When Captain L'Estrange returned from the door, he was an altered man; his purpose was knit, resolved; nothing could now shake him from it. Still, though everything divine had taken its flight, something human still lingered behind; the best of human passions--Love! so nearly allied to heavenly grace as to be all but divine; rising, like snowy mountains, so near, and yet unable to pierce the lofty skies; standing without the pale, so near, yet unable to enter the holy of holies. All heavenly aspirations had died; not so all human. He was still a man, though his soul was consigned to man's great enemy; and as he thought on Ellen, his thoughts were unenviable, bitter. There seemed now a great gulf fixed between them,--she was on the right, he on the left side of the throne, and he looked up to her as a fallen angel does to the sky where once were his destinies, knowing he shall enter its crystal gates no more. Opening his window, he paced the balcony backwards and forwards for an hour or two. The night air was cool, the stars bright--too bright; he could look at them no longer. So he entered his darkened room again, and by the fitful glare of the expiring embers disrobed himself, and pressed his pillow. How his head ached! how he tossed on that unquiet couch! At last sleep, undeserved, sealed his eyes; he slept,--not the unquiet sleep, scared by wild dreams, the soldier sleeps ere he enters the battle field, where glory and honour point the way to glorious death; but the deep calm sleep, the mental lethargy, of the convict on the night before his execution, when contempt and shame point the way to an unhallowed grave! When Captain de Vere left his friend, he strode along the passage, his clanking footsteps ringing through the arched corridor, disturbing the calmness of night, and, descending the stairs, opened the door of the smoking room. "You have kept me a confounded time," said Sir Richard; "I have almost finished the bottle." "It is settled," said the Captain; "he was a difficult leech to fix, a vacillating fool; but I brought him to anchor at last, and he will do so. By G--! he gave his word, and retracted, shifted and reshifted; but spite of all his tackings I piloted him to haven at last." "When does the plot begin to work?" "To-morrow he plays his part; in a week or ten days you will yours. And now good night; it is late, and it would not do to have it suspected we were intriguing." So saying the two young men arose and, shaking hands, retired to their rooms,--the Captain calm and self-possessed, as his unhappy victim was stormy in mind, and unstable as the hurricane's gusts! CHAPTER XX. "Away, and mark the time with fairest show; False face must hide what the false heart doth know." _Macbeth._ "And with coming day Came fast inquiry, which unfolded nought, Except the absence of the chief it sought.