then, Sir Gerald Vernon look to your self,-faith, I'll curtail your courtesies, if they are to be the cover for assailing your neighbours! Look to your goodly manor too, Sir Gerald Vernon! King Edward shall hear how you harbour his rebels! Out upon this railing babble, what is he to me? But, Luke, come nearer! I say, my faithful Luke!-this love-sick thief-this moonlight paramour must be met with." "Oh, Sir! be cautious; your success in such an encounter slays your friend's son." "I would slay my own in such a cause; ay, if heaven had blessed me with one the very mirror of his age, I would peril my life to destroy his.' "But your failure" I "Seals my loyalty with my blood! tell thee, Luke, that blood is curdling into poison every moment the felon lives. My sovereign and my daughter, mine allegiance and my love:-oh-h! she could never be so mad! Edward himself hath singled her forth; men said she might have shared his throne! she could never be so base! this beardless champion of the wolfish Margaret! this ingrate, who, after shaking a firebrand at the house which sheltered him, comes by night to plunder what he could not destroy in the day; this incendiary, as ready to undermine a family as to overturn a kingdom;-oh! Floralice, thou couldst never be so abandoned!" "Of that, mine esteemed kinsman may satisfy himself-if he will deign to present to Mistress Floralice this token, of which I was commissioned by Sir Baldwin to be the bearer." And Luke, as he spoke, drew forth a gimmal ring, with a ruby and turquoise so cut as to represent two hearts joined in one, the hoop being of solid gold most exquisitely branched and chased. Monkshaw seized and thrust the jewel into his vest, and, after musing awhile, with hand drawn over his brow, he said: "Luke! wilt hold with me to the Templar's Tomb to-night?" "Why, of a surety, in so delicate a matter you would not wish your servants". "Not for the kingdom! it would be said the Franklin of Heronswood had so lost all pith and manhood, that he was forced to trust the hands of his servants for the chastisement of a traitor!" "Truth! and then they might chatter too, what were best concealed!" "'Tis not to be thought of; wilt aid me then in cutting out, and keeping secret, this cancer to my honour, or (and he darkened into a fiendish glow) art thou but the carrion crow, that can croak out the quarry, but stoops not upon it till it be slaughtered?". Luke cursed the savage insolence of old Anthony, in his heart, but the very rage he inwardly felt, gave him courage to make the decisive attempt he had long meditated. "Franklin of Heronswood! I will go: -and for thy taunt, know, that the tameless eagle never struck down his prey more boldly than I shall to night, if I strike for myself!" "What mean ye?" "That I have long adored your daughter Floralice, that I am your nearest kinsman, and that if I peril my life in this matter" "Hold Luke! thou fool and braggart, but far greater knave! hold, on your life! By heaven I do esteem thy tale a forgery; false and black as thine own heart!— Thou, dare so much as let thy dreams wander that way! Thou!-begone sir! and see my face no more! A carrion crow! with a vengeance; if I had said a pye-an empty, mischievous, rapacious pye,-it had been nearer the mark !— Hark ye, sirrah! if thy tale be false, I will wring that very neck of thine before the hangman can clutch it; if true, this night shall satisfy me. But know, that should I meet yon red-rose robber at the Templar's tomb, (as, well I trust to slay him if I do!) I would rather myself lead him by the hand to Heronswood; place in his girdle the key of my coffers; lay at his feet the titles of my estate; and knit into his bloody grasp, the soft white fingers of my Floralice;-ay, kneel at his very shoes, and bid him command me for Henry of Winchester,-than brook the presence of one whom I alike discredit and despise !" With these words the grim Franklin struck the cowering Luke no light blow with his walking staff; and then stalked savagely away through the meadows, to his old lair at Heronswood, leaving his kinsman smarting with bodily pain, and in such a state of mind, as we had rather not endeavour to analyse. Heronswood Hall, or Grange, as Anthony Monkshaw's proud humility thought proper to entitle his abode, presented a style of manorial residence of which very few specimens have survived to the present day. I myself have only seen one, and its peculiar characteristics of uncouth architecture, and solitary situation, attracted more frequently my vagrant feet when I was a schoolboy at R, than any other object in that fair neighbourhood. Heronswood Hall, then, occupied no mean space in the centre of a large meadow, built at various periods; the English architect might have traced there the monuments of his skill associated at random with masses of Saxon and Norman masonry. With that most liberal disregard of all uniformity and consistency, which so often produces the highest effects of picturesque beauty, Heronswood enthroned its multifarious buildings about a great irregular court, not altogether square nor circular, but of sufficient extent for a far more important edifice. A wide and forbidding moat sullenly surrounded the pile, across which a bridge led to the gate-house tower, which formed the sole access to the old Grange, and whose arch, wide yawning in the day time, disclosed the gaunt unwieldy. buildings within; no great attraction to the few, whose wanderings conducted them to that solitary spot. A deep colonnade of wood and stone, extending its arches along two sides of the court, and surmounted by the solary, a pleasant sort of corridor, with a long range of lathed windows and balustrades, communicating with the court by a broad open staircase, banistered and pillared with oak, struck the eye, on entering, by its peculiar gracefulness. This with the two towers (rude enough in themselves, but still towers) of the gateway, and lockhouse, constituted the only portions of this strange fabric which it is possible to denominate, if we except one or two florid oriels, and a porch of later date, with steps ascending to the hall, which revealed their elaborate ornaments here and there, just as Serena might have looked among the Satyrs. But these, although of far richer decoration, and more dignified character, were not unpleasingly combined with craggy roofs, columnar chimneys, striped woodwork, low door ways, jutting piers, dingy weathercocks, and gables high up, projecting so far into the court, that they hung like cages in the air. In short the Solitary Grange, in all its combinations, wore an air of independence, perhaps defiance, that greatly resembled grandeur, if not sublimity. Two or three pine trees of enormous size, and reverend age, tossed their funereal shadows across the court, and peering above its jagged roofs, their ponderous branches seemed to be looking around to see if everything beyond the old pile were as gloomy and dull as its interior, at once their cradle, their prison, and their grave. The clock, a vast brazen dial, with figures like Anakim, stood glaring from its tower, in a corner of the court, over against its brother at the gateway; and seldom did that dull area listen to other. sounds than the hours that pealed from the one, and the bell that jingled in the other. Meal time or mass time, the arrival of a guest, or the approach of a stranger, formed the sole topics that set these old cronies a gossiping, and even then you might imagine those dreary disheartening tolls, to be the very groans cf Time, as he heavily and dismally fleeted over the solitary Grange. Anthony Monkshaw hated many servants, and all those employed upon his extensive farms, were accustomed to lodge in the villages and cotes round about. So that, with the exception of the old porter and his wife, with their son, who officiated in the hall, three women servants formed the whole establishment at Heronswood; and of those, two were considered as the peculiar and special attendants of Mistress Floralice, who, in herself, her attire, and her establishment, formed an exception to every thing else belonging to Anthony Monkshaw and his solitary Grange. But if the interior of the mansion of Heronswood were thus gloomy, it only kept the promise which its exterior made to the passenger's eye. The moat which shut in its patchwork structures, shut out nothing but a broad pasture of fine old turf thinly dotted with a few magnificent elms, and the prospect was barricaded at some distance by woodland, or terminated in the fells of dreary Dunsmoor, beyond which, the broad sable tower of Dunchurch formed the sole object. Floralice sate in her private bower, and no ogre, captivated by the lady whom he had intended for his own ravenous maw; no enchanter who, guarding his castle with dragons and demons to others, made it a bower of bliss to the damsel he wished to ensnare, could have furnished a more delicious chamber than the concentrated love of an idolizing father had here built for his only child. But the splendours of that period, gorgeous as they are to the fancy and pleasant in delineation, are somewhat monotonous; and, though we may love to picture an apartment hung all over from floor to ceiling, with storied draperies, depicting "High towers, fair temples, goodly theatres; Strong walls, rich porches, princely palaces, Large streets, brave houses, sacred sepulchres! Sure gates, sweet gardens, stately galleries, Wrought with fair pillars, and fine imageries; yet a higher, and indeed paramount object interposes between us and them. Most vividly have I in my mind's eye, at this moment, the rosewrought spandrils, and elaborate mouldings of that arched oriel; together with the burning intensity of the blue and yellow and red which glow upon its legendary glass. How odorous those fresh rushes smell! what gushing music does the summer wind breathe up that broad palisaded staircase, courting, through its pillared sides, all the sweet influence of sun and air, but protected by its long shelving roof from rain and wind! That massive cabinet, the sumptuous spoil of Agra or of Delhi; and that gaudy coloured bird, swinging upon his gilt perch, demonstrate that master Anthony hath taxed the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, for tributes to his darling. But Floralice herself is there, and monopolises both heart and eye. Not that high fontange' of crimson and azure silk, streaming in long folds from her stately head, but the clear smooth cheek, and majectic forehead, and the hair bright in its darkness, and the dread beauty of the glittering eye, that beamed beneath it;-not the broad girdle of embroidered satin, with its sumptuous clasp of silver lions studded with amethysts, a gift from king Edward himself, -but the graceful waist it adorned;not the voluminous train of blue samite, with its ermine border sweeping half across the room, but the exquisite little foot and ancle it disclosed, would have commanded your admiration, dear reader, -and even they, had you conversed with Floralice Monkshaw, would have retired before the more attractive charms of her mind. "For that same goodlie hue of white and red, That golden wire, those sparkling stars so bright, * Spenser's Ruins of Time. sculptured back, resembling the foliated and feathered shrine in some old minster, was padded with red velvet. The young lady's soft white arm supported her cheek, and by that dubious air, half sunshine and half gloom, in her contemplative countenance, you might divine the theme of her thoughts before she breathed them. "No, no! good Phyllis!-it may not be!-often have my thoughts turned that way, and as often have they recoiled with a dismay I cannot master, as they encountered my father's image: trust me wench! were I to adventure the measure thou talkest of, it would break his heart!" "Troth!" said the petted attendant, "it would have store of tough sinews and hard ribs to penetrate, before it reached so far!" "I tell thee, girl!-my flight with Baldwin Hercey, would unchain a wild fiend there, that would break all down, were the sinews iron, and the ribs brass! Oh no, no! I will never desert my poor rash father!" "Well! for my part," said Phyllis, "I am but a poor casuist,--yet I ponder much, whether it be worse to keep one's true love, night after night, in a dreary haunted wood, and all for a sugared word and a honeyed kiss-or, to go off with bim at once, and so make an end. Marry, you offend the Franklin either way And, by my goodly! here he is, coming back from the meadows. Saints be good to us! what ails the master? he runs through the gateway like a wounded wild boar!" Floralice turned excessively pale, but neither stirred nor spoke; and no scared child ever fancied that rawhead and bloody bones were clamping up the staircase to its nursery, with half the dismay she experienced as her sire's giant strides ushered him into her bower. She attempted to rise, on his entrance, but sank down trembling. but the mute meaning of his bloodshot Monkshaw's appearance was terrific; eye, pale face, and bristling hair, needed mal Ring, which he silently held up beno other interpreter than the fatal Gimfore his stricken daughter's eyes. Phyllis, with an involuntary impulse, made two steps in advance of her young mistress' chair, as if to interpose between her and the menacing attitude of the grim Franklin. But Monkshaw silently signed to her, that she must leave the room and her hesitation in obeying was quickly decided by the look and tone which accompanied the single word "begone!" Phyllis vanished like the lightning from a tempestuous heaven. Monkshaw closed and fastened the narrow arched door upon her; drew over it the gaudy tapestry; and then, either ashamed to shew his fury, or beginning to mingle softer feelings with it in his daughter's presence, he deliberately drew near to Floralice. "The grim Franklin," he said, with an unnaturally low and measured voice, somewhat like the dull prelusive moan of a bull, shut up by hedge and gate from his antagonist, "the grim Franklin of Heronswood is but a lame messenger for a love-token." He paused. Floralice, pale as ashes, but mustering, with great effort, an air of intrepidity to her brow, and absolutely governing all exterior signs of the trepidation that sickened her very soul neither moved a limb nor uttered a word. "Still less," resumed Anthony," doth it beseem the years and reverence of a father, to convey to his child the seal of her disobedience, and the badge of his own dishonour !" "Dear father!" "I am no longer dear! I shall never be dear again-until death has swept away the fond old dotard whom his ungrateful child no longer wishes to live! Dear!-place a serpent in a young child's cradle, a dove in a vulture's nest, a kid among a litter of wolves-then link mine with Baldwin Hercey's image in thy heart, and call me ' dear!'-Thou artful, wanton, thankless thing!" "I deserve not those epithets, and I disclaim them!" answered Floralice, whose naturally high spirit, trebly armed with long habits of deference, which, till that moment, her father had never infringed, rose at these reproaches. "Thankless I am not!-for if my best blood, poured out, could pleasure you, it should be shed, were there no better weapon at hand than this gold bodkin! and wanton! -father, your own honourable heart, and your memory of her who bore me, might strangle that calumny ere it saw the light! Artful!-if to love excellence, and yet deny myself its possession, when it courted my acceptance, be artful-artful at least I will be no longer, for here I profess and vow that, barring a daughter's duty, above all the world I love, and will love to my life's end, Sir Baldwin Hercey!--And if my father cannot estimate that filial tie, preserved inviolate at the expense of a life-long heart break, then let him beware, lest the freight he undervalues be tossed to the waves, and "Love! a well rounded period, mistress and needing no Edipus to finish it off! And so you dare"-the foam flew from Monkshaw's lips as he spoke, "you dare to confess a passion for this beggar of knighthood, this rebel to your king, this foe to your father, this outlaw, this vagrant, -detested, beaten, skulking Hercey?' As old Anthony chafed and frothed forth this speech, the gorgeous collar, with its lion badge, of which, it has been shewn, he was so idolatrously proud, became unclasped, and fell to the floor; where its large golden orbs and flowers, gleaming with coloured jewels, formed a strong contrast to the soft modest verdure of the fresh rushes. "See! the very cognizance of my rightful prince breaks from about the neck, where his own anointed hands first placed it! well may it scorn to deck the parent of so disloyal a child!" "Father!" said Floralice, to whom this paroxysm had given time to select from woman's ever burnished armoury of wit, the fittest conduct in this emergence, "I have heard my confessor say, that twelve jewels, like these, blazed in the high priest's pectoral of old; and that each, in its colours and glory, composed the breastplate of judgment. Alas! the lucid sapphire, the calm emerald, the enlightened diamond, the majestic amethyst, well might thus abandon the bosom that hath banished them! Methinks the House of March might blush to see its emblematic badge so lightly worn!" Floralice stooped, as she spoke, and, presenting the magnificent gorget to her sire with a profound obeisance, stood before him, with her arms submissively folded, in humility's meekest attitude. But there was placid peril in her eye, and her brow bore determination graven as on a tablet; her very quietude was dangerous, and Monkshaw felt it so: at all events he took the collar gently enough; and, turning on his heel, as if to re-fasten the radiant badge, he strode to the far end of the bower, and at length, returning to Floralice, "I am a fool!" he said, "but a father's folly shews ill, indeed, rebuked by a child's wisdom! My girl!" (the grim Franklin stood full in front of his beautiful daughter) "you never told me an untruth, since you could first lisp my name; and, although you have disobeyed and counteracted my wishes, yet well I deem those lips will never utter the thing they do not mean. Will you resign this man; whom, as invidious to me, you should never have entertained; but whom, revolted from his sovereign, and avoided by true men, -nay! interrupt me not, and the chafed old Man will bridle his just anger if he may say, my sweet, dear Floralice, will you discountenance Baldwin Hercey? or will you sever the links, the long, the close, the bright, bright links that bind you to your fond and lonely parent !" The grim Franklin's voice faltered, and he wept ;-yes, heavy, burning tears hunted each other down those gaunt cheeks, spasmodic sobs heaved that herculean chest; in vain he dashed his massive hand across his eyes, their fountains became torrents, and at length, subdued by such an earthquake of anguish, as only a fond, a fierce, and a disappointed father can feel, Monkshaw sank down in his daughter's chair, and buried his face in his gown. A heart far less affectionate than that of Floralice could scarcely have endured this sight, but to her it was agony; she threw herself about her father's neck, covered his hard cheek and grisly hair with kisses, and sinking down on her knees, clasped his waist, laid her fair cheek upon his lap, and lavished on the stern old man, every expression of endearment, every assurance of unceasing love, every demonstration of an affection which not only flowed from her heart at that moment, but had ever been its actuating principle. But not one word spake Floralice which could be construed into an answer to Monkshaw's solemn question. The grim Franklin's paroxysm passed away, as rapidly as it came on; and long ere Floralice had relaxed her caresses and ceased her dulcet blandishments, old Anthony had resumed his grim rigidity of manner. "It is all very well," he said, looking down on the youthful Niobe that still clasped his knees, "and I doubt thee not my child! Still there is but one test. Swear to me that this Hercey (oh! how his name blisters my tongue!) shall henceforth be to thee, as the roaming wolf at evening-fall, like the ringed adder basking at noon on Dunsmoor! Oh Floralice! take but one live coal off the fire that animates thy father's breast, only say that my hatreds are thy hatreds, my affections thy affections!- No! no!no! I ask too much-hear me then, my darling! look around, and choose! cull from the rival gardens of both the factions, be it White Rose or Red;-ay, the very reddest that ever flourished from loyal blood; be the flower ever so lofty, I have a high arm shall pluck it for thee; be it ever so thorny, I have a golden gauntlet shall grasp it—but grant me, only grant the fond old father, thy solemn oath that, whether I be alive to ban, or dead to haunt thee,-whether in palmy prosperity, or sank even below his pity, nay, even though I should myself forget my enmity, and, in my dotage, beg thee to accept him, swear that thou wilt never wed Sir Baldwin Hercey !" My father! my father!" cried Floralice in the most acute distress, "what evil demon hath inspired this bitter passion?" "Swear!" "How can you forget that Baldwin and your child have loved, ever since you used to poise us on either knee !" "But swear!" "And loved to fetter us with our plaited ringlets!" "I only ask you to swear!" 1 "Is it nothing, then, that your own consent sanctioned our affection, before these cruel discords compelled true love to lurk like treason?" "You will not swear then?". "Oh! for pity, for manhood, for very nature's sake, if you would not pluck the crown from your own gray hairs; if you would not blight the garland, only kept alive by tears, that knits up two unhappy hearts,-recal, recal your dreadful words!" "Die then, and with a wronged sire's malison upon thy head!" roared Monkshaw, and bounding from the chair, with all the mad brute in his nature unfettered, he stood in the middle of the floor, the spurned rushes scattering in all directions from his trample, while the arras wavered, and the gilded glass shook in the oriel, and the rainbow-plumed parrot contributed her scream to the sudden storm, "for by yon sacred saint I swear," (and he pointed to a portraiture of Saint Anthony, whose scenes of temptation glowed, in countless colours, upon the sun-clad panes of a large-arched window,)" by him I swear, who surely never was tried by so dire a visitation as a rebellious child,-I solemnly swear, and |