This was a trying moment to the afflicted inmates of the carriage. It was the moment of separation--the parting from their native home--the crossing of the bourne, as it were, that divided them from the strife and troubles of the wide world. All the comforts and peace of that dear abode, which habit, no less than affection, associated with the blithest impulses of their nature, were now to be exchanged for a prison, and the tranquillity of their past lives for anxiety and sorrow. They were passing from retirement into the world--from security to peril; and their home had never seemed so dear to them, under any former trial or visitation, as at that moment. Nevertheless, they had a strong support in their mutual sympathy, and a high consolation in religion. The pang was acute at first, but, in the end, it was not without a happy effect; for the sweet feelings that it awakened, by the similarity and harmony of their tone, rendered the parent and his child more one being, and made the terrors of their position seem less hideous and repulsive. It was not till they had gone some distance on the high-road that Evaline became any way composed. Her mind then turned on a matter which, in the hurry and excitement of the few past hours, she had hardly thought of, but which she now viewed with very serious concern. This was the singular disappearance of Hildebrand Clifford, which she felt, on reflection, had exercised a material influence on the position of her father. The disappearance of Hildebrand was so exceedingly mysterious, that she could not, by any stretch of conjecture, reasonably account for it. One moment, she thought that he had absented himself but for a few hours, as his horse, which her father had pronounced to be a valuable one, was still at the Grange, and his travelling-case had been found unlocked in his chamber. But would he, under any possible inducement, so far outrage all decorum, as to leave her father’s residence without telling any one that such was his purpose? She was sure, he would not! Either, then, his absence was but temporary, and he would shortly join them again, or he had met with some accident, which, contrary to his inclination, detained him at a distance. Evaline did not entertain this conjecture without a great degree of uneasiness. Indeed, in the first instance, she strove to repel it; but as she felt certain that Hildebrand was incapable of rewarding their hospitality and courtesy with rudeness or contempt, and she could not think of any other excuse for his conduct, the conviction grew upon her, in spite of her earnest wishes for his safety, that he had met with some untoward mishap. After dwelling on the matter for some little time, she could not refrain from mentioning to her father, in rather a tremulous tone, what was passing in her mind. “The cavalier who did us such good service, father, has absented himself somewhat mysteriously,” she observed. “I much fear he has encountered some accident.”