ch it had been possible
for her to hear. Once in his anger, she remembered, he had valued her
life but cheaply;--within two short hours Elinor had learned to look
upon her father with terror, almost with dread; those words of his
rang in her ears: "I will kill the King if need be, even without
help!"

The footsteps approached her room. What was she to do? It was too late
to gain the bed and feign slumber, for the creaking of a loose board
would certainly attract his attention. She hoped the door was secured,
but had no recollection of locking it. At last he had gained the
passage; now he was before her room and placed his hand upon the
latch; it was not locked, for the door opened. The man peered in
through the crevice and gazed in her direction. How her heart
throbbed, shaking her whole body, and sending the blood through her
veins with a sound which she feared he would hear. She thanked God
that the moon shone directly through the window and her position was
well out of its rays. He evidently did not see the girl, for after a
scrutiny of the bed, which stood well in the shadow, and a muttered,
"Safe, safe enough; all safe," he closed the door and passed down the
corridor.

Elinor for a moment stood listening to the retreating footsteps; then
sank into a chair, exhausted by the strain of the last few moments,
and tried to gather her scattered thoughts. With woman's intuition she
quickly grasped the enormity of all she had overheard, comprehending
that high treason and wholesale murder had been planned; but the
hardest truth for her to realize was that her father, whom she had
always trusted and looked upon as the embodiment of honor and
uprightness, was the foremost to suggest and even offer to carry out
the fearful deed. "I will kill the King, if need be, even without
help:" the awful sentence seemed to be repeated over and over again by
the rustling night wind. Her first impulse was to save him from the
consequences of such an act. Were not the names of Moore and Essex
familiar to her? And what was their fate for even a suspected treason?
Her hysterical imagination placed vividly before her the head of the
father she loved, lying bleeding in that patch of moonlight on the
floor.

But what could she do in her weakness? Go to her father and beseech
him that, for love of her, he would take no part in this terrible
crime? That would accomplish nothing, for she knew him to be one whom
naught could turn from a deed he