The Duke listened in silence, but evidently the story produced a profound impression on him. His eyes never moved from his daughter’s face as she proceeded, and at the end he sat perfectly silent for a full three minutes before he put a sudden question-- “And why are you so keenly interested in the fate of this Saul Tresithny, Bride? What is he more to you than the cobbler, for instance, of whom Captain O’Shaughnessy spoke? Is it because he is a St. Bride man--Abner’s grandson? Poor old Abner!--it will be a terrible blow to him!” “I think it will kill him if Saul is condemned to death,” said the girl, with shining eyes. “Yes, papa, it is all that--I have known Saul ever since I can remember anything--ever since I was a tiny child, and he used to collect shells and seaweed for me, and make me boats to sail. But it is not that quite--it is not only that he belongs to our village, and that he is Abner’s grandson. That would always make me interested in him, and dreadfully sorry if he got into trouble. But there is another and a much greater reason than that. Oh, papa! surely you know what it is!” He was still looking at her earnestly. Little as Bride knew it, there was at this moment in her face a look of her mother which the Duke had never observed there before; her face was pale from her night’s vigil, and from the stress of her emotion. Her dark eyes were full of a liquid light, reminding him painfully of the dying brightness of his wife’s eyes as she gave him her last solemn charge. Even the note of appeal in the girl’s voice had something of the mother’s sweetness and softness. Bride _had_ been growing increasingly like her mother during the past months--many people had observed it; but her father had never noticed it till now. Now the likeness struck him with a curious force, and Bride noted that he seemed arrested by her words as had seldom been the case before. But he made no verbal response, and she suddenly rose and came over to him and knelt down at his feet, clasping her hands upon the arm of his chair, and turning her sweet, quivering, earnest face up towards him. Probably she would never have ventured upon this demonstration before her unapproachable father, had it not been that her sensitive spirit had received some instinctive consciousness of sympathy new between him and herself. He laid his hand now upon her clasped fingers, and the touch sent a quick thrill through her. “Papa, Saul must not die!” she said, with intense earnestness of resolve. “He must not die a traitor’s death, for the things he has done are not prompted by his own imaginings. The words he has spoken are not his own. It is Eustace who has done it all--Eustace who is the author of all. Oh, papa, the punishment must not fall on Saul’s head. I think it would break Eustace’s heart if he were to know that Saul had come to his death like that.”