Had his father, as he pretended, desired to thwart his will, or prevent his marriage with Theresa, for that very cause he would have toiled indefatigably, till he had made her his own in the face of day. Partly swayed by a romantic and half chivalrous feeling, which loved to build up difficulties for the mere pleasure of surmounting them, partly urged on by pure willfulness and recklessness of temper, he chose evil for his good, he rushed into deceit where truth would in fact have served his purpose better. A boyish love of mystery and mischief might probably have had its share likewise in his strange conduct, and a sort of self-pride in the skill with which he managed his plot, and worked the minds of older men into submission to his own will. Lastly, to compel Theresa to this sacrifice of her sense of duty and propriety, to this abandonment of principle to passion, appeared to his perverted intellect a mighty victory, an overwhelming proof of her devotedness to his selfish will. If there were any darker and deeper motive in his mind, it was unconfessed to himself; and, in truth, I believe, that none such then existed. If such did in after times grow up within him, it arose probably from a perception of the fatal facility which that first fraud, with its elaborate deceits had given him for working further evil. Verily, it is wise to pray that we be not tempted. The perilous gift of present opportunity has made many an one, who had else lived innocent, die, steeped to the very lips in guilt. Such were the actuating motives of _his_ conduct; of hers pure love, and the woman’s dread of losing what she loved, by over-vehement resistance. At the dead of a dark, gusty night in autumn, when the young moon was seen but at rare intervals between the masses of dense driving wrack which swept continuously across the leaden-colored firmament before the wailing west winds, when the sere leaves came drifting down from the great trees, like the ghosts of departed hopes, when the long mournful howl of some distant bandog baying the half seen moon, and the dismal hootings of the answered owls, were the only sounds abroad, the poor girl stole, like a guilty creature, from her virgin chamber, and, faltering at every ray of misty light, every dusky shadow that wavered across her way, as she threaded the long corridors, crept stealthily down the great oaken staircase, and joined her young lover in the stone hall below. Her palfrey and his hunter stood saddled at the foot of the terrace steps, and, almost without a word exchanged between them, she found herself mounted and riding, with her right hand clasped in his burning fingers, through the green chase toward the village.