the most apparent signs of mental agitation on his countenance.

"Helen," said he at length, in a low, earnest tone, "Helen, thou
wert worthy of a better fate than to be linked to the endurance of
my waywardness; but God who sees thine unmurmuring patience, will
give thee strength to meet thy destiny. Thou hast scarcely enough of
womanly weakness in thee to shrink from idle terrors, or I might
strive to appall thee," he added faintly smiling, "with a description
of the gloom and discomfort of thine unknown northern mansion; but if
thou art willing to bear with its scanty means of accommodation, as
well as with thy husband's variable temper, come with him to the
Cross."

Helen longed to throw herself into his arms as in happier days,
when he granted her petition, but she had been more than once
repulsed from his bosom, and she therefore contented herself with
thanking him respectfully; and in another week, they became inmates
of Greville Cross.

The evening whose stormy and endless commencement I have before
described, was the fourth after her arrival in the North; and
notwithstanding the anxiety she had felt for a change of habitation,
she could not disguise from herself that there was an air of
desolation, a general aspect of dreariness about her new abode which
justified the description afforded by her husband. As she crossed the
portal, a sensation of terror ill-defined, but painful and
overwhelming, smote upon her heart, such as we feel in the presence
of a secret enemy, and Lord Greville's increasing uneasiness and
abstraction since he had returned to the mansion of his forefathers,
did not tend to enliven its gloomy precincts. The wind beat wildly