he suspected that she had slipped out into the night, and for what
purpose?

With a wildly-beating heart and a frame that felt ready to sink
into the ground with fear, Petronella tried the latch of the door,
and found it yield to her hand. She pressed it open and then stood
suddenly still, a gasp of terror and dismay escaping her; for
there, in the middle of the hall, the moonlight falling full upon
his tall rugged figure, stood her father, waiting with folded arms
for his truant daughter, a look upon his stern face that she
shivered to behold.

"So, girl!" he exclaimed, making one stride forward and catching
the frail wrist in a vice-like grasp which almost extorted a cry of
pain--"so, my daughter, thou hast come in from this midnight tryst
with thy lover! And what dost thou think is the reward a father
bestows upon a daughter who leaves his house at this dead hour of
the night to meet the man he has bidden her eschew for ever?"

Petronella's agitation was so great that she was well-nigh
swooning. Her nerves had been on the strain for some time. The
excitement of seeing Cuthbert again, of hearing his story and
telling her own, had been considerable. And now to be confronted by
a furious father, and accused of having broken her solemn pledge,
and of having met her lover at an hour of the night when no
virtuous maiden would dream of such a tryst, was more than she
could bear. Slipping to her knees, she laid her hand upon her
father's robe, and clutching hold of it, as if for support, she
gasped out the one word: