"To thy first, thy betrothed lover. He found the pledge that I would not receive."
The maiden hesitated. Her eternal hopes might be compromised by this compliance. But she dreaded the loss of her insidious destroyer.
"Who art thou? I fear me for the tempter!"
"And what boots it, lady? But, listen. These elves be my slaves; and yet I am not immortal. My term is nigh run out, though it may be renewed if, before the last hour be past, a maiden plight her hopes, her happiness to me! Ere that shadow creeps on the fairy pillar thou art irrevocably mine, or his whom thou dreadest."
Eleanor groaned aloud. She felt a cold hand creeping on her brow. She screamed involuntarily. On a sudden the boughs bent with a loud crash above her head, and a form, rushing down the height, stood before her. This unexpected deliverer was Oliver Chadwyck. Alarmed by the cries of a female, as he was returning from the chase, he interposed at the very moment when his mistress was ensnared by the wiles of her seducer.
"Rash fool, thou hast earned thy doom. The blood be on thine own head. Thou art the sacrifice!"
This was said in a voice of terrible and fiendish malignity. A loud tramp, as of a mighty host, was heard passing away, and Oliver now beheld the form of his betrothed.
"Eleanor! Here! In this unholy place!" cried her lover. But the maiden was unable to answer.
"There's blood upon my hand!" said he, holding it up in the now clear and unclouded moonlight. "Art thou wounded, lady?"
"I know not," she replied; "I was alone. Yet I felt as though some living thing were nigh—some unseen form, of terrible and appalling attributes! Was it not a dream?"