Chapter 11

Three ruffians seized me yester morn,
Alas! a maiden most forlorn;
They choked my cries with wicked might,
And bound me on a palfrey white:
As sure as Heaven shall pity me,
I cannot tell what men they be.--CHRISTABELLE.

The course of our story must here revert a little, to detail the
circumstances which had placed Miss Vere in the unpleasant situation
from which she was unexpectedly, and indeed unintentionally liberated,
by the appearance of Earnscliff and Elliot, with their friends and
followers, before the Tower of Westburnflat.

On the morning preceding the night in which Hobbie's house was plundered
and burnt, Miss Vere was requested by her father to accompany him in a
walk through a distant part of the romantic grounds which lay round
his castle of Ellieslaw. "To hear was to obey," in the true style of
Oriental despotism; but Isabella trembled in silence while she followed
her father through rough paths, now winding by the side of the river,
now ascending the cliffs which serve for its banks. A single servant,
selected perhaps for his stupidity, was the only person who attended
them. From her father's silence, Isabella little doubted that he had
chosen this distant and sequestered scene to resume the argument which
they had so frequently maintained upon the subject of Sir Frederick's
addresses, and that he was meditating in what manner he should most
effectually impress upon her the necessity of receiving him as her
suitor. But her fears seemed for some time to be unfounded. The only
sentences which her father from time to time addressed to her, respected
the beauties of the romantic landscape through which they strolled, and
which varied its features at every step. To these observations, although
they seemed to come from a heart occupied by more gloomy as well as more
important cares, Isabella endeavoured to answer in a manner as free and
unconstrained as it was possible for her to assume, amid the involuntary
apprehensions which crowded upon her imagination.

Sustaining with mutual difficulty a desultory conversation, they at
length gained the centre of a small wood, composed of large oaks,
intermingled with birches, mountain-ashes, hazel, holly, and a variety
of underwood. The boughs of the tall trees met closely above, and the
underwood filled up each interval between their trunks below. The spot
on which they stood was rather more open; still, however, embowered
under the natural arcade of tall trees, and darkened on the sides for a
space around by a great and lively growth of copse-wood and bushes.

"And here, Isabella," said Mr. Vere, as he pursued the conversation,
so often resumed, so often dropped, "here I would erect an altar to