Poor, ardent, impulsive Sybil! She had passed a very happy night; and this morning she met her guest with a gush of genuine affection, embracing and kissing her and her child, making them even more welcome than she had done before, and feeling that to-day she could not deal too kindly by Rosa, to atone for having yesterday thought so hardly of her. Under these pleasant auspices the travellers sat down to an excellent breakfast. But the warning horn blew, and they prepared to resume their journey. On entering the coach, they found the other passengers, three in number, already on the back seat. But they were gentlemen, who voluntarily and promptly gave up their seats to the two ladies and their escort. The coach started. Their route now lay through some of the wildest passes of the Blue Ridge. And here the enthusiasm of Rosa Blondelle burst forth. She said that she had seen grand mountains in Scotland, but nothing--no, nothing to equal these in grandeur and beauty! And Lyon Berners smiled to hear her speak so, as one might smile at the extravagant delight of a child, for as a child this lovely stranger often seemed to him and to others. And she, with her sweet, blue eyes, smiled back to him. And Sybil looked and listened, and felt again that strange wound deepening in her heart--that strange cloud darkening over her mind. CHAPTER VIII. BLACK HALL. Seest thou our home? 'tis where the woods are waving In their dark richness to the autumn air; Where yon blue stream its rocky banks are laving, Leads down the hills a vein of light--'tis there.--HEMANS. At the close of that second day, they stopped at a hamlet on the summit of the Blue Ridge, from which they could view five counties. At the little hotel they were entertained very much in the same manner as at the inn of Underhill. Again Sybil's unspoken and unsuspected jealousy was soothed by the caresses of her husband. In the morning they resumed their journey in the early coach, that took them across the beautiful valley that lies between the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny Mountains. And again Lyon Berners' devotion to Rosa Blondelle deeply distressed Sybil. At nightfall they reached Staunton, where they slept. On the morning of the fourth and last day of their journey, they took the cross-country coach and changed their route, which now led them towards the wildest, dreariest, and loneliest passes of the Alleghenies. About mid-day the coach entered the dark defile known as the "Devils' Descent." And, in fact, it needed all the noon sunshine to light up the gloom of that fearful pass. Here the delight of the impressible young foreigner deepened into awe. "I have never seen anything like this in the old country," she breathed, in a low, hushed tone.