equally impossible to postpone his departure. But by travelling
through the night, the lost hours might be regained. And Egremont made
his arrangements, and awaited with anxiety and impatience the last
evening.

The evening, like his heart, was not serene. The soft air that had
lingered so long with them, a summer visitant in an autumnal sky and
loth to part, was no more present. A cold harsh wind, gradually rising,
chilled the system and grated on the nerves. There was misery in its
blast and depression in its moan. Egremont felt infinitely dispirited.
The landscape around him that he had so often looked upon with love and
joy, was dull and hard; the trees dingy, the leaden waters motionless,
the distant hills rough and austere. Where was that translucent sky,
once brilliant as his enamoured fancy; those bowery groves of aromatic
fervor wherein he had loved to roam and muse; that river of swift
and sparkling light that flowed and flashed like the current of his
enchanted hours? All vanished--as his dreams.

He stood before the cottage of Gerard; he recalled the eve that he had
first gazed upon its moonlit garden. What wild and delicious thoughts
were then his! They were gone like the illumined hour. Nature and
fortune had alike changed. Prescient of sorrow, almost prophetic
of evil, he opened the cottage door, and the first person his eye
encountered was Morley.

Egremont had not met him for some time, and his cordial greeting of
Egremont to-night contrasted with the coldness, not to say estrangement,
which to the regret and sometimes the perplexity of Egremont had
gradually grown up between them. Yet on no occasion was his presence
less desired by our friend. Morley was talking as Egremont entered with
great animation; in his hand a newspaper, on a paragraph contained in
which he was commenting. The name of Marney caught the ear of Egremont
who turned rather pale at the sound, and hesitated on the threshold. The
unembarrassed welcome of his friends however re-assured him, and in a
moment he even ventured to enquire the subject of their conversation.
Morley immediately referring to the newspaper said, "This is what I have
just read--

"EXTRAORDINARY SPORT AT THE EARL OF MARNEY'S.

On Wednesday, in a small cover called the Horns, near Marney Abbey, his
grace the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine, the Earl of Marney, Colonel Rippe and
Captain Grouse, with only four hours shooting, bagged the extraordinary
number of seven hund