nd it was when the assumed airs and affected importance of
the musician and their hostess rose to the most extravagant excess--he
observed that Fenella dealt askance on them some of those bitter and
almost blighting elfin looks, which in the Isle of Man were held to
imply contemptuous execration. There was something in all her manner so
extraordinary, joined to her sudden appearance, and her demeanour in
the King's presence, so oddly, yet so well contrived to procure him
a private audience--which he might, by graver means, have sought
in vain--that it almost justified the idea, though he smiled at it
internally, that the little mute agent was aided in her machinations by
the kindred imps, to whom, according to Manx superstition, her genealogy
was to be traced.

Another idea sometimes occurred to Julian, though he rejected the
question, as being equally wild with those doubts which referred Fenella
to a race different from that of mortals--"Was she really afflicted with
those organical imperfections which had always seemed to sever her from
humanity?--If not, what could be the motives of so young a creature
practising so dreadful a penance for such an unremitted term of years?
And how formidable must be the strength of mind which could condemn
itself to so terrific a sacrifice--How deep and strong the purpose for
which it was undertaken!"

But a brief recollection of past events enabled him to dismiss this
conjecture as altogether wild and visionary. He had but to call to
memory the various stratagems practised by his light-hearted companion,
the young Earl of Derby, upon this forlorn girl--the conversations held
in her presence, in which the character of a creature so irritable and
sensitive upon all occasions, was freely, and sometimes satirically
discussed, without her expressing the least acquaintance with what was
going forward, to convince him that so deep a deception could never
have been practised for so many years, by a being of a turn of mind so
peculiarly jealous and irascible.

He renounced, therefore, the idea, and turned his thoughts to his own
affairs, and his approaching interview with his Sovereign; in which
meditation we propose to leave him, until we briefly review the changes
which had taken place in the situation of Alice Bridgenorth.

CHAPTER XXXI

I fear the devil worst when gown and cassock,
Or, in the lack of them, old Calvin's cloak,
Conceals his c