perceived him than she exclaimed, "Eustace!" then laying her hand
on Lady Muriel's arm, "Mother, it is Sir Eustace Lynwood."

"Ha! my gallant godson!" said the Baroness, greeting him cordially.
"Well met, brave youth! No wonder in that knightly figure I did not
know my kinswoman's little page. How does my gentle niece, Eleanor?"

"Alack! then you have not heard the tidings?" said Eustace.

"We heard long since she was sick with grief," said Lady Muriel, much
alarmed. "What mean you? Is she worse? You weep--surely she still
lives!"

"Ah! honoured dame, we come even now from laying her in her grave.
Here is her orphan boy."

Young Agnes could not restrain a cry of grief and horror, and trying
to repress her weeping till it should be without so many witnesses,
Lady Muriel and her bower-woman led her to their apartments in the
inn. Eustace was greatly affected by her grief. She had often
accompanied her step-mother on visits to Lynwood Keep in the peaceful
days of their childhood; she had loved no sport better than to sit
listening to his romantic discourses of chivalry, and had found in
the shy, delicate, dreamy boy, something congenial to her own quiet
nature; and, in short, when Eustace indulged in a vision, Agnes was
ever the lady of it, the pale slight Agnes, with no beauty save her
large soft brown eyes, that seemed to follow and take in every fancy
or thought of his. Agnes was looked down on,--her father thought she
would do him little honour,--her brother cared not for her; save for
her step-mother she would have met with little fostering attention,