Isabel heard all this with a beating heart, but an unmoved cheek. She had schooled herself to disguise her heart, and she succeeded so that no one suspected the truth. Only her father, when he saw her refuse one after another of her many suitors, divined that some unrevealed secret lay hidden in her bosom, and remembering the sudden departure of Grahame, was at no loss to refer her conduct to the right cause. Meantime a change had gradually come over Isabel. She was less light-hearted than of old—her laugh, though musical, was scarcely as gay as it once had been—and her sportive wit no longer flashed incessantly like the lightning in the summer cloud. The tide of war had long rolled steadfastly against the cavaliers, and finally the battle of Marston Moor closed the tragedy. The day after the news of the defeat arrived, a travel-soiled retainer of Grahame reached Mordaunt Hall and recounted in detail the events of that bloody field, from which he was a fugitive. He said that his master, when the day was lost, flung a discharged pistol into the thickest ranks of the enemy and died, like a knight of old, fighting to regain it. At these words her father turned to Isabel, in whose presence the retainer had related his story, and saw a deathly paleness overspread her cheek. The next instant she sank to the floor in a swoon. “My child, my darling Isabel, speak,” said the aged father, raising her in his trembling arms. “Oh! I have long suspected this, and the blow has killed her! Why did I suffer her to hear this tale!” With difficulty they revived her; but she only woke to a spell of sickness; and for weeks her fate hung in a balance between life and death. CHAPTER III. But Grahame had not fallen. True, as his retainer asserted, he had maintained the unequal combat long after every one else had left the field, and true also he had finally been overwhelmed by numbers and left for dead, covered with wounds, upon the battle plain; but when the pursuing squadrons had swept by, leaving the field comparatively deserted, and the chill night wind breathed with reviving coolness over his brow, he awoke to consciousness, and was enabled, by the assistance of one of his followers who yet prowled about the scene of carnage in the hope of finding his master, to gain a secure retreat where he might be cured of his wounds. Here, on the rude couch of a humble cottage, he lay for weeks, and the third month had set in after the battle, before he was enabled to leave his lowly shelter. During all this time his faithful retainer watched over him, tending him one while with the assiduity of a nurse, and another while, on any alarm, preparing to defend him to the last extremity.