Lord Harold took two or three turns up and down the room with a sufficient degree of agitation to attract the attention of the woman, who asked in a peculiar tone, if she could do anything to serve him? "If you could go down," said Lord Harold, "and ask your mistress to speak with me for a few moments before she goes, you would very greatly serve me. Do it privately!" he added. The woman nodded her head, and left him. She returned in a few minutes, however, alone, seeming to have met with a different reception from her mistress to that which she expected. "She says she cannot come," replied she, to Lord Harold's eager questions. "If you want anything, she bade me tell you to speak with Captain Gray himself, who will do anything you may desire that is reasonable." "Pray go down to her again," said Lord Harold; "tell her it is with her I must speak. That I beg, that I entreat of her, by all the kindness that she has shown me, to come and speak to me, if it be but for one minute." "I don't like to go any more," replied the woman; "she answered me quite crossly, and the Captain himself is there, sitting at the further end of the room reading, with his brow as dark as that great black hill, which looks as if it never saw the sun." Lord Harold pulled a ring from his finger, which was the only thing of value on his person that had escaped the hands of Wiley and Hardcastle. and held it out towards the woman. "Will you do what I ask you," he said, "and have this for your reward?" She was not proof against the temptation; and murmuring, "He cannot eat me, if I do whisper again to his wife," she left the room and descended the staircase. In a shorter time than before, she returned, however, and with a still less satisfied countenance, saying, "She says she will not come. She bids me tell you she will not come; and I'm to bring her no more such messages, which I'm sure I would not do for twenty rings; for there he sat while I whispered to her, and though he was so far off that he could not hear a word, he looked up from his book and stared at me as if his eyes had been swords to run me through." Lord Harold turned away, mortified. "It may be the worse for all of us," he said to himself; "it may be the worse for all of us. There, woman, there is the ring I promised you; take it." With a brightening countenance she received the gift, which was perhaps more than she expected, as she had failed in her errand; and then, descending the stairs, Lord Harold heard her stop a moment, and apparently speak with the man who kept watch below. "That must be my next resource," he said to himself; "that must be my next resource. Perhaps I shall succeed better there."