"Then the Lady Frances would take one of the other sex as a shield?" "Yes, Constance; they would do as well to be shot at as ourselves, you know." "Ah, Frances, you are no true woman, unless, if there were real danger, you would thrust yourself between it and the life a thousand times more precious than your own. Suppose, for instance, that sudden danger menaced the life of----" "Hush, dear Constantia; the idea of such an event is enough. It is easier to sacrifice life when the sacrifice is demanded by affection, than to resign one selfish indulgence." "Ah! because, in the first case, we gratify ourselves; in the second, others." "You are a mental chemist, Constance: but here comes the maid called Barbara, with hoods and cardinals, signifying that the dew is falling, though we feel it not." "I sought you, mistress," said Barbara, "all over the house, for Sir Willmott Burrell advised me that he wished to speak with you in the oak parlour, if it so please you, or in the library; my honoured master was present." "Did my father too want me?" "No, madam; he said he would go to his chamber, for a little, before the evening meal." The young ladies, followed by Barbara, entered the house, and, as Frances Cromwell pressed Constantia's hand, she felt it clammy and chilling cold: she would have spoken, but, while arranging the necessary words, her friend, with a more than usually dignified deportment, entered the parlour. It was a dark, dim room, the frettings and ornaments of black carved oak. "Tell Sir Willmott Burrell I await him here," she said to Barbara, while passing the threshold. Frances Cromwell, over whose mind a feeling of terror was imperceptibly stealing, would have remained, but Constance intimated that she would receive Burrell alone. CHAPTER XIII. ----I am sworn brother now To grim Necessity; and he and I Will keep a league till death. SHAKSPEARE. "My blood seems to curdle in my veins," murmured Constance, as she rubbed the palm of one hand against the back of the other; "my very blood seems to curdle in my veins, and a shadow, as of the vampire's wing, is over me. But why is this? Is God less present with me here than beneath the heavenly atmosphere I have just now breathed?" And then she uttered a few words of prayer, so earnestly, that Burrell had entered the room before she was aware of his presence. "You are not well," he observed, seating himself in a chair beside that into which she had sunk: "I hope I do not disturb you unpleasantly. You keep watch too anxiously by your father's couch." "I am better now," she replied; "but that of which you speak, my thought of the living and the dead, although it may have somewhat touched my health, has been my happiest duty." "Perhaps you would rather hear what I have to say to-morrow," he observed, a momentary feeling of sympathy forcing itself upon his mind, as he noticed her white lip, and still whiter cheek.