While the note was yet open before her, the door opened, and Sir Robert
Cecil entered. Lady Frances motioned him that Miss Cecil slept, and the
old man stooped over her bed with clasped hands, scarcely breathing,
lest he should disturb her rest.
"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!"