o have been indebted to him of whom we are speaking three times
for my own life."

The last words were almost inarticulate: her voice failed her from
strong emotion; and she wept audibly.

Sir Charles was moved and softened: the spectacle of a woman's
tears--of a woman so young, beautiful, and evidently unhappy,--her
supplicating countenance and attitude, and the pleading tones of her
low soft voice ("an excellent thing in woman!"), were more than his
gallantry could support. To such a pleader he had not the heart to say
that she must plead in vain: he put his hand to his forehead;
considered for a moment or two; and then said----

"My dear Miss Walladmor, I fear I am doing very wrong: what may be
quite right for you--may be wrong indeed in me: yet I cannot resist a
request of yours urged so persuasively; and I will go to the utmost
lengths I can in meeting your wishes; to go further might expose
them to the risk of discovery. Use any influence you please with the
soldier on guard: I will place only one at the prisoner's door, and
will endeavour to select such a one as may be most readily induced
to----forget his duty. The centinel at the gate will not challenge any
person leaving the castle: he is placed there only to prevent the
intrusion of suspicious persons from without. In short proceed as you
will; and depend upon my looking away from what passes--which is the best
kind of assistance that I can give to your intentions in this case,
without running the risk of defeating them."

Miss Walladmor smiled through her tears, and thanked him fervently: Sir
Charles bowed and departed.

Sir Charles Davenant was a man of ancient family and of great
expectations, but of very small patrimonial fortune: he had been a ward
of Sir Morgan Walladmor's; between whom and the Davenants there was
some distant relationship: and it was to the Walladmor interest,
supported by the Walladmor purse, that Sir Charles was originally
indebted for his commission upon entering the army and his subsequent
promotion. These were circumstances which could not be unknown to Miss
Walladmor: but she had been too delicate and too just to use them as
any arguments with Sir Charles upon the present occasion. So much the
more however was Sir Charles disposed to recollect them: and he now
exerted himself without delay to make such inquiries and arrangements
as might put things in train for accomplishing Miss Walladmor's design;
conscious as he was that