“And if I do, what then?”

“What then?” he echoed; “I would live or die for you—­for you alone.”

“I do love you, then,” she replied, with downcast eyes and blushing face.

Manners stood up erect, and glanced straight into the honest eyes of the beautiful girl as she stood on the bridge beside him.

“You do?” he exclaimed; “say it again.”

“I do love you.” she repeated; “and will be yours for ever if you love me as you say.”

“What!” he cried, “you, the fair Dorothy Vernon, the Princess of the Peak, the fairest jewel in the land, you give yourself to me—­John Manners, a simple esquire?  I can scarce believe my ears.”

“I will show you.  John,” she replied; “my life shall prove it.  I have loved you dearly ever since that self-same hunt”; and permitting her love-troth to be sealed by a kiss, she buried her fair face in his bosom and quietly wept in the excess of her joy.

CHAPTER XIII.

Father Philip’s accident.

  And thou hast loved him!  Faith, what next? 
  It had been better far for thee
  That thou had’st ne’er been born, than this. 
  Brood on thy folly, and return,
  But when thou hast repented on’t.

  A woman’s whim.

As the two lovers, happy in their newly-pledged love-troth, entered the gateway of the Hall they were encountered by the news that Father Philip had met with an accident.  Margaret and Sir Everard Crowleigh had not yet returned, and messengers were even then, by the chamberlain’s commands, preparing to go out to secure aid.

“’Tis a sad mishap, my lady,” said that functionary, as Dorothy entered.  “That stupid old horse of his threw him against a tree, and we cannot find Sir Benedict anywhere; the poor father is bleeding to death.  He’s dying, my lady, dying; what will the baron do if he return?”

“Hush!  Thomas, of course he will return.”

“May the blessed Virgin take pity on us,” pursued the wretched man, “there is an evil spirit o’er the place.  Someone is working a spell against us.”

“Where is the father?” asked Manners abruptly.

“He lies in the chaplain’s room; I can hear him groaning now.  The saints look down in——­”

Dorothy passed on, heeding not the continued invocations which the old man made to all the saints in the calendar, and led her lover into the little room in which the unfortunate priest lay.

The portly form of Father Philip lay stretched at full length upon a wooden bench, and the room resounded with his painful groans.  As they approached nearer to him they could see the fearful injuries he had received; and the continued reiteration of the sufferer that he was about to die needed no other confirmation than a glance at his pale face, upon which the mark of death was plainly written.