ing night; from
the window of Gertrude's room the light streamed calm on the purple air.

With uneven steps and many a pause, he paced to and fro beneath the
window, and gave the rein to his thoughts. How intensely he felt the ALL
that Gertrude was to him! how bitterly he foresaw the change in his lot
and character that her death would work out! For who that met him in
later years ever dreamed that emotions so soft, and yet so ardent, had
visited one so stern? Who could have believed that time was when the
polished and cold Trevylyan had kept the vigils he now held below the
chamber of one so little like himself as Gertrude, in that remote and
solitary hamlet; shut in by the haunted mountains of the Rhine, and
beneath the moonlight of the romantic North?

While thus engaged, the light in Gertrude's room was suddenly
extinguished; it is impossible to express how much that trivial incident
affected him! It was like an emblem of what was to come; the light had
been the only evidence of life that broke upon that hour, and he was
now left alone with the shades of night. Was not this like the herald of
Gertrude's own death; the extinction of the only living ray that broke
upon the darkness of the world?

His anguish, his presentiment of utter desolation, increased. He groaned
aloud; he dashed his clenched hand to his breast; large and cold drops
of agony stole down his brow. "Father," he exclaimed with a struggling
voice, "let this cup pass from me! Smite my ambition to the root;
curse me with poverty, shame, and bodily disease; but leave me this one
solace, this one companion of my fate!"

At this moment Gertrude's window opened gently, and he heard accents
steal soothingly upon his ear.

"Is not that your voice, Albert?" said she, softly. "I heard it just as
I lay down to rest, and could not sleep while you were thus exposed to
the damp night air. You do not answer; surely it is your voice: when
did I mistake it for another's?" Mastering with a violent effort his
emotions, Trevylyan answered, with a sort of convulsive gayety,--

"Why come to these shores, dear Gertrude, unless you are honoured with
the chivalry that belongs to them? What wind, what blight, can harm me
while within the circle of your presence; and what sleep can bring me
dreams so dear as the waking thought of you?"

"It is cold," said Gertrude, shivering; "come in, dear Albert, I beseech
you, and I will thank you to-morrow." Gertrude's voice was chok