We believe that even those who are anxious to learn if the Protector travelled in safety to his place of destination, and what he did when he arrived there, will scarcely murmur at the delay which a brief visit to Constantia Cecil will necessarily occasion.

We must not leave her alone in her sorrow, which, of a truth, was hard to bear. A temporary respite had been afforded her by the terrible events of the evening; it was, however, a respite that was likely, in her case, only to bring about a more fatal termination. What was to prevent Sir Willmott Burrell from branding her father—from publishing his crime, now that he was to receive no benefit by the terrible secret of which he had become possessed? Although she might be preserved from the dreadful and dreaded doom of marrying a man she could neither regard nor respect, it was equally certain that an eternal barrier existed between her and the only one she loved—a barrier which not even the power of Cromwell could break down or remove. It has been said, and said truly, that there are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own deficiency. Constantia was a reasoning being, and she appeared ever placid in situations where her fine mind was overwhelmed by a painful train of circumstances over which she had no control: the sins for which she suffered were not of her own committing.

She had often gloried in days past at the prospect of fame—the honest, upright fame which appeared the guiding principle that influenced her father's actions, when the seeking after glory seemed to her as a ferment thrown into his blood to work it up to action; and though she sometimes apprehended that he used his will with his right hand and his reason with his left, she never imagined the possibility that his pomp was furnished by injustice and his wealth dyed in blood. It was, in truth, a fearful knowledge she had acquired—a knowledge she could not communicate, and upon which she could never take advice. Her misery was to be endured not only with patience, but in secret and without complaint. That destiny was indeed severe which compelled her to anticipate a meeting with Walter as the greatest evil which could befall her; yet ardently did her soul yearn to know his fate. She sat by her father on the first night of his affliction, and on the long, long day that followed, guarding him through his dreadful malady with the watchfulness of a most devoted child, and the skilfulnes of a most wise physician. Almost every word he uttered was as a dagger to her heart; yet she saw and knew the necessity that must soon exist for others to hear him speak, and shuddered at the thought.

"God! God! have mercy on me!" she murmured, clasping her hands, as she looked upon his features, which, when it was nearly morning, had been tranquillised into forgetfulness—"God have mercy upon me—and upon him, poor sleeper!"

"Who sleeps?" he exclaimed, starting from his couch—"He will not let me sleep!—There! Constance, Constance, the ship is under weigh—she spreads her white sails to the breeze, the ocean breeze—the breeze that will not cool my brow!—And there—they drag him from the hold!—Look how he struggles on the vessel's deck!—Spare him!—But no, do not spare him: if he returns, where am I? Hush! did you hear that?—Hush! hush! hush!" He stretched his hand, and bent his head in an attitude of deep attention; then seizing her arm, repeated "hush!" until at last she again inquired what disturbed him. "'Tis your mother, child; heard you not that she said I murdered you? Speak, Constantia,—you are not dead? I did not murder you—speak! I fired no pistol, and you did not fall!" The sleep she had so unintentionally broken had been but of short continuance during those weary hours; and the day was far advanced before she had leisure to bestow a moment's thought upon the probable turn that might be given to her future prospects by the sudden summons of Sir Willmott Burrell to Hampton Court. But, upon whichever side she turned, her destiny was dark, lowering, and fearful as the thunder-storm. How her heart fainted when the form of her favourite Barbara was present to her imagination, as she last held it bleeding on her bosom! How mysterious was that death! how terrible! She would have given worlds to look upon her but once more, for she could ill reconcile the idea of that gentle girl's having a stormy sea-bed at her father's hands—that rude, unhallowed man, the origin and nature of whose influence over her own parent she now understood but too well.

Lady Frances Cromwell would have soothed her affliction had she known how to do so, but comfort cannot be given to a sorrow whose source is unknown. She entered her friend's watching-room, but could not prevail upon her to take either repose or food; and hoping to catch the earliest view of the physician, whose arrival she knew must be soon, she called one of her women to attend her, and wandered up the hill to Minster, where the beautiful ruins of Sexburga's nunnery commanded so extensive a view of the entire island, and a considerable portion of the adjoining country. The day had risen to one of unclouded beauty; the marshy coast of Essex was cleared of its hovering fogs; and its green meadows stretched away in the distance, until they were lost in the clear blue sky. The southern part of the island, flat and uninteresting as it is, looked gay and cheerful in the sun-light; for every little lake mirrored the smiling heavens, and danced in diamond measures to the music of bee and bird.

The cliffs at East-Church towered away for nearly six miles, broken here and there by the falling of some venerable crag, hurled, as it were, into the ocean by the giant hand of changing nature; while, as a sentinel, the house at Gull's Nest Crag maintained its pre-eminence in front of the Northern Ocean. The two little islands of Elmley and Harty slept to the south-east, quietly and silently, like huge rush-nests floating on the waters. Beyond East-Church the lofty front of the house of Shurland reared its stone walls and stern embattlements, and looked proudly over its green hills and fertile valleys—while, if the eye wandered again to the south, it could discern the Barrows, where many hundred Danes, in the turbulent times long past, found quiet and a grave.

Several large men-of-war, with reefed sails and floating pennons, lay at the entrance of the Nore, while a still greater number blotted the waters of the sluggish Medway;—still the sun shone over all; and what is it that the sun does not deck with a portion of its own cheerfulness and beauty?

"Mount up the tower, Maud," said Lady Frances, "the tower of the old church; it commands a greater range than I can see; and tell me when any cross the ferry; thy eyes, if not brighter, are quicker far than mine."

"Will ye'r ladyship sit?" replied the sapient waiting-maid; "I'll spread a kercher on this fragment of antiquity: ye'r ladyship can sit there free from any disturbance. I can see as well from this high mound as from the castle, or church-steeple, my lady; it is so hard to climb."

"Maud, if you like not to mount, say so, and I will go myself. You are dainty, young mistress."

Maud obeyed instantly, though with sundry mutterings, which, well for her, her lady heard not; for the Lady Frances was somewhat shrewishly given, and could scold as if she had not been a princess, the rank and bearing of which she was most anxious to assume, and carry as highly as the noblest born in Europe.

"See you aught?" she inquired, at last looking up to Mistress Maud, whose head, surmounted by its black hood, overlooking the parapet wall, showed very like a well-grown crow.

"A shepherd on yonder hill, lady, waving his arm to a dog down in the dingle, and the beast is driving up the fold as if he were a man."

Lady Frances bent over a tombstone near her and read the inscription. It described in quaint, but touching language, the death of a young woman, about her own age, the day before her intended bridal. There had been a white rose-tree planted close to the rude monument, but its growth was impeded by a mass of long grass and wild herbage, so that there was but one rose on its branches, and that was discoloured by a foul canker, whose green body could be seen under the froth it cast around to conceal its misdeeds. Lady Frances took it out, destroyed it, and began pulling up the coarse weeds.

"Such a tomb as this I should have liked for Barbara," she said aloud, sighing heavily as the words escaped her lips.

"She will not need it," replied a voice from under an old archway, close beside where she sat.

Lady Frances started.

"Will you tell your friend, Mistress Cecil," continued the same voice—Lady Frances could not see the speaker, although, as may be readily believed, she looked around her with an anxiety not divested of terror—"Will you tell your friend, Mistress Cecil, that old Mother Hays, of the Gull's Nest Crag, is dying, and that she has something to communicate which it concerns her to know, and that the sooner she comes to the Gull's Nest the better; for the woman's spirit is only waiting to tell her secret, and go forth."

"Methinks," replied Lady Frances, "that her own child—I know she has one—would be a fitter depositary for her secret than a lady of gentle blood. But why come ye not forth? I hate all jugglery."

"Her own child, Robin, is away, the Lord knows where; and those who are not of gentle blood are as eager after secrets as other folk. Your father has had rare hunting after the Cavaliers and their secrets, though his blood has more beer than Rhenish in it, to my thinking."

Lady Frances stamped her little foot with rage at the insult, and called, in no gentle tone, "Maud! Maud!" then raising her voice, which she imagined could be heard below, as the garden of Cecil Place joined the ruins of Minster, she shouted, in a way that would have done no discredit to any officer in the Commonwealth service, "Below there!—turn out the guard, and encircle the ruins!"

"Turn out the guard, and encircle the ruins!" mimicked the voice, which was evidently receding; "the little Roundhead's in a passion!—'Turn out the guard!' ah! ah! ah!" and the laugh appeared to die away beneath her feet.

Maud had hastened down right joyfully at the summons, and stood beside her mistress, whose temper had by no means cooled at the term "Roundhead," as applied to herself; and broke forth in good earnest, when noting a smile that elongated her woman's lip, as she said,—

"Law! daisy me, my lady! I thought you were run away with, seeing I have just seen two ravens come out o' the glen—the Fox-glen, as we call it."

"Run away with!" repeated Lady Frances, bridling; "have the goodness to remember to whom it is you speak—woman—Here has been a—a—voice—Why turns not out that coward guard? we are too long peaceful, methinks, and need a stir to keep our soldiers to their duty."

"A voice, my lady!" repeated Maud, creeping to Lady Frances, and remembering the legends they had talked of in the hall—"Did it speak, my lady?"

"Fool! how could I know it a voice if it had not spoken?" replied Lady Frances, who, as her temper subsided, felt that she was making herself ridiculous, as it would not be in keeping with her dignity to repeat the words she had heard.

"Shall I go down and call up the guard, and the servants, my lady, to see after this voice?" persisted Maud, with the stupid obstinacy of a person who can only see one thing at a time.

"Go up to the steeple, and look out—But—no—follow me to the house; and remember," she added, with all the asperity of a person who is conscious of having permitted temper to overcome judgment, "that we are in the house of mourning, and ought not to indulge in any thing like jest—say nothing of my alarm—I mean of what I heard, to your companions: it is not worth recording——"

"My lady!"

"Silence, I say!" returned Lady Frances, folding her robe round her with the dignity of a queen. The woman certainly obeyed; but she could not resist muttering to herself, "She never will let a body speak when she takes to those stormy fits. Marry, come up! I wonder who she is!—Well, she's punishing herself; for I could have told her that out by East-Church I saw two soldiers and another, who seem to have taken the wrong instead of the right road; and, after still staying a little at the Cross, turned back on their steps, so as to come to Cecil Place."

How many bars and pitfalls are in the way of those who would climb highly, even if they wish to climb honestly and holily! If they stand as the mark for a multitude's praise, they have also to encounter a multitude's blame—the rabble will hoot an eagle; and the higher he soars, the louder will they mock—yet what would they not give for his wings!

Lady Frances's woman found within her narrow bosom an echo to the sneer of the mysterious voice; yet, could she have become as Frances Cromwell, how great would have been her triumph! How curious are the workings of good and evil in the human heart! How necessary to study them, that so we may arrive at the knowledge of ourselves.

Yet Maud loved her mistress; and had not Lady Frances reproved her harshly and unjustly, she would never have thought, "Marry, come up! I wonder who she is!" The spirit of evil worked at the moment in both—in the lady, as a triumphant tyrant—in the woman, as an insolent slave.

We leave it to our philosophical readers to determine which of the two manifestations was the most dangerous: we hope their displeasure against either will not be very violent; for we have but too frequently observed the self-same dispositions animate bright eyes and open coral lips. Women are frequently greater tyrants than men, because of their weakness: they are anxious for power as the means of strength; and therefore they more often abuse it than use it properly; and men are better slaves than women; because an innate consciousness of their strength, which they are apt to believe they can employ whenever a fitting opportunity occurs, keeps them tranquil. It has been often noted, that in popular tumults women are frequently the most busy, and the least easy to be controlled.

No one would have supposed that Lady Frances's temper had been ruffled, when she crept into the room where Constantia was watching her still sleeping father, and communicated the news of the anticipated death of Mother Hays, with her strange request, in so low a whisper, that happily he was not disturbed.

She quitted the apartment when her father's physician was announced; but not until he had informed her that his Highness was about to visit the Island, inquire personally after the health of Sir Robert Cecil, investigate the strange murder that had occurred, inspect the fortress of Queenborough, and ascertain if useful fortifications might not be erected at Sheerness; thus mingling public with private business.