Without heeding her astounded look, I ran up to my room, took down my cloth cloak, drew it around me, and drawing the hood over my head, I hastened down stairs to the garden. As I passed underneath the verandah, the voice of Mrs. Langton seemed to call me back, but the wind drowned her words, and I ran fast along the avenue. I had soon reached the iron gate; I took down the key, opened the door, and entered the lane. As 1 turned my back on Poplar Lodge, I caught a last glimpse of it rising against a dark sky, with a faint speck of light glimmering from the drawing-room window. No other light shone on my path; the sun had set bright and glorious, the evening had set in clear and serene; but a sudden eclipse had come; one vast gloom shrouded sky and earth; I never saw summer night like this for intense, for dreary darkness. I knew the way well; I walked straight on, swiftly and without pause, meeting no obstacles, fearing none, like one who passes through vacant space. Once I thought I heard a voice calling on me faintly in the distance behind; but I heeded it not, I did not answer, I did not look round; I went on as in a dream. Raised beyond the body by the passion of my grief, I felt not the ground beneath my feet; all I felt was that the wind as it swept by me with a low rushing sound, seemed to bear me on through that sombre and melancholy night, as a spirit to its viewless home. At length, the air became of a dead stillness; it was as if I had suddenly entered a silent and sultry region in which there was no breathing and no life. I stopped short; I looked round to see that I had not mistaken the way; a streak of fiery lightning passed through the darkness of the sky; for a moment I caught sight of an open space, in which I stood, and saw before me two long lanes diverging from a half ruined gateway, and vanishing into depths of gloom whence seemed to come forth the peal of far thunder that died away in low faint echoes. I knew the spot well; I had not missed the right path; I was half way on my journey. But as if this first flash had only been a signal, the brooding storm now broke forth. Before it fled at once the silence and the gloom of the hour. A low, wild murmur ran along the ground, then rose and lost itself in the wide and desolate hollow of the night; trees tossed about their dark boughs, and groaned lamentably like vexed spirits. As the sound of a loosened flood came the rushing rain, the wind rose ever deepening in its roar; and above all rolled the full thunder, louder than the deafening voice of battle, whilst, cleft with many a swift and silent flash, the dark sky opened like a sea of living fire, below which stretched a long, low moving shore of livid clouds.