Calantha’s horses awaited: she rode out the whole of the day: it seemed to her as if a moment’s pause or rest would have been agony unutterable. And yet, when the spirit is heavy there is something unpleasant in the velocity of motion: throwing, therefore, the reins upon her well-trained steed, she paced slowly over the mountain’s side, lost in reflections which it had been pain to interrupt. Suddenly a horse and rider, in full speed, darting along the moor, approached and crossed upon her path. “Whither ride you lady, so slow?” said Miss St. Clara, whom she now recognized, scarce reining in her swift footed charger. “And whither ride you, Lady, so fast?” said Calantha, courteously returning her salute. “To perdition,” cried Elinor; “and they that wish to follow must ride apace.” The hat and plume of sacred green, the emerald clasp, the gift of Glenarvon, were all but too well observed by Calantha. Deeply she blushed, as St. Clara, fixing her dark eyes upon her, asked her respecting him. “Is thy young lover well?” she said; “and wilt thou be one of us? He slept last night at Belfont: he could not rest: didst thou?” Saying which, she smiled, and rode away. Oppressed with many bitter doubts, Calantha returned to the Castle; and what is strange, she felt coldly towards Glenarvon. On her return, she found letters from him far the most ardent, the most impassioned she had yet received. He spoke with grief of her unkindness: he urged her by every tie most dear, most sacred, to see him, and fly with him. Yet, that night, she went not to meet him; she wrote not kindly; she loved not. She retired early; and her thoughts were painful and terrible. But such is the inconsistency of the human heart; her coldness seemed but to encrease his ardour. She received that night, the warmest, the most unguarded letters; she even now dreaded the violence of his attachment. Remorse, she felt, had taken the place of passion in her own heart: for all within was chilled, was changed. As she thus sat in sullen silence, unwilling to think—unable to forget, she heard a step stealing along the passage; and in a moment Glenarvon entered her apartment. “We are lost,” she cried. “I care not,” he said, “so that I but see you.”—“For God’s sake, leave me.”—“Speak lower,” he said, approaching her: “be calm, for think you that when you have risked so much for me, I dare not share the danger. After all, what is it? Whoever enters must do it at their peril: their life shall pay the forfeit: I am armed.”—“Good God! how terrible are your looks: I love you; but I fear you.”