"No indeed, for God above Is great to grant, as mighty to make, And creates the love to reward the love; I claim you still for my own love's sake! Delayed it may be for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few; Much is to learn, much to forget, Ere the time be come for taking you." --ROBERT BROWNING. But at rare intervals was that dark torturing shadow, so dreaded by Lady Shanno, wont to fall across her path; but in the bodily weakness caused by her sorrow and her long months of watching it sprang up once more during the lonely weeks which followed her father's death, and in its terror the poor girl fled from her castle walls and took shelter as in her childhood beneath the lowly roof of her foster-father, where his loving care speedily soothed her tortured nerves to rest. Then at last she prevailed on him to give up his humble home and return with her for ever to the castle, that she might cheer his old age and he protect her from her girlish terrors within those ancient halls, whose resounding echoes and empty vastness now seemed more dreary than she could bear. And though even now it cost the old man a pang to leave his riverside cot, where he had dwelt so many long years, yet there was a certain proud satisfaction mixed with the love which drew him to his foster-daughter's side, in that he, the humble boatman, should be called to end his days within those brave old walls, with a secret right so to do which was little guessed by any of his village friends. Still, although his daughter and her noble husband were dead, the old man clung fixedly to his resolve to maintain silence as to his real relationship to his foster-child, and seemed to take a greater pride in his own secret knowledge of the fact than he would have felt in having his true position as the Lady Shanno's grandfather proclaimed throughout the neighbourhood. Perhaps his aged nerves were actually too weak to bear the fresh excitement caused by such a revelation, but be that as it might, his will was firm on the matter, and Primrose, so finding it, forbore to press him further.