

"That may be never, Mistress Stafford," retorted the woman impatiently.
"Thou mayst never see him again."

"Then will I wear it to my grave," was Francis' answer. "I am fixed in
this resolve, Mistress Shelton, and naught can turn me from it."

"As ye please then," quoth the dame. "Full surely thou art as stubborn a
lady as it hath ever been my hap to see. But if ye will not, ye will
not;" and she took the garments away.

Francis now occupied her mother's apartment in the Bell Tower, and
because of this fact found a curious contentment in it.

"It may be that her spirit lingers here loth to leave me alone," she
thought, and she took to watching for a sign that such was the case.

She was roused from this dangerous train of thought by Mrs. Shelton
appearing before her one day with a basket of figs. The girl uttered an
exclamation of delight at sight of them, so small a thing does it take to
arouse interest sometimes.

"For me?" she cried. "Whence came they? Who could have sent them?"

"Ask me not, mistress. I know naught of them save that they came from
without the gates of the Tower. Sir Michael searched the basket, and as
there was nothing but the fruit, he let it pass."

"Who could have sent them?" murmured Francis, again in ecstasy. It was so
sweet not to be forgotten. To know that some one still remembered her.
"Could it be my father? Nay; he would not dare. Lord Shrope? Yea; it must
have been he. Goo