"Thy daughter!"
Tyrone, for it was he, seemed nigh choking with the emotion he sought to
suppress.
"Nay," he continued, "it must not be. Oh! did I love her less, she had
been mine!"
"Thine?" suddenly retorted her father, somewhat scornfully. "And who
gave thee this power over woman's spirit? Thou hast not even had speech
of her, much less the means to win her favour."
An almost supernatural expression seemed to gather on the features of
the chieftain. His eye, rolling through the vista of past years, began
to pause, appalled as it approached the dark threshold of the future. He
appeared lost to the presence of surrounding objects, as he thus
exclaimed with a terrific solemnity--
"When the dark-browed Norah nursed me on her lap, and her eye, though
dark to outward sense, saw through the dim veil of destiny, it was thus
she sung as she guarded my slumbers, and the hated Sassenach was in the
hall:--
"'Rest thee, baby! light and darkness
Mingling o'er thy path shall play;
Hope shall flee when thou pursuest,
Lost amid life's trackless way.
"'Rest thee, baby! woman's breast
Thou shalt darken o'er with woe;
None thou lookest on or lovest,
Joy or hope hereafter know.
Many a maid thy glance shall rue,
Where it smites it shall subdue.'
"It was an evil hour, old man, when I looked upon thy daughter."
Holt, though of a stout and resolute temper, was yet daunted by this
bold and unlooked-for address. He trembled as he gazed on the mysterious
being before him, gifted, as it seemed, with some supernatural
endowments. His unaccountable appearance, the nature of his
communications, together with his manner and abrupt mode of speech,
would have shaken many a firmer heart unprepared for these disclosures.
"What is thy business with me?" he inquired, with some hesitation.
"To warn thee;--to warn thy daughter. She hath seen me. Ay, to-night.
And how runs the prophecy? Let her beware. I have looked on her
beforetime. Looked on her! ay, until these glowing orbs have become dim,
dazzled with excess of brightness. I have looked on her till this stern
bosom hath become softer than the bubbling wax to her impression; but I
was concealed, and the maiden passed unharmed by the curse. To-night I
have saved her life. A resistless impulse! And she hath looked on me."
He smote his brow, groaning aloud in the agony he endured.
It may be supposed this revelation did not allay the apprehensions of
the listener. Bewildered and agitated, he turned towards the window. The
pale moon was glimmering through the quiet leaves, and he saw a dark and
muffled figure in the avenue. It was stationary for a while; it then
slowly moved towards the adjoining thicket and was lost to his view.
Holt turned to address his visitor, but he had disappeared. It was like
the passing of a troubled dream, vague and indistinct, but fraught with
horrible conceptions. A cloud seemed to gather on his spirit, teeming
with some terrible but unknown doom. Its nature even imagination failed
to conjecture. His first impulse was to visit his daughter. He found the
careful nurse by her bedside. As he entered the room, Agnes raised one
finger to her lips, in token of silence. The anxious father bent over
his child. Her sleep was heavy, and her countenance flushed. A tremor
passed over her features. A groan succeeded. Suddenly she started up.
With a look of anguish he could never forget, she cried--
"Help! O my father!" She clung around his neck. In vain he endeavoured
to soothe her. She sobbed aloud, as if her heart were breaking. But she
never told that dream, though her haggard looks, when morning rose on
her anxious and pallid countenance, showed the disturbance it had
created.
Days and weeks passed by. The intrusion of the bold outlaw was nigh
forgotten. The father's apprehensions had in some degree subsided, but
Constance did not resume her wonted serenity. Her earliest recollections
were those of the old nursery rhymes, with which Agnes had not failed to
store her memory. But the giant killers and their champions now failed
to interest and excite. Other feelings than those of terror and of
wonder were in operation, requiring a fresh class of stimulants for
their support--tales of chivalry and of love, that all-enduring passion,
where maidens and their lovers sighed for twice seven years, and all too
brief a trial of their truth and constancy! As she listened, her soul
seemed to hang on the minstrel's tongue; that erratic troubadour, Gaffer
Gee, being a welcome and frequent visitor at Grislehurst.
One night he had tarried late in the little chamber, where she was wont
to give him audience. She seemed more wishful to protract his stay than
heretofore.
"Now for the ballad of Sir Bertine, the famous Lancashire knight, who
was killed at St Alban's, fighting for the glorious red rose of
Lancaster."