without seeing Sybil; 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,