Annette cared little for inuendos which she attributed chiefly to malice
and ill-nature. None are so difficult to convince as those who are
obstinately deaf to conviction, and there is an idolatry of affection
which sometimes burns fonder and deeper, as its object is contemned and
despised by the world. Annette had also some idea, that these, and other
reports to the prejudice of Charles, originated with an unsuccessful
rival, though poor William Curry, amiable, single-minded, and
good-humoured as he was, never breathed in her presence, a syllable to
the disparagement of Elliott.

Time sped, and upon an occasion when Lord Mortimer returned for a week
or two to his Castle, the conduct of his chief huntsman was reported to
him; but Charles with consummate art, so vindicated himself, and so
contrived to disgrace his accusers, that when the young baron again left
home, he stood higher perhaps than ever, in his confidence and favour.

It was the bright summer-time, the period when rural folks make holiday,
(at least they did so then, but times have strangely altered of late in
once _merry_ England,) the woods put on their brightest green, and the
people their finest clothes, for there were wakes, fairs, and rustic
meetings innumerable in the vicinity of the Castle. Charles the huntsman
might, as usual, be seen at these _fêtes_ for nothing, but after his
late victory, he carried his head higher, assumed a swaggering gait, and
looked his neighbours out of countenance with impudent defiance.

The village feasts were not yet over, when late one night, a cavalier,
passing through one of the great forests which surrounded Mortimer
Castle, beheld, (for it was a moon-light night,) a female form slowly
sauntering about the bridle-way in which he was riding, and uttering
heavy moans and sobs. At first, taking this figure for something