"Hark! The clock strikes. I have but a few moments more. The hour is wearing away. I have seen the duchess, and she has told me to whom I must most strenuously apply; and she has warned me that I must not do what, as you may well believe, my heart would prompt,--share your prison. I must be at liberty to act in your service: but I have bribed a kindly guard, and he will admit me when it is possible. I understand others, without the holy claim I have, gain access to some within the walls: so trust me, I shall soon be here again; and, as I hope, with news to cheer us both." Lord Nithsdale shook his head slightly, but then, with an assumed cheerfulness, listened to what she had to communicate. "Lord Danby and Lord Nottingham are friendly; the Duke of Richmond, though not friendly, cannot be forward in the prosecution, related as he is to Lord Derwentwater; and I feel persuaded the next news from Scotland will be such as to quiet the fears of government." "And is the time come when one calculates upon the failure of the cause to which oneself and all one's house have ever been devoted?" "Nay! can I now think of any cause but my own dear lord's? such days are past, and gone forever! To accomplish all that may he compassed with honour is now my first, my only object!" and she tore herself from the husband who, whatever might be her devotion to him, repaid her with the love and reverence he might feel for a guardian angel. She was gone! He remained in his solitude, gazing upon the door through which she had disappeared, and almost doubting whether he had been blessed with her actual presence, or whether it had not been a cheering vision vouchsafed to him in mercy. How often had he thought that were she near to console and to support him, he could meet his fate without a murmur. He fancied that the bitterest part of his present condition was the entire separation from her who was the partner of all his feelings, the depositary of his sorrows, the sharer of his anxieties. But alas! while life was so dreary, so joyless, so irksome, it was far less precious to him than when the sight of her had brought before him all he was to lose. He was sad, hopeless, resigned before. He felt that, if wrong, he had not been wilfully so in the course he had pursued; he consoled himself with the reflection that no stain could rest on his fair fame; that, though his name might be attainted, he left behind him to his children a character of unblemished honour. He had deliberately, and with little hope of any better result than the present, upheld the pretensions of the prince for whom he was now suffering; and he felt it would not become him to repine at an event to which he had always looked forward as probable.