Alice
Bridgenorth?

These were questions which no reflection could enable Peveril to
answer. His eyes glanced from Alice to the stranger; and new fears, and
undefined suspicions, in which the safety of that beloved and lovely
girl was implicated, mingled with the deep anxiety which already
occupied his mind, on account of his father and his father's house.

He was in this tumult of mind, when after a thanksgiving as long as the
grace, the company arose from table, and were instantly summoned to
the exercise of family worship. A train of domestics, grave, sad,
and melancholy as their superiors, glided in to assist at this act of
devotion, and ranged themselves at the lower end of the apartment.
Most of these men were armed with long tucks, as the straight stabbing
swords, much used by Cromwell's soldiery, were then called. Several had
large pistols also; and the corselets or cuirasses of some were heard to
clank, as they seated themselves to partake in this act of devotion. The
ministry of him whom Julian had supposed a preacher was not used on
this occasion. Major Bridgenorth himself read and expounded a chapter of
Scripture, with much strength and manliness of expression, although so
as not to escape the charge of fanaticism. The nineteenth chapter of
Jeremiah was the portion of Scripture which he selected; in which,
under the type of breaking a potter's vessel, the prophet presages the
desolation of the Jews. The lecturer was not naturally eloquent; but
a strong, deep, and sincere conviction of the truth of what he said
supplied him with language of energy and fire, as he drew parallel
between the abominations of the worship of Baal, and the corruptions
of the Church of Rome--so favourite a topic with the Puritans of that
period; and denounced against the Catholics, and those who favoured
them, that hissing and desolation which the prophet directed against the
city of Jerusalem. His hearers made a yet closer application than the
lecturer himself suggested; and many a dark proud eye intimated, by a
glance on Julian, that on his father's house were already, in some part,
realised those dreadful maledictions.

The lecture finished, Bridgenorth summoned them to unite with him in
prayer; and on a slight change of arrangements amongst the company,
which took place as they were about to kneel down, Julian found his
place next to the single-minded and beautiful object of his affection,
as she knelt, in her loveliness, to