Constance looked out and listened; and, faint upon her ear, the closed casement dulling the sound, came the same strain of music which Fulmer had heard from a different part of the castle. Gently disengaging her hand, Iola glided into the ante-room, and opened the door leading into the passage. She returned the moment after, however, saying-- "There is some one moving. I must wait a little;" but, ere two minutes more were over, she went out again, and closed the doors behind her. Constance remained where her cousin left her, listening with anxious ears, for several moments, but Iola returned not; and, locking the door, her cousin cast herself upon her knees, and prayed fervently. CHAPTER XXVIII. We must give a glance beyond the waters. "What waters?" The reader may ask, "the waters of time?" No, alas, that we cannot do. Let the eager eye stretch as it will, aided by whatever glass the ingenuity of man can devise, or his presumption use, that wide horizon will never present any object distinctly. A mirage may raise the images which lie beyond the scope of natural vision; but, after all, it is a fading picture, where everything is indistinct, uncertain, and confused. No, the waters that I speak of are those which flow between the white cliffs of England and the shores of France; and I leap over no particle of time; for the day and hour were the same as those of which I have just been speaking; and it is to keep up the perfect synchronism of my narrative that I am obliged to change the scene, and travel all the way to France, carrying the unwilling reader with me. It was in a small room, lined with shadowy tapestry and ceiled with black oak, carved in a strange and peculiar fashion--in the form of pentagons, piled one upon the other, and each centred with a little gilded star--that there was seated, towards the first hour of the morning, an elderly man of dignified though quiet aspect, habited in the robes of a bishop. Near the door stood two ecclesiastics, with a boy of some fourteen years of age between them, apparently equipped for a journey. "And you are sure you know every step of the way, my son?" said the bishop, fixing his eyes upon the boy, and speaking in French. "As well as I know the steps to my mother's door, my lord," answered the boy. The bishop mused, and motioned one of the ecclesiastics to come nearer. The good man approached, and bent down his head, till his ear was on a level with the prelate's lips; and then, in reply to a whispered question, which the other seemed to ask him, he exclaimed-- "Oh, I will be his surety, my lord; for he ran between the armies, in the times of the late troubles with Britanny, and never betrayed his trust in a single instance." "Well then, take him away for the present," said the bishop; "and I will write the letter at once; for there is no time to be lost, Entreat him kindly, and feed him well before he goes. I will call when I want him."