“Oh, yes, frequently. There is an underground passage to the sea, and we often go out for a sail, but always dressed like high-born ladies, and accompanied by some of the band richly clad as gentlemen, so that any one to see us would think we were some of the gentry out on a pleasure excursion. In the same way we often go out horseback riding, though we are never allowed to go where it is thickly settled, lest some of us should give the alarm. We are carefully guarded at all times, and every precaution taken to conceal our identity. Now,” she added, looking up at Robert, archly, “I have gossiped long enough, so please take your turn and tell me about yourself. I am getting impatient to know all about you.” Robert, in return, related all that the reader already knows about him, much to the wonder and indignation of his fair listener, who mourned from the very depths of her pure heart that she was the child of a man who was so vile in all his acts and intentions; whose only desire seemed to be to work out revenge and the unhappiness of others. CHAPTER XXI. AN ENEMY’S TRIUMPH. A week passed away, more quickly and pleasantly than Robert could have imagined, and he daily had secret interviews with the fair Vivien, and her sweet presence soothed him to bear with something of calmness and patience his torturing imprisonment and suspense. Robert told his fair sister, as he called her, of Dora, and of all her enchanting ways, her beauty and accomplishments, painting her in the most glowing colors, until Vivien said that she already loved her, and longed to see one whom she knew must be good and beautiful, to win so noble and true a heart as his own. Strange though it may seem, her own heart was not touched by the many engaging qualities which Robert possessed, other than with a pure sisterly affection. She never dreamed of loving him, herself, which many a girl of less mind and character would surely have done. Their intercourse was pure, free, and ennobling, such as two delicate, accomplished, and high-minded persons could not help enjoying to the uttermost. Notwithstanding all this, there were many hours of weariness and impatience which our hero spent by himself. It chafed him almost beyond endurance to be thus shut off from all communication with the outer world; to be so confined that he could do nothing for himself, or demand or secure redress from others for his wrongs; and most of all, cut off from all possibility of rescuing his darling from the fate which he had been told awaited her. He would have felt tenfold more miserable had he even dreamed that not a dozen yards from his own chamber, which hour after hour he paced in such an angry and discontented mood, his father lay in a dark and dismal cell, a close and unhappy prisoner.