quitted Isidora, who, shivering with terror, but unable to utter a word that might implore him to stay, stood alone, her whole frame trembling almost to dissolution, and her feet feeling as if she were nailed to the spot where she stood. What passed she knew not. There was a short and darkened struggle between two figures,--and, in this fearful interval, she imagined she heard the voice of an ancient domestic, much attached to her, call on her, first in accents of expostulation and appeal, then in choaked and breathless cries for help--help--help!--Then she heard a sound as if a heavy body fell into the water that murmured below.--It fell heavily--the wave groaned--the dark hill groaned in answer, like murderers exchanging their stilled and midnight whispers over their work of blood--and all was silent. Isidora clasped her cold and convulsed fingers over her eyes, till a whispering voice, the voice of Melmoth, uttered, “Let us hasten on, my love.”--“Where?” said Isidora, not knowing the meaning of the words she uttered.--“To the ruined monastery, my love,--to the hermitage, where the holy man, the man of your faith, shall unite us.”--“Where are the steps that pursued us?” said Isidora, suddenly recovering her recollection.--“They will pursue you no more.”--“But I saw a figure.”--“But you will see it no more.”--“I heard something fall into that stream--heavily--like a corse.”--“There was a stone that fell from the precipice of the hill--the waters splashed, and curled, and whitened round it for a moment, but they have swallowed it now, and appear to have such a relish for the morsel, that they will not be apt to resign it.” “In silent horror she proceeded, till Melmoth, pointing to a dusky and indefinite mass of what, in the gloom of night, bore, according to the eye or the fancy, the shape of a rock, a tuft of trees, or a massive and unlighted building, whispered, “There is the ruin, and near it stands the hermitage,--one moment more of effort,--of renewed strength and courage, and we are there.” Urged by these words, and still more by an undefinable wish to put an end to this shadowy journey,--these mysterious fears,--even at the risk of finding them worse than verified at its termination, Isidora exerted all her remaining strength, and, supported by Melmoth, began to ascend the sloping ground on which the monastery had once stood. There had been a path, but it was now all obstructed by stones, and rugged with the knotted and interlaced roots of the neglected trees that had once formed its shelter and its grace.