For some minutes after he was gone, all was still and silent. The rosy beams of the evening departed from the light clouds overhead; the nightingale broke forth in the wood; the scene around lost its lustre, and became gray; and the bat, more surely summer's harbinger even than the martin, flitted quietly over the space before the old building, in search of its insect prey. At the end of those few minutes, however, some of the branches of ivy, which had extended themselves across the ruined doorway, were pushed back, and a dark shadowy figure came out in the gray twilight, and stood for a moment with the arms crossed upon the chest. It was that of a man, dressed in a long straight-cut black coat, with a white cravat tied round the throat. There was nothing else remarkable in his appearance, and he gazed quietly to the left, upon the road taken by Eda and Edgar, and then to the right, where Dudley had disappeared. He next fell into a fit of meditation, the nature of which it would be difficult to divine. It ended, however, with a low, unpleasant laugh, and saying to himself, "So, so! at eight o'clock to-morrow," he turned and walked away in the same direction as Miss Brandon and her cousin, but took the road under the park wall for some way, and entered the enclosure by a stile farther up. CHAPTER XLVIII. It still wanted half an hour of eight o'clock on the following morning, when Dudley walked along the road from Beach Rock to Brandon. He was not alone, however, for by his side was Martin Oldkirk, whose stern but not unpleasant features were lighted up with an expression of high satisfaction. At the distance of about a quarter of a mile from the old Priory the two paused, and Dudley turned to take the path across the fields which led to the ruin, while Martin Oldkirk went on; but after a moment the young gentleman paused, and called to his companion, saying, "I think you would do it more quickly if you would go back and get the gig we left at Seafield. I should like to have them all at Brandon by half-past nine." "I shall go quicker on foot, sir," replied Oldkirk. "Seafield is a mile and a half, and that would be all lost time." Without more words he walked on; and leaping the stile with a light heart, Dudley soon reached the bank of the little stream near which ran the path he was following. Slackening his pace a little, as he proceeded, to gaze at the dancing waters sparkling in the morning light, he advanced with the copse straight before him, and an angle of the ruin rising gray above the green foliage. The hour and the scene and the season all harmonised well with the feelings in his bosom. He was going to meet her he loved in the bright morning of the year's most hopeful time, and his heart was full of the thrilling emotions of life's happiest dream.