The next moment it was open in her hand, and she read with a fluttering pulse,
"Let me see you for a brief moment just as the moon rises, by the linden that grows at the foot of the Rondeel. My temporal, nay, spiritual welfare hangs upon your answer. I am penitent. I appeal to you as to a heavenly intercessor! Refuse not this request, lest the guilt of my suicidal blood fall on your soul.
She looked at the lines till they seemed composed of words of fire. Her brain reeled, her heart swelled, and she seemed torn by emotions of terrible power.
"Heaven guide me in this strait!" she cried, falling impulsively on her knees and clasping the letter in her folded hands. "Sudden and strange events crowd thick upon me, with tales of murder foul, and this newborn jealousy of Rupert--whom I know not if I love or no, yet whom I should love had _he_ not risen from the grave, as 'twere, to step between me and my newly-plighted troth! My brain is crazed!"
She rose to her feet and walked the room thoughtfully, with the letter in her hand, now looking at it with tenderness, now crumpling it with disdain. Suddenly she stopped and said with energy,
She stepped to the balcony, beneath which the young secretary stood, and said calmly,
She withdrew herself hastily into the boudoir as she spoke, and the youth left her to bear the message back to the bucanier, and thereby redeem his oath and regain his liberty.
The moon was just rising above the Heights of Brooklyn, when, wrapped in a mantle, her face concealed by its folds, thrown over her head in the shape of a hood, Kate Bellamont left her boudoir by the door that communicated with the main body of the house. With light and hasty footsteps she traversed a long passage that led to the library. She cautiously opened the door, and, evidently to her surprise and pleasure, found no one within. She crossed it to an opposite door, which she opened with the same caution, and found herself in the family chapel, dimly lighted by two wax tapers placed upon a small stand before a crucifix. She gathered the folds of her mantle closer about her form, and, looking round the obscure apartment to see if she was observed, kneeled a moment in silent prayer before the altar, looking heavenward as she prayed, as if she sought guidance and protection. She then rose to her feet, and hastily walked towards a door partly concealed by tapestry, and passed through it into a conservatory verdant and fragrant with rare plants. A little wicket inserted in the Venetian blinds which surrounded this floral gallery she pushed open, and issued into the open air and upon a lawn that extended close up to the foot of the glacis that environed the Rondeel. She paused an instant ere she crossed the green, as if hesitating. The delay was but for an instant; for she directly afterward moved forward with a rapid pace towards a lofty tree, the topmost branches of which towered above the walls of the fort. Its foot was buried in deep shadow, the rising moon having only touched, as yet, the upper wall. Beneath it walked a man with a hasty and impatient tread, who at every third step stopped and looked towards the Hall with anxious scrutiny.