“No, sir, he escaped them, and as report goes they know nothing about him, except that they haven't got him.” Deep and speechless was the agony in which Helen sat during this short dialogue, her eyes having never once been withdrawn from the butler's countenance; but now that she had heard of her lover's personal safety, a thick, smothered sob, which, if it were to kill her, she could not repress, burst from her bosom. Unwilling that either her father or the servant should witness the ecstasy which she could not conceal, and feeling that another minute would disclose the delight which convulsed her heart and frame, she arose, and, with as much composure as she could assume, went slowly out of the room. On entering her apartment, she signed to her maid to withdraw, after which she closed and bolted the door, and wept bitterly. The poor girl's emotion, in fact, was of a twofold character; she wept with joy at Reilly's escape from the hands of his cruel and relentless enemy, and with bitter grief at the impossibility which she thought there existed that he should ultimately be able to keep out of the meshes which she knew Whitecraft would spread for him. The tears, however, which she shed abundantly, in due time relieved her, and in the course of an hour or two she was able to appear as usual in the family. The reader may perceive that her father, though of an abrupt and cynical temper, was not a man naturally of a bad or unfeeling heart. Whatever mood of temper chanced to be uppermost influenced him for the time; and indeed it might be said that one half of his feelings were usually in a state of conflict with the other. In matters of business he was the very soul of integrity and honor, but in his views of public affairs he was uncertain and inconsistent; and of course his whole life, as a magistrate and public man, was a perpetual series of contradictions. The consequence of all this was, that he possessed but small influence, as arising from his personal character; but not so from his immense property, as well as from the fact that he was father to the wealthiest and most beautiful heiress in the province, or perhaps, so far as beauty was concerned, in the kingdom itself.