t was still night; the
moon had vanished, but the stars were still shining. He recalled with an
effort the scene with which he had become acquainted yesterday for the
first time. Before him, serene and still, rose the bowers of Ducie.
And their mistress? That angelic form whose hand he had clasped in his
dream, was not then merely a shadow. She breathed, she lived, and under
the same roof. Henrietta Temple was at this moment under the same roof
as himself: and what were her slumbers? Were they wild as his own, or
sweet and innocent as herself? Did his form flit over her closed vision
at this charmed hour, as hers had visited his? Had it been scared away
by an apparition as awful? Bore anyone to her the same relation as
Katherine Grandison to him? A fearful surmise, that had occurred to him
now for the first time, and which it seemed could never again quit his
brain. The stars faded away, the breath of morn was abroad, the chant
of birds arose. Exhausted in body and in mind, Ferdinand Armine flung
himself upon his bed, and soon was lost in slumbers undisturbed as the
tomb.

CHAPTER IX.

_Which I Hope May Prove as Agreeable to the Reader as to Our
Hero_.

FERDINAND'S servant, whom he had despatched the previous evening to
Armine, returned early with his master's letters; one from his 'mother,
and one from Miss Grandison.

They were all to arrive at the Place on the day after the morrow.
Ferdinand opened these epistles with a trembling hand. The sight of
Katherine's, his Katherine's, handwriting was almost as terrible as
his dream. It recalled to him, with a dreadful reality, his actual
situation, which he had driven from his thoughts. He had quitted his
family, his family who were so devoted to him, and whom he so loved,
happy, nay, triumphant, a pledged and rejoicing bridegroom. What had
occurred during the last eight-and-forty hours seemed completely to have
changed all his feelings, all his wishes, all his views, all his hopes!
He had in that interval met a single human being, a woman, a girl, a
young and innocent girl; he had looked upon that girl and listened to
her voice, and his soul was changed as the earth by the sunrise. As
lying in his bed he read these letters, and mused over their contents,
and all the thoughts that they suggested, the strangeness of life,
the mystery of human nature, were painfully impressed upon him.
His melancholy father, his fond and confiding mother, the devoted
Gla