Mona gazed in his face with a bewildered look, as if she did not comprehend his meaning; for though his words were not ungentle, they were spoken in that tone which showed the feelings that prompted them to be bitterer than the expression. There succeeded a pause for one or two minutes; and Franklin Gray, moving across the room, cast himself into a chair near the window, and gazed out gloomily over the wide prospect that stretched afar beneath his eyes, diversified only by the slopes of the hills, without town or village, or hedgerow to mark man's habitation or his cultivating hand. As he sat there, he spoke not to any one, and the silence grew painful, till at length it was broken by Lord Harold, as we shall continue to call him. "I am glad of an opportunity of speaking with you," he said, "for I want to know more precisely how I am situated. I have to thank you, I find--" "For nothing, sir!" replied Franklin Gray; "I have done what I have done for my own pleasure and convenience, and you have to thank me for nothing." "Such is perhaps the case, sir," replied Lord Harold, coolly; "at all events, you saved my life when I should otherwise undoubtedly have bled to death upon the moor. You have since treated me kindly and skilfully, have nearly cured a wound which might have proved fatal, and have tended me with much attention. At the same time, from various events which have occurred, from my being brought forth across the downs and placed in a coach which carried me hither, as well as from having seen at all times an ill-looking fellow with a pistol in his hand sitting at the foot of the next flight of steps, when I crossed from one room to the other, I am inclined to believe that you view me in some sort as a prisoner." "Doubtless the ill-looking fellow, as you call him," replied Franklin Gray, with a bitter smile, "may find many of the fair and the gay, in his own rank of life, who would think him fully as good-looking as Edward, Lord Harold. However, sir, I gather from your discourse, that you wish to learn whether you are to consider yourself as a prisoner or not. Now, as you acknowledge that you owe me your life, I do not think you can consider it a hard case, even should I, for my own convenience, keep you a prisoner for a certain time." "Yes, I have, sir," replied Lord Harold; "for I suppose there is scarcely any Englishman who does not feel that liberty is preferable to life." "Then perhaps the best way of settling it," answered Franklin Gray, sternly, "would be to shoot you through the head, and thus leave the account between you and me as it stood before." But as he spoke, Mona had advanced gently to his side, and laid her hand upon his arm. "Oh, set him free!" she said; "set him free as soon as he is able to depart." "What is it to you, Mona?" demanded Franklin Gray, turning sharply upon her; "Why should you wish him to depart?"