Thus saying, he left the room, and sprang upon horseback, while Isadore returned to the apartment of her cousin, who was now in bed by the orders of the village apothecary, and in the act of taking such medicines as he judged most likely to calm and sooth the mind by their sedative effect upon the body. Here Isadore communicated in a low voice to her mother all that she had gathered from Colonel Manners; and placing herself at the window of her fair cousin's room, watched the dark edge of the hill where it cut upon the sky, till at length she saw the figures of three horses straining with their riders up the steep ascent. The next moment they came upon the level ground at the top, changed their pace into a quick gallop, were seen for a minute or two flying along against the clear blue behind, and then, passing on, were lost entirely to her sight. CHAPTER XIV. We must now beg leave to retrograde a little in regard to time: and, in order to bring every character in our story to the same point, must turn for a while to a personage of whom we have heard nothing since the day after Edward de Vaux's arrival at Morley House. The beautiful world in which we live, the multitude of blessings by which we are surrounded, and that beneficent ordination by which the human mind in its natural state is rendered capable of resting satisfied with whatever portion is allotted to it, would make the earth that we inhabit an Eden indeed, if Satan had not supplied us with easy steps to lead us to misery. Our passions form the first round of the ladder; then come our follies close above them; then follow next our vices; these, with brief intervals, are succeeded by crimes; and all beyond is wretchedness. Every crime, too, is prolific in miseries--its legitimate children--who not only return to prey upon their proper parent, but ravage far and wide the hearts of thousands of others. Not only is it on the grand scale when the glory-seeking felon calls the dogs of war to tear the prostrate carcass of some peaceful country, and, by his individual fault, render millions wretched; but each petty individual crime, like the one small seed from which mighty forests spring, is but the germ of gigantic and incalculable consequences; and no one knows to what remote and unforeseen events each trifling action may ultimately lead: no one can tell to whose bosom the error he commits may not bring despair, or how many hearts may be laid desolate by the sin or the folly of the moment.