love any one half so much as she loved him, and weren't he and she
going to have a merry Christmas to-morrow?

"How about that pretty young man? Hey? What?" said Sir Godfrey, in
high good-humour.

"Who?" snapped Elaine.

"I think this girl knows," he answered, adopting a roguish
countenance.

"Oh, I suppose you mean that little fellow this morning. Pooh!"

"Ho! ho!" said her father. "Ho! ho! Little fellow! He was a pretty
large fellow in somebody's eyes, I thought. What are you so red about?
Ho! ho!" and the Baron popped his own eyes at her with vast relish.

"Really, papa," said Miss Elaine, rising from his knee, with much
coldness, "I hardly understand you, I think. If you find it amusing
(and you seem to) to pretend that I----" she said no more, but gave a
slight and admirable toss of the head. "And now I am very sleepy," she
added. "What hour is it?"

Sir Godfrey took out his grandfather's sun-dial, and held it to the
lamp. "Bless my soul," he exclaimed; "it's twenty-two o'clock."
(That's ten at night nowadays, young people, and much too late for you
to be down-stairs, any of you.)

"Get to your bed at once," continued Sir Godfrey, "or you'll never be
dressed in time for Chapel on Christmas morning."

So Elaine went to her room, and took off her clothes, and hung up her
stocking at the foot of the bed. Did she go to sleep? Not she. She
laid with eyes and ears wide open. And now alone here in the dark,
where she had nothing to do but wait, she found her heart beating in
answer to her anxious and expectant thoughts. She heard the wind come
blustering from far off across the silent country. Then a snore from
Mistletoe in the next room made her jump. Twice a bar of moonlight
fell along the floor, wavering and weak, then sank out, and the pat of
the snow-flakes began again. After a while came a step through the
halls to her door, and stopped. She could scarcely listen, so hard she
was breathing. Was her father going to turn the key in her door,
after all? No such thought was any longer in his mind. She shut her
eyes quickly as he entered. His candle shone upon her quiet head, that
was nearly buried out of sight; then laughter shook him to see the
stocking, and he went softly out. He had put on his bed-room slippers;
but, as he intended to make a visit to the cellar before retiring, it
seemed a prudent thing to wear his steel breast-plate; and over this
he had slipped his quilted red silk dressing-gown, for i