As they reached their home, the heavy rain-drops began to fall. They stood for some minutes at the casement, watching the coruscations of the lightning as it played over the black and heavy waters of the lake. Lucilla, whom the influences of nature always strangely and mysteriously affected, clung pale and almost trembling to Godolphin; but even in her fear there was delight in being so near to him in whose love alone she thought there was protection. Oh what luxury so dear to a woman as is the sense of dependence! Poor Lucilla! it was the last evening she ever spent with one whom she worshipped so entirely. Godolphin remained up longer than Lucilla. When he joined her in her room, the storm had ceased; and he found her standing by the open window, and gazing on the skies that were now bright and serene. Far in the deep stillness of midnight crept the waters of the lake, hushed once more into silence, and reflecting the solemn and unfathomable stars. That chain of hills, which but to name, awakens countless memories of romance, stretched behind--their blue and dim summits melting into the skies, and over one higher than the rest, paused the new risen moon, silvering the first beneath, and farther down, breaking with one long and yet mellower track of light over the waters of the lake. As Godolphin approached he did so, unconsciously, with a hushed and noiseless step. There is something in the quiet of nature like worship; it is as if, from the breathless heart of Things, went up a prayer or a homage to the Arch-Creator. One feels subdued by a stillness so utter and so august; it extends itself to our own sensations, and deepens into an awe. Both, then, looked on in silence, indulging it may be different thoughts. At length, Lucilla said softly:--"Tell me, hast thou really no faith in my father's creed? Are the stars quite dumb? Is there no truth in their movements, no prophecy in their lustre?" "My Lucilla, reason and experience tell us that the astrologers nurse a dream that has no reality." "Reason! well!--Experience!--why, did not thy father's mortal illness hurry thee from home at the very time in which mine foretold thy departure and its cause? I was then but a child; yet I shall never forget the paleness of thy cheek when my father uttered his prediction." "I, too, was almost a child then, Lucilla." "But that prediction was verified?" "It was so; but how many did Volktman utter that were never verified? In true science there are no chances--no uncertainties." "And my father," said Lucilla, unheeding the answer, "always foretold that thy lot and mine were to be entwined." "And the prophecy, perhaps, disposed you to the fact. You might never have loved me, Lucilla, if your thoughts had not been driven to dwell upon me by the prediction." "Nay; I thought of thee before I heard the prophecy." "But your father foretold me, dearest--cross and disappointment in my love--was he not wrong? am I not blest with you?"