“Not Nancy?”

“O, no!” said Miss Ilderton; “Nancy, though an excellent good girl, and fondly attached to you, would make a dull conspirator—­as dull as Renault and all the other subordinate plotters in Venice preserved. No; this is a Jaffier, or Pierre, if you like the character better; and yet though I know I shall please you, I am afraid to mention his name to you, lest I vex you at the same time.  Can you not guess?  Something about an eagle and a rock—­it does not begin with eagle in English, but something very like it in Scotch.”

“You cannot mean young Earnscliff, Lucy?” said Miss Vere, blushing deeply.

“And whom else should I mean,” said Lucy.  “Jaffiers and Pierres are very scarce in this country, I take it, though one could find Renaults and Bedamars enow.”

“How call you talk so wildly, Lucy?  Your plays and romances have positively turned your brain.  You know, that, independent of my father’s consent, without which I never will marry any one, and which, in the case you point at, would never be granted; independent, too, of our knowing nothing of young Earnscliff’s inclinations, but by your own vivid conjectures and fancies—­besides all this, there is the fatal brawl!”

“When his father was killed?” said Lucy.  “But that was very long ago; and I hope we have outlived the time of bloody feud, when a quarrel was carried down between two families from father to son, like a Spanish game at chess, and a murder or two committed in every generation, just to keep the matter from going to sleep.  We do with our quarrels nowadays as with our clothes; cut them out for ourselves, and wear them out in our own day, and should no more think of resenting our fathers’ feuds, than of wearing their slashed doublets and trunk-hose.”

“You treat this far too lightly, Lucy,” answered Miss Vere.

“Not a bit, my dear Isabella,” said Lucy.  “Consider, your father, though present in the unhappy affray, is never supposed to have struck the fatal blow; besides, in former times, in case of mutual slaughter between clans, subsequent alliances were so far from being excluded, that the hand of a daughter or a sister was the most frequent gage of reconciliation.  You laugh at my skill in romance; but, I assure you, should your history be written, like that of many a less distressed and less deserving heroine, the well-judging reader would set you down for the lady and the love of Earnscliff; from the very obstacle which you suppose so insurmountable.”

“But these are not the days of romance, but of sad reality, for there stands the castle of Ellieslaw.”

“And there stands Sir Frederick Langley at the gate, waiting to assist the ladies from their palfreys.  I would as lief touch a toad; I will disappoint him, and take old Horsington the groom for my master of the horse.”

So saying, the lively young lady switched her palfrey forward, and passing Sir Frederick with a familiar nod as he stood ready to take her horse’s rein, she cantered on, and jumped into the arms of the old groom.  Fain would Isabella have done the same had she dared; but her father stood near, displeasure already darkening on a countenance peculiarly qualified to express the harsher passions, and she was compelled to receive the unwelcome assiduities of her detested suitor.