At length, he bethought him that it would be as well to order the horses, which was accordingly done; and some time before they were ready, the fair girl herself appeared, and continued walking up and down the garden with her father and their guest, looking very lovely, both from excitement, which gave a varying colour to her cheek, and from intense feelings, which, denied the lips, looked out with deeper soul from the eyes. "I think, Zara," said Sir Robert Croyland, when it was announced that the horses and the servant were ready, "that you took Sir Edward to the north, when you went over to your uncle's. You had better, therefore, in returning--for I know, in your wild spirits, when once on horseback, you will not be contented with the straight road--you had better, I say, come by the southwest." "Oh, papa, I could never learn the points of the compass in my life!" answered Zara, laughing; "I suppose that is the reason why, as my aunt says, I steer so ill." "I mean--by the lower road," replied her father; and he laid such emphasis on the words, that Zara received them as a command. They mounted and set out, much to the surprise of Mrs. Barbara Croyland, who saw them from the window, and thence derived her first information of their intended expedition; for Zara was afraid of her aunt's kindnesses, and never encountered them when she could help it. When they were a hundred yards from the house, the conversation began; but I will not enter into all the details; for at first they related to facts with which the reader is already well acquainted. Sir Edward Digby told her at large, all that had passed between himself and Leyton on the preceding day, and Zara, in return, informed him of the message she had received from his friend, and how it had been conveyed. Their minds then turned to other things, or rather to other branches of the same subjects; and, what was to be done? was the next question; for hours were flying--the moment that was to decide the fate of the two beings in whom each felt a deep though separate interest, was approaching fast; and no progress had apparently been made. Zara's feelings seemed as much divided as Edith's had been. She shrank from the thought, that her sister, whom she loved with a species of adoration, should sacrifice herself on any account to such a fate as that which must attend the wife of Richard Radford. She shrank also, as a young, generous woman's heart must ever shrink, from the thought of any one wedding the abhorred, and separating for ever from the beloved; but then, when she came to turn her eyes towards her father, she trembled for him as much as for Edith; and, with her two hands resting on the pommel of the saddle, she gazed down in anxious and bitter thought.