is money!"

To all this Fanny made but one answer,--she threw herself suddenly upon
the woman's breast, and sobbed out: "My grandfather is blind, he cannot
do without me--he will die--die. Have you nobody you love, too? Let me
go--let me out! What can they want with me?--I never did harm to any
one."

"And no one will harm you;--I swear it!" said Harriet, earnestly. "I see
you don't know my lord. But here's the dinner; come, and take a bit of
something, and a glass of wine."

Fanny could not touch anything except a glass of water, and that nearly
choked her. But at last, as she recovered her senses, the absence of
her tormentor--the presence of a woman--the solemn assurances of Harriet
that, if she did not like to stay there, after a day or two, she should
go back, tranquillised her in some measure. She did not heed the artful
and lengthened eulogiums that the she-tempter then proceeded to pour
forth upon the virtues, and the love, and the generosity, and, above
all, the money of my lord. She only kept repeating to herself, "I shall
go back in a day or two." At length, Harriet, having eaten and drunk as
much as she could by her single self, and growing wearied with efforts
from which so little resulted, proposed to Fanny to retire to rest.
She opened a door to the right of the fireplace, and lighted her up a
winding staircase to a pretty and comfortable chamber, where she offered
to help her to undress. Fanny's complete innocence, and her utter
ignorance of the precise nature of the danger that awaited her, though
she fancied it must be very great and very awful, prevented her quite
comprehending all that Harriet meant to convey by her solemn assurances
that she should not be disturbed. But she understood, at least, that
she was not to see her hateful gaoler till the next morning; and when
Harriet, wishing her "good night," showed her a bolt to her door, she
was less terrified at the thought of being alone in that strange place.
She listened till Harriet's footsteps had died away, and then, with a
beating heart, tried to open the door; it was locked from without. She
sighed heavily. The window?--alas! when she had removed the shutter,
there was another one barred from without, which precluded all hope
there; she had no help for it but to bolt her door, stand forlorn and
amazed at her own condition, and, at last, falling on her knees, to
pray, in her own simple fashion, which since her recent visits to the
schoolmistr