"Who speaks? who?"
"Grace!"
"Thou art no enemy! Bless thee for the sound of thy voice. Tell me what has happened? Where is my uncle? Oh, speak as if life hung on thy words."
"The Earl of Bellamont is living."
"Heaven, I thank thee! And this dead body?"
"I have protected thee from a fate worse than death, with the life of this man."
"Who—who art thou? I should know that voice," she exclaimed, with returning confidence and hope, gazing upon his now swarthy and disfigured features which defeated her scrutiny, deeply shaded, too, as they were by his bonnet, which he pulled farther over his brows.
"An outcast, unworthy a thought from innocence and purity like thee."
"Yet you are my friend. How came you here?"
"To save thee!"