"Kyd retained me prisoner to bear a courteous message to his lady love. I swore, to purchase my life, to be its bearer when he came to port. For this purpose I was landed above the town on the western side, and guided by him to this gate. He now awaits an answer to this billet. This done, I am released from my solemn oath to him. Fitzroy lives, said you, lady?"
She heeded not his words, but snatching the note from his hands, said hurriedly,
"Wait my return."
She flew to the balcony and shut herself in her boudoir, and, drawing the curtains close, half opened the letter, when she hesitated.
"Nay, it must not be! 'Tis wrong. I will return it.—But perhaps it contains something I should know! I should like to hear what the lost Lester can say. He comes, too, in such gentle guise! I will read it!"
The next moment it was open in her hand, and she read with a fluttering pulse,
"Dearest Kate,
"Let me see you for a brief moment just as the moon rises, by the linden that grows at the foot of the Rondeel. My temporal, nay, spiritual welfare hangs upon your answer. I am penitent. I appeal to you as to a heavenly intercessor! Refuse not this request, lest the guilt of my suicidal blood fall on your soul.
Lester."
She looked at the lines till they seemed composed of words of fire. Her brain reeled, her heart swelled, and she seemed torn by emotions of terrible power.
"Heaven guide me in this strait!" she cried, falling impulsively on her knees and clasping the letter in her folded hands. "Sudden and strange events crowd thick upon me, with tales of murder foul, and this newborn jealousy of Rupert—whom I know not if I love or no, yet whom I should love had he not risen from the grave, as 'twere, to step between me and my newly-plighted troth! My brain is crazed!"
She rose to her feet and walked the room thoughtfully, with the letter in her hand, now looking at it with tenderness, now crumpling it with disdain. Suddenly she stopped and said with energy,