"Then I am lost; there remains no hope for me," cried L'Estrange, in a bitter voice. "Oh, Ellen, Ellen, suffer me so to call you; here on my bended knee behold me; by all our former love, by all that is most pure and holy, return to me again! Restore me to your favour. Let me prove myself still worthy of your esteem, of your love. On this point turns the whole course of my future life; on one word hangs my eternal weal or woe. If you say 'Yes;' if you will restore me to your love--take me, faulty, worthless though I be--you may lead _me_ to better things; guide _me_ to purer founts, and I am happy. But if you say, 'No,' you drive me to desperation; you shut the door of hope in this world and the next; you drive me to drown in the pleasures of sin the bitter remembrances of parted bliss; you seal my speechless doom, for time and for eternity. Which is it? I wait your answer." With his hands clasped together in an earnestness of despairing hope beyond the power almost of fancy to conceive, the unhappy lover knelt at Ellen's feet. Calm as the young girl's outward expression was, it needed no practised eye to detect the deep emotions that worked within her bosom, as she faltered, in a voice scarcely audible, to her suffering suppliant-- "I am deeply moved for you; I feel for you with all my heart, but I cannot, cannot go beyond what I have already spoken. Seek God's mercy--He will bind your broken heart; you are worthy of better things than you predict for yourself. Edward L'Estrange, it gives me the most unfeigned pain to be obliged to answer _NO!_" The last fatal word was uttered with a distinctness awful to the unfortunate listener. For a burning moment he still knelt as though he heard not; he scarce seemed to draw his breath; an air of speechless anguish clouded his dark eye; and then, as if all at once he realized his wayward fate, he smote his hands together, and while the veins swelled almost to bursting on his brow, exclaimed, in a voice of agony Ellen could never forget: "Oh God, help me!--I am truly most miserable." Then, springing up, he rushed from the room without one farewell word. When he was gone, Ellen seemed first to breathe; she buried her face in her hands, and sobs of woe, wrung from a full heart, showed how deeply she felt her old lover's misery, and how keenly another's woe touched her tender spirit. CHAPTER XV. "The stately homes of England How beautiful they stand, Amidst their tall ancestral trees, O'er all the pleasant land! The deer across the greensward bound Through shade and sunny gleam, And the swan glides past them with the sound Of some rejoicing stream."--_Hemans._ "Look, Nelly, see the deer!" cried little Maude Ravensworth, as their carriage slowly climbed the gentle ascent leading from the foot of the park to the Towers; "see them--one, two, three--bounding across the road."