CHAPTER VII. THE WHITE WANDERER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 85, 12 December 1874, Page 13

CHAPTER VII. THE WHITE WANDERER.

There was an awful agony in the tone of Lord Thurston, which told the abbot that the apprehension which had suggested itself to him, as to who that' fugitive might Tie, was shared by the unhappy father. It .arose from the direction of the cloister. The wretched wanderer had evidently sought shelter there. The earl and the abfoot joined in the search, but the miserably

person fled before them, turned and doubled like a hare, and finally, with renewed shrieks of bitter woe, abandoned the cloister, skimmed across the wide quadrangle, and dropped, in seeming exhaustion, a huddled-up heap beneath the arched door of the bell tower.

The earl was the first to reach the spot. He raised the crouching figure, flung back the long auburn tresses that veiled the face, and lo ! the white wanderer was Evelina of Egremont. With furrows on the young brow, with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, palid, shrunk and wasted, what must have been the sufferingß which in a few short days had done the work of years, and changed the bright blooming girl into a woebegone haggard woman.

Her insensibility was brief ; she opened her eyes as, with a groan of irrepressible anguish, Lord Thurston .extended his arms, with their mournful burthen, towards the abbot, and exclaimed with bitterness — " You, too, my lord — you surmised with me that the apparition which so frightened your lay brother was the lost, the miserable Evelina !"

" Lost indeed !" moaned the damsel, lifting up her rayless eyes with an expression full of anguish to the earl. "He told me this morning that I was mad. So I was — so perhaps I am. But I know you i — you are Lord Thurston, the father of him who was to have been my husband. Oh, sweet virgins ! — oh, sweet saints ! — the father of him who is my husband. Mad ! lam not mad ! — oh, would to heaven I were, for then I should forget myself — forget my cruel wrongs. But lam not mad ! This is the holy sanctuary of our Lady, to which I fled when I eluded my traitor husband ; you are Earl Thurston — there is my Lord Abbot, and the reverend Prior. No ; lam not mad !"

" Sweet Evelina !" said Lord Thurston, with a tenderness he had never before shown to living creature. " How earnest thou in this wretched plight. Didst leave Coniston of thine own free will. My sons. Randolf ! Oswald ! Where are they ?" " Where are they ?" cried the damsel, with a shriek of horror, as though the very names renewed her frenzy. " Where are they ? Oh, hide me ! — hide me from them both ! Oh, would that they had ne'er been born !"

With a shudder the hapless creature again closed her eyes, and lay white and motionless in the armß of Lord Thurston.

"My lord," said the abbot, " press not this unhappy lady, I beseech you, with questions she is in no state to answer. See you, her garments are drenched with rain, her head-gear gone, her shoes torn from her feet by the rough road she has travelled. The dwelling of our verderer is within bowshot of the abbey gates. His -wife is a kind aad good woman. I will send down a messenger to laid her make ready to receive the Lady of Egremont for the night ; and, in the meantime, we will bring her to our guest-chamber, where she can have warmth and refreshment, for sorely is the poor damsel in need of both."

There was such manifest, good sense in the proposal of the abbot, that Lord Thurston could but thank him and assent.

Alas ! the benevolent intentions of the good abbot were to be defeated. Comfort and consolation Evelina was never to know.

Even as Lord Thurston lifted her slight form, and prepared to bear her to the abbeyj the sound of horses' hoofs careering up the vale of Beckansgill at headlong speed mingled with that of the still sobbing gustEvelina shrieked. She clung with a- grasp of despair to Lord Thurston.