propriety which she owed to herself, not to attend the appointment to which he had so earnestly entreated her coming. The unknown now again occupied all her thoughts; she wished that the promise which she had made to him of secrecy, on the first day of her becoming acquainted with him, had not been made, in order that she might have been at liberty to recommend him to the protection of her father-from this step the sacredness of her word withheld her; and she began to reflect, whether, as she was the only person at whose hands he would accept those services of which a cruel destiny appeared to render him so painfully in need, it did not become her to waive these scruples of extreme delicacy, and to repair at the appointed hour to the spot which he had named in the wood:-she resolved, however, as she had still three evenings before her, on either of which she might see him, if her inclination leant to the meeting, to deliberate upon the matter for a day or two longer, before she formed her determination. In the evening of the second day after Eleonora's last rencontre with the stranger, it had been Latimer's intention to visit the hermit Agatha; but being prevented in his design, he commissioned his daughter to be his representative, The mind of Eleonora had for the two last days been tossing in a sea of painful doubt; she dreaded lest, by refusing to see her mysterious acquaintance, she might plunge him into some calamity, which the very confined knowledge that she now had of his circumstances did not allow her to foresee; and she feared equally the selfreproach with which accident or design might conspire hereafter to load her mind, for having complied with a request of this obscure nature. The sensibility of her heart was such as to place her upon the present occasion in a state of irreconcileable difficulty to her own mind-she knew not how to act, and wished chance to be her director. The hour at which her father had proposed to her to become his representative in a visit of friendship to the hermit Agatha, was was that of six in the evening— Had she felt a reluctance to have passed through the wood so near the hour of the stranger's appointment, she durst not have confessed it, as she was not at liberty to have assigned any cause for that reluctance; and accordingly she threw her stole over her, and set out. When she had passed over the drawbridge, she paused a moment in reflection -chance, for the interference of which she had so earnestly prayed in the case subsisting between herself and the unknown, appeared to have decided that she should once more behold him; the hour of eight would be the very time at which she must, without deviating from her regular custom when she visited Agatha in an evening, pass near the rivulet in the wood;-now her heart beat with a painful violence; now again it sunk motionless within her breast-In the course of a few minutes she proceeded onwards-The sun was already in the west, and the clouds of dapple grey, which foretold the approach of evening, were collecting in the oppo site direction of the horizon. For the first time in her life, Eleonora felt a sensation approaching to apprehension, at entering that wood, where not the idea of a fear had ever before assailed her sensesshe had not penetrated far into its recesses ere the sound of hasty footsteps struck her ear; she stopped and listened-they advanced, and in a few seconds she beheld several men in the habits of hinds, issue from different thickets around the spot on which she stood―alarıned by their sudden appearance, and the more so by observing that they were all armed, although some of the number were not provided with more formidable weapons than sticks which they had broken from the arms of trees, she uttered a loud and piercing shriek. One of the men instantly approached her, and requesting her not to be alarmed, informed her that they intended her no ill, that they were in search of a person whom they believed to have concealed himself in the wood, and begged her to pass on without apprehension. The desire which Eleonora felt to in quire who the person was of whom they were in pursuit, was almost insurmountable; but she commanded her feelings sufficiently to repress her inclination of asking this information-she decided that if it were indeed her mysterious acquaintance of whom they were in search, that such a question might excite their suspicion of her having some knowledge of him; and therefore, not less out of respect to the promise which she had made to him, than to her own private desire of his welfare, she passed on. On reaching the hermitage, it was with some difficulty that she could sufficiently compose her features, for the agitation of her mind to escape the penetrating eye of Agatha-she however succeeded in her endeavours to this end; but the doubts and apprehensions which racked her mind whilst she remained with her, were of the most painful kind-She could not divest herself of the idea that these men were the enemies of the unknown, and that of him they were now in pursuit;-hence she concluded that if she had on the preceding evening |