CHAPTER XIII.
Banks of the Clyde.
Two days passed drearily away to Helen.

She could not expect tidings from her cousin in so short a time.

No more happy dreams cheered her lonely hours; and anxiety to learn what might be the condition of the earl and countess so possessed her that visions of affright now disturbed both her waking and sleeping senses.

Fancy showed them in irons and in a dungeon, and sometimes she started in horror, thinking that perhaps at that moment the assassin's steel was raised against the life of her father.
On the morning of the third day, when she was chiding herself for such rebellious despondence, her female attendant entered to say, that a friar was come to conduct her where she would see messengers from Lady mar.

Helen lingered not a moment, but giving her hand to the good father, was led by him into the library, where the prior was standing between two men in military habits.