wer superior to her own. She strove to
escape this thraldom, but in vain. She threw round an apprehensive
glance, but all was still--the dripping boughs alone breaking the
almost insupportable silence that surrounded her. Suddenly she heard a
sigh, and a rustling at her ear; and she felt an icy chillness
breathing on her. Then a voice, musical but sad, whispered--

"Thou hast rejected my suit. Another holds thy pledge."

"Another! Who art thou?" said the maiden, forgetting her fears in the
first emotion of surprise.

"Thou hast been conscious of my presence in thy dreams!" replied the
mysterious visitor. She felt her terrors dissipated, for the being
whom she loved was the guardian of her safety.

"I have loved thee, maiden," said the voice; "I have hovered round
thee when thou slept, and thou hast answered my every thought.
Wherefore hast thou not obeyed? Why not seal thy compact and our
happiness together?"

"Because it was unhallowed," replied she firmly, though her bosom
trembled like the leaf fluttering from its stem.

"Another has taken thy pledge. Yet is it not too late. Renew the
contract, even with thy blood, and I am thine! Refuse, and thou art
his. If this hour pass, I am lost to thee for ever!"

"To whom," inquired Eleanor, "has it been conveyed?"

"To thy first, thy betrothed lover. He found the pledge that I would
not receive."

The maiden hesitated. Her eternal hopes might be compromised by this
compliance. But she dreaded the loss of her insidious destroyer.

"Who art thou? I fear me for the tempter!"

"And what boots it, lady? But, listen. These elves be my slaves; and
yet I am not immortal. My term is nigh run out, though it may be
renewed if, before the last hour be past, a maiden plight her hopes,
her happiness to me! Ere that shadow creeps on the fairy pillar thou
art irrevocably mine, or his whom thou dreadest."

Eleanor groaned aloud. She felt a cold hand creeping on her brow. She
screamed involuntarily. On a sudden the boughs bent with a loud crash
above her head, and a form, rushing down the height, stood before her.
This unexpected deliverer was Oliver Chadwyck. Alarmed by the cries of
a female, as he was returning from the chase, he interposed at the
very moment when his mistress was ensnared by the wiles of her
seducer.

"Rash fool, thou hast earned thy doom. The blood be on thine own head.
Thou art the sacrifice!"

This was said in a voice of terrible and fiendish malignity