ietta; 'I am happy that it is left behind.'

The servant entered with lights, drew the curtains, renewed the fire,
arranged the room, and withdrew.

'Little knows he our misery,' said Henrietta. 'It seemed strange, when I
felt my own mind, that there could be anything so calm and mechanical in
the world.'

Ferdinand was silent. He felt that the hour of departure had indeed
arrived, yet he had not courage to move. Henrietta, too, did not
speak. She reclined on the sofa, as it were, exhausted, and placed her
handkerchief over her face. Ferdinand leant over the fire. He was nearly
tempted to give up his project, confess all to his father by letter, and
await his decision. Then he conjured up the dreadful scenes at Bath, and
then he remembered that, at all events, tomorrow he must not appear at
Ducie. 'Henrietta!' he at length said.

'A minute, Ferdinand, yet a minute,' she exclaimed in an excited tone;
'do not speak, I am preparing myself.'

He remained in his leaning posture; and in a few moments Miss Temple
rose and said, 'Now, Ferdinand, I am ready.' He looked round. Her
countenance was quite pale, but fixed and calm.

'Let us embrace,' she said, 'but let us say nothing.'

He pressed her to his arms. She trembled. He imprinted a thousand kisses
on her cold lips; she received them with no return. Then she said in a
low voice, 'Let me leave the room first;' and, giving him one kiss upon
his forehead, Henrietta Temple disappeared.

When Ferdinand with a sinking heart and a staggering step quitted
Ducie, he found the night so dark that it was with extreme difficulty
he traced, or rather groped, his way through the grove. The absolute
necessity of watching every step he took in some degree diverted his
mind from his painful meditations. The atmosphere of the wood was so
close, that he congratulated himself when he had gained its skirts; but
just as he was about to emerge upon the common, and was looking forward
to the light of some cottage as his guide in this gloomy wilderness, a
flash of lightning that seemed to cut the sky in twain, and to descend
like a flight of fiery steps from the highest heavens to the lowest
earth, revealed to him for a moment the whole broad bosom of the common,
and showed to him that nature to-night was as disordered and perturbed
as his own heart. A clap of thunder, that might have been the herald of
Doomsday, woke the cattle from their slumbers. They began to moan and
low to the rising