Lady Peveril was silent. They were now approaching the point where the avenue terminated in a communication with a public road, or rather pathway, running through an unenclosed common field; this the lady had to prosecute for a little way, until a turn of the path gave her admittance into the Park of Martindale. She now felt sincerely anxious to be in the open moonshine, and avoided reply to Bridgenorth that she might make the more haste. But as they reached the junction of the avenue and the public road, he laid his hand on her arm, and commanded rather than requested her to stop. She obeyed. He pointed to a huge oak, of the largest size, which grew on the summit of a knoll in the open ground which terminated the avenue, and was exactly so placed as to serve for a termination to the vista. The moonshine without the avenue was so strong, that, amidst the flood of light which it poured on the venerable tree, they could easily discover, from the shattered state of the boughs on one side, that it had suffered damage from lightning. “Remember you,” he said, “when we last looked together on that tree? I had ridden from London, and brought with me a protection from the committee for your husband; and as I passed the spot--here on this spot where we now stand, you stood with my lost Alice--two--the last two of my beloved infants gambolled before you. I leaped from my horse--to her I was a husband--to those a father--to you a welcome and revered protector--What am I now to any one?” He pressed his hand on his brow, and groaned in agony of spirit. It was not in the Lady Peveril’s nature to hear sorrow without an attempt at consolation. “Master Bridgenorth,” she said, “I blame no man’s creed, while I believe and follow my own; and I rejoice that in yours you have sought consolation for temporal afflictions. But does not every Christian creed teach us alike, that affliction should soften our heart?” “Ay, woman,” said Bridgenorth sternly, “as the lightning which shattered yonder oak hath softened its trunk. No; the seared wood is the fitter for the use of the workmen--the hardened and the dried-up heart is that which can best bear the task imposed by these dismal times. God and man will no longer endure the unbridled profligacy of the dissolute--the scoffing of the profane--the contempt of the divine laws--the infraction of human rights. The times demand righters and avengers, and there will be no want of them.” “I deny not the existence of much evil,” said Lady Peveril, compelling herself to answer, and beginning at the same time to walk forward; “and from hearsay, though not, I thank Heaven, from observation, I am convinced of the wild debauchery of the times. But let us trust it may be corrected without such violent remedies as you hint at. Surely the ruin of a second civil war--though I trust your thoughts go not that dreadful length--were at best a desperate alternative.”