was
intended. The table was promptly covered with an excellent breakfast,
and the old man sent a message to his daughter, requesting that she
would bring a bottle of the best wine in the cellar.

Florian fixed his eyes upon the door in shrinking anticipation. He
suspected new attempts to ensnare him to the headsman's purpose; and
notwithstanding his firm determination to resist them, he recoiled with
fastidious disgust from the possible necessity of contending with the
meretricious advances of a bold and reckless female, whose limited
opportunities of marriage would impel her to lure him by any means to
her father's object. How widely different were his emotions when the
door opened, and his lovely travelling-companion, whom, in the terrors
of the past night, he had forgotten, entered, in blushing embarrassment,
with the bottle of wine. In a tumult of mingled apprehension and
delight, he started from his chair, but the cordial greeting he intended
was checked by a significant wink from the lively fair one as she passed
behind her father to the table. It was obvious to Florian that she
wished to conceal their previous acquaintance, and with a silent bow he
resumed his seat, while the smiling maid, whom her father introduced to
his guest by the name of Madelon, took a chair between them, and the
conversation soon became general and exhilarating.

The continued fever of apprehension which had almost unhinged the reason
of the timid Florian, now rapidly subsided. The cordial hospitality of
the old headsman soon made him feel at home in an abode which he had
once contemplated with horror and disgust; while the artless attentions
and fascinating vivacity of the pretty Madelon soon wove around him a
magic spell, and invested the Gothic chambers of her father's antique
mansion with all the splendours of Aladdin's palace.

Motherless from the age of fourteen, and secluded by her father's
vocation from all society save occasional intercourse with relatives of
the same degraded caste, the headsman's daughter had been early
accustomed to rely upon her own resources.

Most of her leisure hours had been devoted to a comprehensive course of
historical reading, from which her unpolished but strong-minded father
conceived that she would derive not only amusement and instruction, but
that sustaining fortitude so essential to the station in which her
lot was cast. Thus her innocent and active mind, untainted by the
licentiousness and