When Eustace had unstrapped my packages, and in his tender manner placed all my little properties in order, he took me in his arms, meaning thereby to welcome me to my new home and the house of his fathers. We were standing by the window, and I tried, foolishly it seems, to hide my weakness of spirit (for I confess to having felt a great longing to cry) by pointing to that piece of moonlit sea, and repeating a line of Ossian, at the beginning of the description of the pirates crossing the sea to the house of Erved. Foolishly, for although that passage is a favourite with Eustace, indeed one we often read during our courtship, he was annoyed at my thinking of such matters, I suppose, at such a moment; and answered with that kind of irritated deprecation that is so new to me; embracing me indeed once more, but leaving me immediately to go to his uncles. Foolish Penelope! It is this no doubt which makes me feel lonely just now; and I can hear you, dearest mother, chiding me laughingly, for giving so much weight to such an incident. Eustace will return presently, as gentle and sympathising as ever, and all will be right with me. Meanwhile, I will note down the events of this day, so memorable in my life. We seemed to ride for innumerable hours, I in the hired chaise, and my husband on the horse he had bought at Bristol. The road wound endlessly up and down, through a green country, with barely a pale patch of reaped field, and all veiled in mist and driving rain. There seemed no villages anywhere, only at distances of miles, a scant cottage or two of grey stone and thatch; and once or twice during all those hours, a desolate square tower among distant trees; and all along rough hedges and grey walls with stones projecting like battlements. Inland mountain lines like cliffs, dim in the rain; and at last, over the pale green fields, the sea--quite pale, almost white. We had to ask our way more than once, losing it again in this vague country without landmarks, where everything appeared and disappeared in mist. I had begun to feel as if St. Salvat's had no real existence, when Eustace rode up to the chaise window and pointed out the top of a tower, and a piece of battlemented wall, emerging from the misty woods, and a minute after we were at a tall gate tower, with a broken escutcheon and a drawbridge, which clanked up behind us so soon as we were over. We stopped in a great castle yard, with paved paths across a kind of bowling green, and at the steps of the house, built unevenly all round, battlemented and turreted, with huge projecting windows made of little panes.