This unsatisfactory information only served to increase the excitement already produced in the minds of the prisoners; while their attendants were busily searching for keys, and smoothing the rich vestments that had been somewhat roughly crowded into the coffer, they looked on as people in a dream. The glare of lights which filled every gloomy angle of their dungeon; the velvet robes flung in glossy robes over the armed chair; the jewels, twinkling and flashing like a cluster of stars, on the table—all seemed like enchantment, and they looked on with a strange emotion of hope mingled with foreboding and almost with affright. Still there was something in all that had transpired, calculated to encourage more than to depress. So after a few brief words of consultation, the mother and daughter sat down and permitted the two women to adorn their persons without farther question. The duchess was speedily arrayed. In spite of her fears, a ray of hope had been awakened, and her face, before so pale and care-worn, became almost happy in its expression, save that a color, far more vivid than was natural to her cheek, betrayed the anxious fears that struggled against the more hopeful feeling that had sprung to life in her heart. She stood by as they wreathed the diamond tiara amid the tresses of her daughter’s hair, and, with her own fair hand, put back two or three of the brown curls where they fell over the young cheek, which gradually became warm and damask from the influence of anticipations which she could not entirely control, and yet which she trembled to encourage. How beautiful she looked in her robe of glowing velvet, with the tiara which had once adorned a queen, shedding its starry brightness amid her hair and over that pure forehead. Her neck, always beautiful, now gleamed out with more pearly whiteness beneath the string of brilliants that shed a rich light upon it; and, as the old nurse busied herself with the point lace which draped her rounded arms, she looked up to her mother, and a sweet, natural smile came faintly over her face. The mother did not smile, but a brighter expression lighted up her eyes, and the two looked almost happy making their strange toilet in a dungeon. The nurse had taken that little hand, which trembled in her clasp with conflicting emotions, and after pressing her lips upon the rosy palm, was drawing on the snowy glove with its embroidery of seed pearls, when there was a sound at the door, as of some person knocking against it with his knuckles, and, after a moment, the lieutenant of the tower once more presented himself. When the duchess advanced eagerly toward him, demanding a reason for all that had transpired, he answered with the calm politeness which usually marked his demeanor, that the Lord Protector had given orders that they should be removed to another room. “But, tell me,” said the lady, almost beside herself with anxiety, “tell me, is it to the duke—is it to my husband you conduct us?”