He turned on his heel, and, without looking back once, strode through the garden, with all his better feelings lost and swallowed up in bitterness and hatred; entered his own apartment, and there wrote a few lines to his uncle, to the effect that in order to avoid the pain of a parting, and the sorrows of a last adieu, he had judged it for the wisest to depart suddenly and unawares; and that he should not return to Widecomb until his voyage should be ended. Then, leaving the house, where he had passed so many a happy hour, in hot and passionate resentment, he mounted his horse and rode away at a hard gallop across the hills toward Hexwerthy and Plymouth. The last words he uttered had gone to Theresa’s heart like a death-shot. She did not speak, or even sigh, as she heard them, but pressed her hand hard on her breast, and fell speechless and motionless on the dewy greensward. He, engrossed by his selfish rage, and deafened to the sound of her fall by the beatings of his own hard heart, stalked off unconscious what had befallen her; and she lay there, insensible, until the servant girl, missing her at the breakfast hour, found her there cold, and, as at first she believed, lifeless. She soon revived, indeed, from the swoon; but the excitement and agitation of that scene brought on a slow, lingering fever; and weeks elapsed ere she again left her chamber. When she did quit it, the fresh green leaves of summer had put on their sere and yellow hue, the autumn flowers were fast losing their last brilliancy, the hoar-frosts lay white, in the early mornings, over the turf walks of her garden, ice had been seen already on the great pool above the fords of Widecomb, and every thing gave notice that the dreary days of winter were approaching, and even now at hand. The northwest winds howled long and hollow over the open hills and heathery wolds around Widecomb Manor, and ever as their wild melancholy wail fell on the ears of Theresa, as she sat by her now lonely hearth, they awoke a thought of him, the playmate of her happy childhood, from whom she had parted, not as friends and playmates should part, and who was now ploughing the far Atlantic, perhaps never to return. A shadow had fallen upon her brow; a gloom upon her young and happy life. And where was he who unconsciously, though not perhaps unintentionally, had been the cause of the cloud which had arisen, and whence that shadow, that gloom? Where was Jasper St. Aubyn? PART II. CHAPTER I. A change came o’er the spirit of my dream. The lady of his love was wed with one Who did not love her better. BYRON. Two years had passed away since Durzil Bras-de-fer set sail on the Virginia voyage, and from that day no tidings had been heard of him in England.