Falkland still continued to track the stream: it wound its way through Mandeville’s grounds, and broadened at last into the lake which was so consecrated to his recollections. He paused at that spot for some moments, looking carelessly over the wide expanse of waters, now dark as night, and now flashing into one mighty plain of fire beneath the coruscations of the lightning. The clouds swept on in massy columns, dark and aspiring-veiling, while they rolled up to, the great heavens, like the shadows of human doubt. Oh! weak, weak was that dogma of the philosopher! There is a pride in the storm which, according to his doctrine, would debase us; a stirring music in its roar; even a savage joy in its destruction: for we can exult in a defiance of its power, even while we share in its triumphs, in a consciousness of a superior spirit within us to that which is around. We can mock at the fury of the elements, for they are less terrible than the passions of the heart; at the devastations of the awful skies, for they are less desolating than the wrath of man; at the convulsions of that surrounding nature which has no peril, no terror to the soul, which is more indestructible and eternal than itself. Falkland turned towards the house which contained his world; and as the lightning revealed at intervals the white columns of the porch, and wrapt in sheets of fire, like a spectral throng, the tall and waving trees by which it was encircled, and then as suddenly ceased, and “the jaws of darkness” devoured up the scene; he compared, with that bitter alchymy of feeling which resolves all into one crucible of thought, those alternations of sight and shadow to the history of his own guilty love--that passion whose birth was the womb of Night; shrouded in darkness, surrounded by storms, and receiving only from the angry heavens a momentary brilliance, more terrible than its customary gloom. As he entered the saloon, Lady Margaret advanced towards him. “My dear Falkland,” said she, “how good it is in you to come in such a night. We have been watching the skies till Emily grew terrified at the lightning; formerly it did not alarm her.” And Lady Margaret turned, utterly unconscious of the reproach she had conveyed, towards Emily. Did not Falkland’s look turn also to that spot? Lady Emily was sitting by the harp which Mrs. St. John appeared to be most seriously employed in tuning: her countenance was bent downwards, and burning beneath the blushes called forth by the gaze which she felt was upon her.