Other eyes besides Cecil's kept watch through the night that followed that eventful day. Royston's never closed till the dawning. Sometimes sitting motionless, sunk in his gloomy meditations, sometimes walking restlessly to and fro, and cooling his hot forehead in the current of the fresh night air, he kept his mind on a perpetual strain, calculating all probable and improbable chances; and the dull red light was never quenched, that told of perpetually-renewed cigars. I fancy I hear an objection, springing from lips that are wont to be irresistible, leveled against such an atrocious want of sentiment. Fairest critic! we will not now discuss the merits or demerits of nicotine, considered as an aid to contemplation, or an anodyne; but do you allow enough for the force of habit? Putting aside the case of those Indian captives, who are allowed a pipe in the intervals of torment (for these poor creatures have had no advantages of education, and are beyond the pale of civilized examples), do you not know that men have finished their last weed while submitting to the toilette of the guillotine? We are told that a Spaniard has begged of his confessor a light for his _papelito_ within sight of a freshly dug grave, when the firing-party was awaiting him one hundred paces off with grounded arms. Only when the sky was gray did Royston lie down to rest; but he slept heavily late into the morning. His first act, when he rose, was to send a note to Cecil Tresilyan, begging her to meet him at a named place and time: she did not answer it, nevertheless he felt certain she would come. Assignations were no novelties to him, but he had gone forth to bear his part in more than one stricken field, where the chances of life and death were evenly poised, without any such despondency or uncertainty as clung to him then on his way to the appointed spot. He arrived there first, but he had not waited long when Cecil came slowly along the path that led into the heart of the woodland. As she drew near, Keene could not help thinking of the first time his eyes had lighted on her, mounting the zigzags of the Castle-hill. There was still the same elasticity of step, the same imperial carriage of the graceful head; but a less observant eye would have detected the change in her demeanor. The pretty petulance and provocative manner which, contrasting with the royalty of her form and feature, contributed so much to her marvelous fascinations, had departed, he feared, never to return. Many instances occur daily where the same painfully unnatural gravity exasperates us, when its cause can not be traced up to either guilt or sorrow. Ah! Lilla, there are many who think that your wild-flower wreath was a more becoming ornament than that diamond circlet--bridal gift of the powerful baron. Sweet Eugenia! faces that were never absent from your _levees_ in old times you have missed at your court since you wedded Caesar.