where Walter was confined; she had taken the paper from her bosom, and was rushing towards him, about to ejaculate the words "A pardon! a pardon !" but the accents died away upon her lips, and the brave girl, who had stood unawed in the presence of royalty, and confronted so many perils without once flinching, could only murmur an inarticulate sound, when she sank gasping into the arms of her lover, still, however, holding up the paper, in hopes that it would tell the joyful tidings which she herself was utterly unable to communicate..

CHAPTER VI.

Bel amour! bel amour, ma foi! l'amour de mes louis d'or!

LAVARE.

Would my sword had a close basket-hilt to hold wine, and the blade would make knives, for we shall have nothing but eating and drinking.

The Two Noble Kinsmen.

MOST painful and conflicting had been the feelings of the imprisoned Walter during the protracted absence of Hetty; even the uncertainty of his own life, suspended, as it seemed to be, by a single quivering hair, being forgotten at times in the absorbing interest that attached to the disappearance of his mistress under such very questionable and suspicious circumstances. Mystery ever possesses a double attraction for the human mind, by stimulating our pride as well as our curiosity to its deve

lopement; but when our hopes and affections are wound up with the secret, every thought and feeling yields to the predominant, the torturing anxiety for solving the enigma. Such was the case with the unhappy Walter. Day after day had he confidently predicted Hetty's return, and triumphant exculpation from every charge; and as every recurring night left his prophecies unfulfilled, a deeper gloom saddened his heart, and an increased misgiving took possession of his mind. That she should have engaged herself in an attempt apparently so vain and superfluous, as that of travelling to London upon the same errand as Mr. Shelton, never once entered into his contemplation; his friend and brother officer, for the reasons already assigned, faithfully preserved her secret; and thus was the hapless lover left to all the miseries of suspense as to his own fate, aggravated by conjectures equally incessant and fruitless as to Hetty's. It appeared to him that, even the death hanging over his head would come with an additional bitterness were he to perish under the impression of her unwor

thiness, a feeling that gathered strength as the hour approached when he was to expect the King's fiat upon the sentence of the courtmartial.

It was a remarkable illustration of Edith's disordered state of mind at this period, that, affectionate and sensitive as she usually was, she scarcely ever adverted to Hetty's absence, or to her brother's terrible predicament, and indeed did not appear to be in the least conscious that his life was in jeopardy. One dominant idea had subjugated her faculties, one paramount wish reigned exclusively in her heart, it was the desire to die, after having seen her friend Agatha united to Forester. Upon this she mused in her solitary wanderings, upon this she pondered when she sat abstracted and silent in the midst of company, upon this hope she fed her heart during the sleepless nights which by debilitating her body increased the morbid state of her mind. Even her repugnance to Seagrave, once so inveterate, had now subsided into indifference. In his recent visits she had received him with a calm resignation, sitting

often in an absent mood, and as often answer

ing him wide of the mark, but never evincing the smallest dislike, or even impatience of his presence, though it was evidently a delight to her when she could make her escape to the solitude of her own chamber, or to her favourite haunt in the sequestered woody dell beyond the meadows. Whether she betook herself to the one or the other, and indeed in the most trivial actions she performed, her manner was marked by a stealthy and significant air of conceal

ment.

Agatha, grieved to the heart at beholding her friend in this lamentable state, and frightened at the thought that her faculties might become permanently disordered, passed almost every day at Orchard Place in the hope of consoling her; and when she found that all her exertions, all her most unremitting assiduities failed to dissipate the leaden and listless despondency into which she had sunk, she made an attempt to remove one of its causes, by relieving her from the addresses of the hateful Seagrave. Seeking an interview with that worthy, she