Julian had scarce time to shudder at her purpose, as he beheld her about to spring from the parapet, ere, like a thing of gossamer, she stood light and uninjured on the rocky platform below.

He endeavoured, by the gravity of his look and gesture, to make her understand how much he blamed her rashness; but the reproof, though obviously quite intelligible, was entirely thrown away.

A hasty wave of her hand intimated how she contemned the danger and the remonstrance; while, at the same time, she instantly resumed, with more eagerness than before, the earnest and impressive gestures by which she endeavoured to detain him in the fortress.
Julian was somewhat staggered by her pertinacity.

"Is it possible," he thought, "that any danger can approach the Countess, of which this poor maiden has, by the extreme acuteness of her observation, obtained knowledge which has escaped others ?" He signed to Fenella hastily to give him the tablets and the pencil which she usually carried with her, and wrote on them the question, "Is there danger near to your mistress, that you thus stop me ?" "There is danger around the Countess," was the answer instantly written down; "but there is much more in your own purpose." "How ?--what ?--what know you of my purpose ?" said Julian, forgetting, in his surprise, that the party he addressed had neither ear to comprehend, nor voice to reply to uttered language.

She had regained her book in the meantime, and sketched, with a rapid pencil, on one of the leaves, a scene which she showed to Julian.