University of Virginia Library

2. PART II.

“Ah! Bentinck, have you come at last?”

“Sweet, sweetest Agnes.”

The moon, robed with her soft, silver light, rose above the
tree-tops in her full-orbed glory; edging the fresh luxuriant
verdure with a fringe of mellow lustre, and checkering the
smooth, grassy lawns with long gleams and alternate shadows.
The nightingale sings not in wide woodlands of the north, but
the jarring cry of the night-hawk, and the plaintive hooting
of the distant owls, blended themselves with the near murmur
of the waterfall, and with the low, soft music of the western
wind among the tree-tops, and formed a sweet and soothing
melody, replete with the calm tenderness of moral associations.

But the guilty pair saw not the tender light tipping the green
with silver, or glittering in diamond showers upon the spray of
the clear cascade; they heard not the cadences of the water
and the breeze, nor heeded the cry of the nocturnal birds.

Brighter to him was the unholy fire that beamed from her
blue eyes, and sweeter the low murmur of her passionate expressions,
than all the lights of heaven, than all the hymns of
angels, could they have resounded in his ears deafened by crime
and hardened against all diviner sentiments, by the defilement
of an evil earthly passion.

It is a mistake to believe that the wicked are not happy in
the first transport of their wickedness, and they are both false
moralists and unwise teachers, who would have us to believe
otherwise.

There is indeed to the guilty, as there is to all of human
mould, and in a greater degree than to the calm and virtuous
who tread the paths of moderation, the drop of bitterness which
still arises, as the poet of nature sang, in the mid fount of every
human pleasure, stinging them like a thorn among the
sweetest flowers.

It is when the hour of reaction has arrived, when the nerves
are relaxed and unstrung by the very violence and fury of their
own excitement; when the head aches and the hand trembles,
overdone and outworn by the very excess of enjoyment; when
the spirit, failing, exhausted, yet yearns with a sick and morbid
craving, wearied and insatiate of passion, for some fresher excitement,
fiercer stimulant; it is then that the punishment commences
which is the inseparable consequence of sin; it is then
that conscience resumes her power over the shuddering mind;
that the vulture-talons of the fury retribution pierces to the very
heart of the miserable sinner.

But for Agnes and Bentinck, thoughtless and young trangressors,
the hour of anguish had not yet arrived; nor that
strange hatred of the wicked, one against the other, which so
constantly succeeds to the decline of unholy passion.

They were yet quaffing the first drops of that beverage, the
dregs of which are bitterness, and loathing, and despair; and
in their self-deception, they fancied that one thing alone was
wanting to their happiness, the power of displaying to each
other, before the eyes of the whole world, their deep fondness
of being each to the other, at all times, and in all places, openly
and without reproval, all in all.

Nor did they fail — as when did the human heart ever fail of

self-deception? — to palliate, nay excuse, their disgraceful sin, to
lay the blame on fate, on the world, on anything, except their
own corrupt and wilful natures.

And, in truth, as is oftentimes the case, there was some slight
show of justice in their reclamations against the world, as they
called the society of the court-circle of St. James. For it is
true that they had loved in youth, to the utmost extent perhaps
of which their frivolous and slight natures were capable of loving;
and the affections of the very young, if not of that depth
and ardor which characterize the passions of more advanced
life, are yet marked by a freshness, and unselfishness, and a
quick fervor, which make them pass for more than they are
really worth, even with the professors, who over-estimate the
violence, owing to the newness of the emotion.

Hence it is that so often those who have been divided or kept
asunder by chance, by the rules of social position, or by some
violence done to the feelings, return in after-life, as the French
proverb says we always do, to their past loves, and that with a
violence which breaks all bonds, and overleaps all obstacles;
whereas had they been suffered to take their own course, and
had no restraint been put upon their actions, the early and unstable
fancy or predilection would have worn itself out, which
contradiction alone has magnified into a mighty and absorbing
passion.

Thus had it been with Agnes d'Esterre and Bentinck Gisborough,
had Reginald Vernon never been sent by his evil destiny
to claim the hand of his unconsciously-betrothed bride, in
an unhappy hour, and one fraught with misery or shame to all
whom it concerned. For so light was the character of the
vain, spoiled beauty, as was proved by the ease with which she
consented to fulfil the contract, and the favorable ear which she
lent to Reginald's addresses, and so very a coxcomb was the
young dragoon, that ere a second season had elapsed, it is ten

to one they would have separated by mutual consent, and never
thought of each other more.

But as it was, when amid the lonely shades of Vernon in
the Vale, and in the uncongenial atmosphere of her husband's
calm and abstracted society, Agnes began to cast a regretful
glance to the gayeties and frivolities of London; to contrast
the light-hearted mirth and merry companionship of the gay,
handsome, fashionable cornet, with the tranquil and melancholy
dignity of Vernon; and above all, to regard it as the despite
of fate, and not the operation of her own free will, that had
given her as an unresponsive wife to the arms of the sad, silent
conspirator; she soon learned to exaggerate in her own
thoughts the love she had felt for Gisborough; to brood over
the destiny which had separated them; to pine in secret for the
absent hero of her fancy's love.

In the solitude and seclusion in which she lived, with no associate
of her own rank, by whose companionship to lighten
the monotony of her weary existence, with no sympathizing
friend, or young monitor, on whose affection she might rely,
she nursed and cherished her thick, teeming fancies, till she
had persuaded herself into the belief that she was the most
miserable of her sex, an unloved wife of a cold, misanthropic,
and hard-hearted husband, and the passionate adorer of an idolized
and idolizing lover.

By slow degrees she grew to despise and loathe a character
too great and noble for her comprehension; she came to regard
Sir Reginald as the bar betwixt herself and happiness, to feel
weariness for his society, aversion for his person, and something
not far removed from actual hatred for the man whom she
had sworn to love and honor.

Tranquil in his character, calm in his very affections, never
ardent even in the warmest of his feelings, it is easy to imagine
that Sir Reginald was the last person to discover the coldness

of his lady, or to suspect her dislike for his person. As there
was no society to call forth her coquetry with others, there were
no causes by which to excite his jealousy or distrust; and so
long as he saw her always beautiful, always graceful, and always,
at least in outward semblance, gay — for gayety was an
inborn quality of her nature — he thought of her only as a very
fair and gentle mistress of his household, and loved her rather
as the mother of his children and the partner of his home, with
the grave and chaste affection of a pious philosopher, than as
she desired to be loved, with the passion of an ardent and adoring
lover.

When the fatal year of the rebellion came — that rebellion so
disastrous to the catholic and tory aristocracy of England — for
the Romanist was then the farthest in the world removed from
the radical — and when Sir Reginald Vernon broke out from
his repose of moody disaffection, into the activity and eagerness
of rebel preparation; when his days were passed in his
study, planning the means whence to support the sinews of the
war, or by which to avert the consequences of defeat, and half
his nights in the saddle, reviewing his tenantry and mustering
his yeomen into service, he had even less leisure than before
to observe, and less reason to suspect the aversion of his wife.

And she, when she saw the eagerness, the enthusiasm, the spirit,
nay, the passion, which he could expend on an object that aroused
his interest, and stirred his soul to its depths, was not perhaps
all unjustly mortified and galled at being sensible of her own
inability to kindle him to life; looked upon herself as a woman
scorned; began to detest the neglecter of her charms, and to
meditate the woman's revenge by the medium of the very beauty
which she conceived to be undervalued.

Bentinck arrived, as I have said, a welcome guest to the confiding
and pure-hearted husband, and a long-desired and ready
accomplice in her vengeance to the wilful and wicked wife.

Agnes Vernon fell not, nor was seduced into the paths of
vice; headlong, yet with her eyes wide open, she rushed into
the abyss of sin and shame, and revelled in the very consciousness
of infamy, which to her warped and distorted vision, appeared
in the light of a just revenge.

It will scarce be believed, except by those who have studied
the depths of the human heart, and learned to know, what the
Mantuan poet sang, “furens quid fæmina possit,” that it was
with difficulty Gisborough could prevail upon her so far to veil
her guilt, as to avoid her husband's eye, and that she actually
grieved, at times, that her revenge was incomplete, so long as
Reginald was unacquainted with her infamy.

It is probable that fear only of his desperate wrath — for she
well knew the intensity of anger of which his calm, resolute,
deep soul was capable — and the unwillingness to sacrifice her
luxurious state and high position, alone prevented this infamous,
and almost insane wretch from willingly and knowingly betraying
herself.

But of late a fresher and stronger inducement was added to
her reasons for avoiding a premature discovery of her guilt.

She had become aware of the reason of her husband's altered
demeanor, had learned the full extent of his complicity in
the rebellion which was on the eve of breaking out, and had
exerted her every power of fascination and persuasion to fix
him in his fatal purpose, even to the lavishing upon him of
those Delilah-like caresses which revolted her as she bestowed
them.

She learned, moreover, that in his anxiety to avoid the confiscation
of his property and the beggaring of herself and his
children in case of failure, he had actually alienated the whole
of his estates, transferring them legally and for a valuable consideration,
to three trustees, of whom — marvellous infatuation! —
Bentinck Gisborough was one, for her benefit and that of his

children as her heirs; and this suggested to her depraved mind,
the thought, to which the hope was indeed the father, that he
might find a red grave on the battle-field, and she have it in her
power to bestow upon that lover, to whom she had already
given herself, her hand, together with her own and her children's
fortune.

To do Bentinck Gisborough mere justice, he was ignorant
of this refinement of domestic treason. Perhaps, had he been
aware of it, it might so far have revolted all his better feelings,
as to lead him to break off the connection with Agnes, and to
escape her fascinations.

Well for him had it been to do so.

But with the woman's wicked craft, she had foreseen that
the confession of her morbid motives would disgust the hair-brained
and daring spirit, which even in its worst points, had
nothing in it of the mercenary or the calculating, and had concealed
them from him carefully, well knowing that he could be
wrought upon to commit deeds for the secure possession of her
person, from which he would have recoiled if suggested for the
attainment of pecuniary advantage.

She had disclosed to him, as a matter of course, the intentions
of her husband, and made him acquainted with the imminence
of the rebellion. But information thus obtained, he was
too honorable to reveal to the government, even if he had not
been well content to let matters take their course. For he had
no conception of the extent of the ramifications of the conspiracy,
of the general nature of the discontents against the Hanoverian
government, or of the great chances which really existed
at that moment for the success of a Jacobite insurrection.

He did not believe for a moment, that the movement would be
more formidable than that of the rebellion of '15, which had been
put down almost without an effort, and its ashes drenched though
not extinguished in the blood of its gallant but misguided leaders.

He was convinced that a single battle in the north of England,
would crush the insurrection, and as his own regiment of
horse was quartered at Carlisle, and was of consequence likely
to be among the first engaged, he hoped to have an opportunity
of measuring swords with the man whom he regarded as
his enemy, and the wrongful possessor of his own intended
bride rather than as one whom he was wronging in the tenderest
point of honor.

The present meeting of the guilty pair was chiefly for the
discussion of projects, the laying of plans, the betrayal of the
husband's last secret by his abandoned wife.

The prince — for of princely birth he was, though outcast from
his father's realm, not by his own but by his father's vices — the
prince had landed in the wilds of Moidart, and unfurled the
standard of rebellion over the heads of seven adherents only,
but those made of the stuff which almost supplies the want of
armies. The clans were rushing to arms, Lochiel, Keppoch,
and Glencarry, had belted on the broadsword, and slung the
targe upon the shoulder. The gentry of the northern counties,
already ripe for insurrection, would be in arms within six days
at farthest, and in a week from that same day, Reginald Vernon
would set foot in stirrup, and unsheathe his father's sword, in
the vain hope to avenge the death of that father.

I do not mean to assert, for I do not believe it to be true,
that direct earthly retribution always or often follows the sinner
to “overtake him when he leasts expects it,” or that He to
whom eternity is as to-day, is so prompt to strike, that his vengeance
is manifest here below. It is, as I regard it, a poor,
and presumptuous, and unphilosophical morality, which looks
for the punishment of the guilty in this world, by direct Divine
agency — which sees the judgment of God in the flash of the
lightning's bolt, or hears the voice of his anger in the thunder's
roar. “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” are as much words

of HIS speaking, as that awful sentence, “Vengeance is mine,
I will repay, saith the Lord.” And repay he will, of a surety,
and good measure, yea, pressed down and running over — but
when, let him say, who can pronounce whence the wind comes
and whither it goes in its path of devastation.

But there is another way, in which sure retribution does follow
crime and overtake it, even here on earth, and that way
the philosopher is prompt to observe and sure to mark. That
way is the way of nature, the common course of things, the
general law of the universe. For that law has decreed, more
immutably than that of the Medes and Persians, that as surely
as there is sin, so surely shall there be satiety; and he who
shows this as the consequence of vice, is a wise teacher and a
good, because he is a true one.

Now that the blow was actually struck, and when intelligence
sent to the government could in nowise arrest the outbreak,
or anticipate the full disclosure of the conspirator's overt
guilt and open action, she prevailed upon Gisborough to write
to his father by a special messenger to London, warning him
fully of all that had occurred, so to obtain the credit of zeal for
the powers that were, and to avoid the suspicion of being privy
to the secrets of the rebels.

Next to this she obtained his promise — though many a caress
was lavished ere she prevailed in this — to inform Honeywood
of the movement of the catholic gentry of the northern
counties, and to induce him to act promptly for the suppression
of the rising, by striking instantly and in force at the levy of
cavalry which would be made at Vernon in the Vale, on the
seventh day thereafter.

“Come yourself, Bentinck,” she said, “come yourself, my
own beloved, brave Bentinck, with your gallant squadrons, and
let your own good sword work the deliverance of your Agnes.
Let my eyes look upon his fall, sweet at any hand, but doubly

sweet at yours, my love, my champion, my deliverer; and I
will hail, will bless the day, which shall make me yours altogether
and for ever.”

“Can you be more mine than you are now, my own Agnes?”
cried the young man eagerly.

“Only in this, my Bentinck, that I shall then be yours before
the face of the world, before the face of my Maker, who
never meant me for the wife of that cold-blooded, haughty
despot.”

“Sweet Agnes,” cried the soldier; “Heaven send it, as you
say; and I will slay him!”

“And I say, never! adulterer and murderer, never!” said a
harsh voice without, in deep, hoarse, grating accents, but yet
with something feminine in the manner and intonation. Instinctively
the soldier's hand fell to the hilt of his sword, and
the next instant he stood without the little building, on the
small, open esplanade, on which, save a small space under the
shadow of the oak-tree, the full moonbeams dwelt lovingly, so
that for fifty yards around, all was as bright as day.

There was no braver man than Bentinck Gisborough, in that
island of the brave, whereon he had his birth; and with all the
national courage of his breed, all the hereditary courage of the
race, and that last cause for courage added — the instinct, quod
etiam timidos fortes facit, which prompts the wren to do battle
for its partner — the defence of the woman prompting him —
he sprang forth, expecting to do battle on the instant with a resolved
and mortal foe.

But the blood turned stagnant in his veins, and the hair
seemed to bristle on his head, as he gazed on the sward around
him, and found nothing — no sign of human life — no form, no
sound, no footstep, although no time had elaspsed for flight,
although no covert was within reach for the shelter of a human

being, although the voice which he had heard, uttered its words
within ten paces of the door.

To circle round the building, the oak-tree, to examine its
leafy canopy, and every trifling hollow of its gnarled trunk, was
but a moment's work, but it was all in vain. There was no
one present, or within ear-shot of anything less than a halloo;
although the words which had reached his ear, were not spoken
much above the usual tone of conversation, and although
they implied that all the low whispers of their guilty schemes
had been overheard by the speaker.

There was no one present; and after all, the young soldier
had naught to do but to return to the pale and trembling Agnes,
and explain how fruitless had been his exertions to find the intruder,
and ask of her if it could have been imagination that
had presented the strange sounds to their senses.

“No more than this, our meeting is imagination,” she replied,
“my Bentinck. But what matters it? Had it been he,
you should have slain him now and here, and that had been the
end of it. For the rest, he is in the toils, and he can not escape
them, for all he be brave, wise, and wary; and if we have
been observed, I care not even if the observer tell him. It will
but add a pang to an existence, the term of which is already
fixed, and which may not be much prolonged by any means.
So, tell him, listener, if you will,” she added, raising her soft
and musical voice to a pitch all unwonted, and stepping to the
door with an impudence of bearing, which, had it been less
guilty, had been almost sublime: “Tell him that you have
heard Agnes d'Esterre — for Agnes Vernon I am not — assure
her Gisborough, with all the truth of earnest love, that she was
his, and his alone. Tell him that, secret spy — tell him that
— and you will but serve my purpose, torturing him with tidings
that shall avail him nothing!”

“Hush! Agnes. Hush! beloved one,” cried the young

man, shocked and amazed by this wild outburst of immodest
and unwomanly defiance. “These are wild, whirling words,
and such, in truth, avail nothing, if they even mean anything.”

“Mean anything! Mean anything, do you say, Bentinck
Gisborough? What should they mean, but that I hate him
deeply, deadly? hate him more even than I love you! hate him
so utterly that his death would bring me no pleasure, if he die
fancying that I love him.”

“Oh! do not, Agnes, do not say such words, if you love me
— even if they be true; say them not, my own Agnes.”

“If I love you,” she exclaimed; “if they be true! Have I
not given you proof that I love you, and will I not prove that
they are true, to the very letter? But if you love not to hear
me, I am silent. Once more, then, go your way, with blessings
on your head, and fail me not, I implore you, this day week,
my own Bentinck. For of precious truth! I do believe, that
if he survive that day, I shall die even of his odious life!” At
length, she tore herself away, and darted through the dim, wild
woods, homeward — homeward — half-fearful, half-rejoicing in
the partial discovery of her treason.

He stood for a moment, gazing after her beautiful, elastic
figure, till he lost sight of her among the trees, and then with
a deep drawn sigh, he turned away, bounded down the near
side of the steep ravine, leaped from stone to stone across the
channel of the noisy stream, and appeared indistinctly a moment
afterward among the shrubbery on the farther bank, scaling the
steep acclivity.

Five minutes afterward, the clang of a distant horse's tramp
was heard sounding on the rocky brow of the hill, at a hard
gallop, and then there was silence.

A moment or two passed, and then a sort of trap or shutter
was raised in the stylobate, or substructure of the hermitage, the
floor of which was elevated some two feet above the surface of

the soil, and was rendered accessible by four low, flat steps, under
which a secret door had been constructed, giving access
to a vault or cellar underneath the building.

From this aperture, there now emerged cautiously and slowly
the head and then the whole person of a tall, gaunt, and rawboned
woman, apparently of very great age, for her dark, sallow
skin was fretted with so many wrinkles, that at first sight, she
struck the observer as having been tattooed after the fashion of
the Australasian savages, and her hair, which was cut short
round the head, like a man's, was as white as the driven snow
of winter, as were her shaggy pendant eyebrows, likewise, and
her long, thin lashes, from beneath which a pair of small, black
piercing eyes gleamed out with a spiteful, venomous sparkle,
like that of some vicious reptile.

Her face, however, in spite of this ominous and threatening
eye, was decidedly intellectual, full of thought, and not unbenevolent
in its general character, although decidedly its most
distinctive feature was the firm resolution expressed by the thin,
compressed lips, and the bony angular jaw.

In figure, she was very tall, and although gaunt and emaciated
by age, rather than privation, her limbs were sinewy and
muscular, more than is usual among women, and her hands
especially were as large and almost as strong as a man's. The
dress of this singular and masculine looking female consisted
of a petticoat of the common russet serge, which constituted
the usual country wear, with a sort of coarse, half-manlike jerkin
or doublet over it, made of bright blue cloth, with tight sleeves
and a high collar, this unwonted garment descending nearly to
the hips. Above this again she wore a long and voluminous
scarf of scarlet duffle, disposed about her gaunt and angular
person, much after the fashion of a highlander's plaid. On her
head she had a Scottish bonnet, and in her sinewy hand she
carried a stout pike-staff of some five feet in length, with a

sharp, steel head. Nor did it appear that this was her only
weapon, for there were two protuberances closely resembling
the form of pistol butts, clearly visible at the waist of her blue
jacket; and the black leathern scabbard of what was undoubtedly
a long knife, protruded below its hem.

Her legs were covered by blue woollen stockings, with large
scarlet clocks, and her feet protected by stout brogues of untanned
hide, which, strong as they were, gave evidence of
much hard usage and long travel.

As she emerged from her place of concealment, which she
did warily and slowly, closing the trapdoor securely after her
so that no trace was left to unfamiliar eyes of the existence of
the secret vault, that woman stood and gazed anxiously in the
direction which Agnes had taken in her flight, and then listened
if she might judge aught of the lover's whereabout from the
sound of his distant horse-hoofs. But there was neither sound
nor sight to guide her, and satisfied as it would seem, that she
was entirely alone, she gave way to the full force of her indignation
and disquiet, dashing her pike-staff violently upon the
rocky soil, and gnashing her teeth in the bitterness of her rage.

“Accursed wanton,” she exclaimed, “foul, soulless, sensual
wretch! False Delilah! accursed Jezebel — may the fate of
Jezebel be thine; may dogs eat thee yet alive, and may thy
name perish utterly from among thy people; and it is to such
as thee that wise men intrust their honor! that prudent men
confide the fate of mighty enterprises, the fortunes of their best
and dearest friends. It is to insure the being kissed in luxurious
chambers by thy curled darling that a great, a royal undertaking
must be cast to the winds — that the blood of the noble,
and the faithful, and the brave, shall dye the moorlands with a
ruddier hue than the bloom of their purplest heather. Out on
it! out on it! that after all the doings, all the sufferings of our
church, our people, and our lawful king, the lust of a titled

wanton and an embroidered coxcomb, should prostrate all the
wisdom of the wisest, the bravery of the bravest, and change
the course of dynasties, the fate of nations! Out on it! out on
it? So young, so delicate to look upon, and yet so shameless,
and so daring, and of so resolute and bold a spirit. But, by
the faith of my fathers! I will thwart her, or she shall rue the
day when she dared to hatch domestic treason, and plot murder
under trust. But I will thwart her.”

She spoke rapidly, and in a low, muttered tone, but with fierce
emphasis, and fiery eyes full of vindictive anger; and as she
ended her soliloquy, she too plunged into the deep woods, in a
direction nearly parallel to that taken by Agnes Vernon, but
pointing more directly toward the manor-house; and was
speedily lost amid the shadowy glades, while the little summer-house
was left all silent and untenanted, amid the cold, clear
moonlight, and the calm stillness of the summer-honse.

Meanwhile the wretched woman hastened with fleet steps
homeward. She had already threaded the greater part of the
woodland path which led somewhat circuitously through the
plantings to the open park, and she might see already the
moonlight sleeping calm and serene on the smooth grassy lawns,
beyond the opening of the bowery walks in which she stood
secluded, as if within a vault of solid verdure, when a quick,
sudden rustling of the bushes, violently parted by the passage
of some body in quick motion, startled and in some sort alarmed
her. But almost instantly she rallied from her half-conceived
apprehension, as she reflected how near she was to the house,
and how little chance there was of any real danger within the
precincts of her own park.

The sound, moreover, ceased as suddenly as it commenced,
and she laughed with a low, musical laugh at her own fruitless
fear, muttering to herself: “It was a deer only, or perhaps a
timorous hare or rabbit startled from its form, and I, fool that I

am, was afraid, when I might have known well that no danger
can reach me here.”

“Adulteress and liar!” exclaimed the hoarse voice which
she had heard before, now close at her elbow; and at the same
instant that tall, gaunt, sinewy woman started from the thick
coppice and confronted her, barring her homeward path, and
bending on her eyes of deadly and revengeful wrath.

“Adulteress and liar!” she repeated, clutching the delicate
and slender wrist of Agnes in her own vulture-like, iron talons,
while with the other hand she drew a pistol from her girdle,
cocked it, and levelled it within a hand's breadth of her head.
“There is danger here; and even here shall God's vengeance
find thee. Down on thy knees, I say, down on thy knees,
wanton, down on thy knees, accursed murderess of thy wedded
lord, and make thy peace with Heaven, for with the things of
earth thou hast done for ever.”

“What have I done to thee, that thou shouldst slay me — me
who have never seen thee before, much less wronged thee?”
asked Agnes, faltering now in mortal terror, for she recognised
in the harsh, croaking tones which she now heard, the voice
which had broken off her guilty interview with Bentinck in the
hermitage, and doubted not that this singular and terrible old
woman was cognizant of all her crimes, and capable of revealing
all her hidden projects.

“Much!” — cried the fierce old enthusiast, “much hast thou
done already against my cause — for the cause of the true church
and the rightful king is mine — much hast thou done already,
traitress and murderess, and much more wilt do, if I cut not
off at once thy crimes, and thy thread of being. Wilt thou
pray, woman, wilt thou pray, I say, or wilt thou die in thine
impenitence, and so go down to hell with all thy sins rankling
on thy soul, unconfessed and unshriven?”

“It is too late!” replied the wretched girl, now terribly

alarmed, but striving to maintain a bold front, for she half believed
the strange woman to be mad, and perhaps fancied that
by boldness she could overawe her. “It is too late! — but if
it were not so, and I were all that thou hast called me, who
constituted thee mine accuser, my judge, and my executioner?”

“He who made all things, who seeth all things, and who
hath set his law on high, that all who run may read it, even
the law of blood for blood. Pray, I say, pray, adulteress, for
this day thou diest.”

Agnes Vernon closed her eyes in despair, expecting to receive
the death-shot in her face from the close levelled weapon
of the fanatic, when the shrill, savage bay of a deer greyhound
smote her ear with tidings of near help, and at the same time
the voices of men nigh at hand.

Hitherto she had been silent, fearing by her cries, that she
should only irritate the maniac and precipitate her action, without
procuring assistance, but now she screamed aloud in mortal
terror, for the click of the pistol lock had fallen on her sharpened
ear, and she felt that she had, indeed, but an instant to
live, if aid came not.

“It is my lady's voice,” cried one of the men, a keeper, or
wood-ranger. “Forward, Hugh, forward, Gregory, to the old
horn-beam walk.” But swiftly as they hurried forward, they
would have come too late, had not a swifter foot and more
vigorous ally rushed to the rescue.

With a repeated yell, a large wire-haired, dun-colored deer
hound burst through the coppice, and springing at the woman's
arm, caught the sleeve of the coarse jacket which she wore,
in his strong teeth. He bore down her hand, and the levelled
weapon which went off harmlessly in the struggle; when the
enthusiast, seeing that she could not effect her purpose, turned
to escape, and Agnes, who by no means desired her capture,
called off the dog, as if for her own protection.

“In God's name, my lady, what has harmed thee?” cried a
rough woodman, bursting upon the scene, with his loaded musketoon
in his hand; “we were out seeking thee, even now.”

A highly ornamented bracelet had fallen from her arm in the
struggle, and lay on the green sward at her feet, glittering in a
stray moonbeam, which had found its way through a chink in
the verdant arch overhead, and this suggested to her quick wit
a ready answer.

“A robber — a ruffian!” she replied; “a strong, armed man,
disguised as a woman. See, he tore off my jewels, and would
have murdered me, but for my brave and faithful Bran,” and
therewith she caressed the great, rough dog, which, in truth,
had preserved her. “Follow him quickly, Hugh, and see you
shoot him dead at once! Seek not to make him prisoner, he
is a desperate villain, and it will cost life to secure him. Shoot
him dead, I say, on the sight. I will be your warranty, and
you, Gregory, go with me home. I had lost my way in the
wilderness, and got belated, when this rude wretch assaulted
me, and would have slain me.”

The men scarcely paused to hear her out; two of them
plunging into the underwood in pursuit, while the third accompanied
her toward the hall, leading the fierce hound in a leash,
and carrying his carabine cocked in the other hand.

Before they had gained the open park, the loud report of
one, and then of a second shot, came ringing from the woodlands,
and a thrill of mingled horror and exultation, rushed
through her veins, as she muttered between her teeth — “Now!
now! they have dealt with her, and I have well escaped this
peril, and the witness of my shame lives no longer.”

But the guilty woman reckoned without her host, for she
had not long arrived at the hall, before the men returned, saying
that they had failed to apprehend or kill the fugitive, owing
to the darkness of the woods, and his speed of foot, although

they had both fired on his track, and believed that he was severely
wounded, since they had found much blood both on the
leaves of the bushes, and on the ground, where they had fired.

Be that, however, as it might, no more was heard of the
stranger; and on the third day thereafter Sir Reginald returned,
absorbed as usual in the details of the rebellion, and all unsuspicious
of his faithless wife; and then, over the heads of the
plotters and counterplotters, the days rolled on serene and tranquil,
toward the appointed time, and toward that end, which
though many fancied they could see, one alone saw and knew,
and He, from the beginning.