uction made by Winter concerning the silence of Elinor had been
correct; but the power he had deemed potent to restrain her from
uttering what she had overheard, and from giving voice to the
indignities he in his drunkenness had heaped upon her, was not alone
the reason of her silence; the mind was held in a species of lethargy.
Now her father had left England; the motive which prompted his
departure she could surmise,--his mission was an enigma. And who was
his companion? The man whose face was ever before her, whose touch
haunted her in dreams causing her to awake and cry in terror to the
Virgin for protection. The girl was wrought up to a state of
hysterical expectancy. Even when sitting within doors, an exclamation
upon the street would cause her to start, fearing it might be a voice
proclaiming the fulfillment of the awful threat which ever sounded in
her ears. Never did she go abroad and behold a group of men but she
approached with trembling limbs and nervous eagerness, feeling that
the first words falling from their lips would be that England was
without a king. What the effect of this anxiety might have been had
she brooded over it long in solitude, is not difficult to tell. But
solace arose from an unexpected quarter. On his departure for France,
Fawkes had mentioned that there was in the city a certain friend, his
companion several years before, whom he had again lately met and asked
to call from time to time to inquire if he might render any service.
The girl awaited the arrival of this visitor with trepidation and some
anxiety, being well aware that the companions of her father were, as a
rule, men of little refinement, accustomed to the rough life of a
camp, and more at their ease in a pot-house than in the society of a
young woman. Her expectations were pleasantly disappointed, for on his
first visit the stranger, by his ease and grace of manner, banished
from her mind all doubts concerning him. Although habited in the garb
of a soldier of the period, there was about him something--a peculiar
refinement of speech, a dignity of carriage, a certain reverent homage
which he rendered unto her--that won from the girl a feeling of
respect and confidence. His visits, far from being cause for
apprehension, had become the one bright spot in her daily life; in his
company Elinor for a brief time forgot the terrible anxiety to which
she was a prey.

The only circumstance which impressed her as strange was that "Capt