cannot banish them: nay, though painful to me, I recur to these images
of dread with a species of fascination, as if in their fate I
contemplated mine own. Not one, who hath wedded a Rookwood, but hath
rued it."

"Yet you will wed one," said Handassah.

"He is not like the rest," said Eleanor.

"How know you that, lady?" asked Handassah. "His time may not yet be
come. See what to-morrow will bring forth."

"You are averse to my marriage with Ranulph, Handassah."

"I was Sybil's handmaid ere I was yours, lady. I bear in mind a solemn
compact with the dead, which this marriage will violate. You are
plighted by oath to another, if he should demand your hand."

"But he has not demanded it."

"Would you accept him were he to do so?" asked Handassah, suddenly.

"I meant not that," replied Eleanor. "My oath is annulled."

"Say not so, lady," cried Handassah--"'twas not for this that Sybil
spared your life. I love you, but I loved Sybil, and I would see her
dying behests complied with."

"It may not be, Handassah," replied Eleanor. "Why, from a phantom sense
of honor, am I to sacrifice my whole existence to one who neither can
love me, nor whom I myself could love? Am I to wed this man because, in
her blind idolatry of him, Sybil enforced an oath upon me which I had no
power to resist, and which was mentally cancelled while taken? Recall
not the horrors of that dreadful cell--urge not the subject more. 'Tis
in the hope that I may be freed for ever from this persecution that I
have consented thus early to wed with Ranulph. This will set Luke's
fancied claims at rest for ever."

Handassah answered not, but bent her head, as if in acquiescence.

Steps were now heard near the door, and a servant ushered in Dr. Small
and Mrs. Mowbray.

"I am come to take leave of you for the night, my dear young lady," said
the doctor; "but before I start for the Vicarage, I have a word or two
to say, in addition to the advice you were so obliging as to receive
from me this morning. Suppose you allow your attendant to retire for a
few minutes. What I have got to say concerns yourself solely. Your
mother will bear us company. There," continued the doctor, as Handassah
was dismissed--"I am glad that dark-faced gipsy has taken her departure.
I can't say I like her sharp suspicious manner, and the first exercise I
should make at my powers, were I to be your husband, should be to
discharge the handmaiden. To the point of my visit. We are