With one rapid glance of terror Lilian surveyed the whole place, and started from her chair to be confronted by one whose aspect made her instinctively shrink back. The keen and hawk-like eyes of Beatrix Gilruth were fixed upon her with an expression at once menacing, searching, and scornful. There was something in the wild visage of this inexplicable woman that excited curiosity, while her air terrified, and her withered person repelled approach.
"Who are you, woman?" asked Lilian firmly, as, stepping back a pace, she surveyed her from head to foot; "and what are you?"
"_What_ am I?" reiterated the other, with a voice that thrilled, while her grey eyes gleamed with a blue light, and she ground her teeth. "I am what thou shalt be, my pretty minx, ere ye leave these walls, perhaps."
Lilian, terrified by her aspect and her answer, sank into a chair, saying, as she clasped her hands, and looked up imploringly from her bright dishevelled hair--
"Woman, for the love of God, say where am I?"
"So my soul foreboded; but can _he_ have dared thus far?"
"Neither the Heaven that is above us, nor the Hell that is beneath, will protect you, pretty one; but you will be made what many as fair have been,--the toy, the plaything of an hour, to be cast aside when some new fancy has seized the wayward mind of your lord and betrayer. Look at that veiled portrait----"
At that moment three distinct knocks were heard against the almery. Lilian started and turned pale.
"Yes, yes," said Beatrix scornfully, addressing the knocker; "you are impatient. There was a time--but it matters not--I bide mine; and my long delayed vengeance will wither thee up, false lord, even as if the lightning of God had scorched thy perjured soul."
Low as this was uttered, it reached the ears of Lilian; she became doubly terrified, and a momentary feeling of utter abandonment made her cover her face with her hands and weep bitterly. But, suddenly starting up, she said with energy--
"I will go hence, madam; and whatever be the danger, I will risk it. But the snow, the darkness, and the distance--oh, horror!--Aunt Grisel--gossip Annie--what will they think of this?--what will become of me?"
"Stand," said Beatrix, interposing. "Are you mad, to think of leaving this roof in the middle of a winter night? Remember the dreary lea of Clermiston, the rocks and the frozen marshes of Corstorphine, you are fey, maiden, to think it."