"Has she slept thus all the night?" he whispered.—"Has she slept thus soundly all the night, Lady Frances?"
"No, sir," was the reply; and it was delivered in a tone of unusual sternness; for it must be remembered that she entertained much anger against Sir Robert, for permitting the marriage to take place so manifestly against the inclination of his daughter. "No, sir, it is many nights since she has slept soundly."
"But, lady, see how sweet, how gentle her repose! Surely, she could not sleep thus with a heavy heart?"
"Sir Robert," replied Lady Frances, "the heart's heaviness will make heavy the eyelids; nay, with greater certainty, when they are swollen with weeping."
The baronet stooped down, as if to ascertain the correctness of what the lady had said, and at the instant a tear forced its way through the long fringes that rested on his daughter's pallid cheek. He groaned audibly, and left the apartment with the stealthy step and subdued deportment of a proclaimed criminal.
"They are all mystery, one and all, mystery from beginning to end," thought Lady Frances, as with a heavy heart she went in search of her women to ascertain how they were fulfilling her directions.
In one of the passages she met Barbara weeping bitterly.
"Tears, tears! nothing but tears!" said the Protector's daughter, kindly. "What ails thee now, girl? Surely there is some new cause for grief, or you would not weep thus?"
"My lady, I hardly know what is come over me, but I can scarcely stanch my tears: every thing goes ill. I sent two of the serving maidens to gather flowers, to help to dress up the old chapel, that looks more like a sepulchre than any thing else. And what do you think, my lady, they brought me? Why, rue, and rosemary, and willow boughs; and I chid them, and sent them for white and red roses, lilies and the early pinks, which the stupid gipsies brought at last, and I commenced nailing up the boughs of some gay evergreens amongst the clustering ivy, that has climbed over the north window—the lower one I mean; and just as I had finished, and was about to twist in a garland of such sweet blush roses, an adder, a living adder, trailing its length all up the fretted window, stared with its dusky and malignant eyes full in my face, and pranked out its forked tongue dyed in the blackest poison. Oh, madam! how I screamed—and I know the creature was bent on my destruction, for, when I jumped down, it uncoiled, and fell upon the earth, coming towards me as I retreated, when Crisp (only think, my lady, of the wisdom of that poor dog!)—little Crisp seized it, somewhere by the neck, and in a moment it was dead!"
"You should smile at that, not weep," observed Lady Frances, patting her cheek as she would that of a petted child.