"Have no fear," Garnet answered, kindly, laying a hand upon the other's shoulder; "in that will I be as zealous as though she were a daughter of mine own."
CHAPTER XV.
"THOU SHALT NOT KILL."
The deduction made by Winter concerning the silence of Elinor had been correct; but the power he had deemed potent to restrain her from uttering what she had overheard, and from giving voice to the indignities he in his drunkenness had heaped upon her, was not alone the reason of her silence; the mind was held in a species of lethargy. Now her father had left England; the motive which prompted his departure she could surmise,—his mission was an enigma. And who was his companion? The man whose face was ever before her, whose touch haunted her in dreams causing her to awake and cry in terror to the Virgin for protection. The girl was wrought up to a state of hysterical expectancy. Even when sitting within doors, an exclamation upon the street would cause her to start, fearing it might be a voice proclaiming the fulfillment of the awful threat which ever sounded in her ears. Never did she go abroad and behold a group of men but she approached with trembling limbs and nervous eagerness, feeling that the first words falling from their lips would be that England was without a king. What the effect of this anxiety might have been had she brooded over it long in solitude, is not difficult to tell. But solace arose from an unexpected quarter. On his departure for France, Fawkes had mentioned that there was in the city a certain friend, his companion several years before, whom he had again lately met and asked to call from time to time to inquire if he might render any service. The girl awaited the arrival of this visitor with trepidation and some anxiety, being well aware that the companions of her father were, as a rule, men of little refinement, accustomed to the rough life of a camp, and more at their ease in a pot-house than in the society of a young woman. Her expectations were pleasantly disappointed, for on his first visit the stranger, by his ease and grace of manner, banished from her mind all doubts concerning him. Although habited in the garb of a soldier of the period, there was about him something—a peculiar refinement of speech, a dignity of carriage, a certain reverent homage which he rendered unto her—that won from the girl a feeling of respect and confidence. His visits, far from being cause for apprehension, had become the one bright spot in her daily life; in his company Elinor for a brief time forgot the terrible anxiety to which she was a prey.
The only circumstance which impressed her as strange was that "Captain Avenel"—for by this name he had introduced himself—seldom visited the house by day, and there was always a certain amount of implied rather than actual caution in his movements, which seemed to the girl odd, as nothing else in his manner could be deemed in the least mysterious.
On one of those evenings, which Elinor now looked forward to with some pleasure, she and "Captain Avenel" sat together in a little room of Fawkes' dwelling.
"And didst say thou hadst intelligence of my father?" inquired she, eagerly.
"This very morning," answered the man, "did I receive a letter brought by packet from Calais, and in the note he wished me to make known his safe arrival; further, that he would by the next mail write thee, telling all about his travels. Now thou canst set thy mind at rest concerning him, for France in our time offers but few dangers, though in truth I think thy sire hath the look of one to whom peril would be a diversion."