desperate or alarming-though certainly it is not altogether pleasing, or such as I could have desired."

"I have seen it. I knew it, from the first moment you dismounted, and stood so long in deep converse with Florence, instead of hurrying, as is your wont, to join us, on your return home. I have been questioning Hardress this last half-hour." "Ha! Your reason, fair lady, was a good and true one; for who would tarry, talking with a great Low Country colonel, who might be basking in the light of your eyes, Eily? But. what said Hardress-ha?”

"Hardress either knows nothing of the matter, or is as closetongued as beseems a lord's page to be," answered the girl.

"Or a fair lady's either, Mistress Ellinor," replied the boy, who was a favorite, laughing gaily. "I have heard tell that the lady's page has often more need for a close mouth than the earl's esquire. But in truth, for this time, I knew nothing of the matter. I only saw that a marvellous ill-looking stranger rode into the castle with my lord's train, and so I told fair Mistress Ellinor."

"Are you sure that he was a stranger, Hardress ?" asked the earl, with a quiet and somewhat sad smile. "Think, boyhave you never seen that ill-favored countenance before ?"

"Jesu Maria!" exclaimed the youth, with a sudden start, and a motion of his hand toward the hilt of the gay dagger which he wore at his girdle-while a keen glance of intelligence and recognition gleamed, like a flash of lightning, over his handsome features. "It is he!-it is he! How could I ever have forgotten? But who should have looked to see him here, here in the Red Castle of O'Brien, unless as a prisoner, led hither but to die? But it is he!"

"It is who, Hardress?" cried the girl, bending her eyes upon his face with an expression of anxiety amounting almost to terror. "Tell me, tell me who is it? I knew that there was something wrong."

"Go to my mother, Hardress," said the earl, laying his fore.

finger on his lip, with a warning glance at the quick-witted boy, "and say to her that I beseech her to put back the supper yet half an hour longer; for I have tidings from the city of importance; and then pray his reverence to meet me in my private study forthwith, as I must speak with him before supper. Be quick, boy; there is no time to lose. Then to the stables and the kennel, and tell all those who rode with me, it is my pleasure not one word be spoken. Now, cousin Eily," he continued, turning to the beautiful girl, "if you will give me half an hour of your time, I will tell you what has fallen out, for I want your counsel. Where can we be most private ?" "Come with me," she said quickly; come to my own withdrawing room. But why did you send for Father Daly, if you would talk with me. It is not courteous, Dermot, to keep the good father waiting."

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"Courteous or no, I did it purposely. I would not have his keen eyes prying into matters prematurely-his long ears drinking words which I would have him weigh before believingor his sharp tongue asking questions which I desire not to have answered. But come, dearest, come!"

And with the words he took her by the hand and led her up the last flight of steps within the embrazure of the castle-door, and entered the great oaken hall of the fortalice, all glittering with lights reflected from a score of clear steel panoplies, and flashed back from a hundred polished weapons.

She was indeed very beautiful, and of a style of beauty perfectly characteristic of the isle which gave her birth.

Considerably above the middle height of women, and of a slender and elastic figure, her whole form was so exquisitely rounded, so fully swelling in its soft womanly outlines, that, although her waist was but a span, her neck and delicate throat, swan-like in its long drooping curve, and her wrist and ancle shapely and small as a child's; the general character of her shape was of plumpness and mature perfection, though she was in reality scarcely advanced beyond girlhood.

Her face was of the perfect Grecian outline, and her complexion as pure and white as that of the fairest Saxon maiden, though it was warmed by the glowing tints of a blood richer and more genial than runs in the veins of people of more northern nations. Her hair was black as the raven's wing, and like that, shadowed with a glittering metallic lustre that glanced in the light of the torches with a warm purple radiance; and it was so profuse that it fell down in a flood of luxuriant ringlets over her dazzling shoulders, below the verge of her velvet corsage. Her brows were of the same color, strongly defined, and full of character; and the long lashes of her great deepblue eyes, relieved by the clear hues of her transparent cheek, showed like a fringe of glossy silk.

Her gait was beautifully easy, graceful and swimming as the motion of bird in the air, or swan on the waters-such as is said to be peculiar to females of that Spanish blood which is believed by many to flow in the veins of the noblest children of Green Erin; and of a surety, both in birth and character, Ellinor Desmond was of her very noblest.

Such was the girl who moved gently and tranquilly, yet with an anxious heart and downcast eye, by the side of the proud young earl; and so fair a specimen did they present of young mortality that the boy Hardress gazed on them earnestly and long, with a wistful eye, and muttered to himself with a half-murmuring sigh, before he turned away to obey his lord's behest:

"God's benison upon their heads! Who ever saw so bright and beautiful a pair in all Green Erin! And they are good as they are beautiful and bright. God's benison upon them."

CHAPTER V.

"And, for that right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence."

TENNYSON.

THE apartment into which the young earl led the lady of his love-for such it may be admitted that she was, and one in every way worthy of his distinctions, whether natural or social-was a low-roofed square room, raised a few steps above the level of the neighboring chambers, and looking through a large mullioned oriel window into a small spot of garden, situated in the very centre of the castle, and overlooked only by the battlements of the tall square towers which surrounded it on every side but this by their blank and windowless walls.

It was for this reason probably that Ellinor Desmond had selected its as her own withdrawing room, or bower-as ladies' apartments were still sometimes called-and it was, perhaps, the only one in the castle fitted, from its seclusion and conveniences, to be the abode of a young and delicate girl, almost alone, in the midst of a society of rude and half civillised clans

men.

The entrance to it lay through an ante-chamber, communicating by a narrow passsage, on either hand of which was a small chamber for attendants, with the grand reception saloon of the castle, in which the mother of the earl-a stern old stately matron of the olden school, who remembered the civil war of the great Tyrone, and the iron rule of Elizabeth-was wont to sit in cold and solitary state.

There she was not, however, as the young and handsome pair passed through it on their way to Ellinor's bower-being, in consequence of the page's message, absent upon those hospitable cares intent which had not as yet been devolved upon menials. In the ante-chamber, however, there were three pretty,

gaily-attired maidens employed-two about their embroideryframes, and one reading aloud to her companions some merry French romance; for their laughter was heard, fresh and musical, before the earl and his fair companion reached the door of the room in which they sat.

They all three rose on the entrance of their lady, and courtesied gracefully, and with more of a lady-like demeanor than we should now expect from mere servant maidens; but at that period, when the lines of distinction between the commonalty and gentry were drawn so much more broadly than at present, the personal attendants of the great and noble were for the most part drawn from the humbler branches of their own families, or composed of the young aspirants of other noble lines, who scrupled not to perform what we should now deem menial offices, until their term of servitude should fit them, in their turn, to command others.

The former of these cases was most general with the female portion of the household, except for ladies of the very highest rank of nobility, who were waited upon by gentlewomen of birth and breeding-the latter with the pages and equerries, who rose gradually to the rank even of knighthood itself-when knighthood was not a mere empty name-and were often of birth as noble as he whose cloak they brushed, or whose spurs they buckled to his heel.

And in the present instance, one of her pretty girls in waiting was a far-off cousin of her own; while the two others were-what was in those days and in Ireland accounted a yet nearer connexion-her foster sisters; and all three had been brought up with their young mistress in a French convent, as was very usual among the Catholics, both of Ireland and Great Britain; and hence, in no small degree, the grace and courtesy of their demeanor, and assuredly the fluent use of the French tongue.

Without pausing, however, longer than to say a kind word en passant, Ellinor Desmond and her lover passed into the lit