mute appeal; falling on her knees, she buried
her face amid the drapery of his robe. In this posture she continued for
a few minutes: her lips uttered no word, but her bosom heaved as if in
mortal struggle, and her hard breathings were almost groans. At length,
still kneeling, she raised her head, her hands clasped, her swollen but
tearless eyes fixed upon the pale, anxious, and alarmed countenance of
her parent. He would have spoken, but she raised her finger in token
that she entreated silence; a moment afterwards she addressed him in
broken and disjointed sentences.

"I can hardly give it utterance--and when I think upon it, I know not
why I should intrude so vile a falsehood on your ear, my father; but
Burrell seemed so real, so fearfully real in what he said, that I
tremble still, and my voice comes heavily to my lips." She paused for
breath, and pressed her clasped hands on her bosom.

Sir Robert, imagining that she alluded to her marriage, which he knew
Burrell must have been urging upon her, replied,--

"My dearest child knows that I have not pressed her union; but Sir
Willmott is so anxious--so attached--and, I must say, that my grey hairs
would go peacefully to the grave were I to see her his wife. I am almost
inclined to think my Constance capricious and unjust upon this point;
but I am sure her own good sense, her regard for her father----"

"Merciful powers!" interrupted Constance, wildly; "and is it really
possible that you knew of his proposal? Ay, ay, you might have known
_that_, but you could not know the awful, the horrid threat he held out
to me, if I did not comply with his demand--ay, _demand_ for an
immediate union?

"It was very imprudent, very useless, in fact," said the baronet,
peevishly, his mind reverting to the proposals of the Buccaneer, which
he believed Burrell had communicated to Constantia; "very absurd to
trouble you with the knowledge he possesses of my affairs--that is
strange wooing--but good will arise from it, for you will now, knowing
the great, the overpowering motive that I have for seeing your union
accomplished----"

The baronet's sentence remained unfinished, for the look and manner of
his daughter terrified him. She had risen from her knees, and stood, her
eyelids straining from her glaring eyes, that were fixed upon her
father, while her hands were extended, as if to shut out the figure upon
which she still gazed.

"It is all madness--moon-struck madness," she excl