And with the word he took up his rapier which lay on a slab near the table at which he had been sitting, and hung it to his belt, and then throwing on his plumed hat carelessly, without putting on his cloak, strolled leisurely out into the glorious summer evening. For a little while he loitered on the esplanade, gazing out toward the sea, the ridgy waves of which were sparkling like emeralds tipped with diamonds in the grand glow of the setting sun. But ere long he turned thence with a sigh, called up perhaps by some fancied similitude between that bright and boundless ocean, desolate and unadorned even by a single passing sail, and his own course of life so desert, friendless, and uncompanioned. Thence he strolled listlessly through the fine garden, inhaling the rare odors of the roses, hundreds of which bloomed on every side of him, there in low bushes, there in trim standards, and not a few climbing over tall trellices and bowery alcoves in one mass of living bloom. He saw the happy swallows darting and wheeling to and fro through the pellucid azure, in pursuit of their insect prey. He heard the rich mellow notes of the blackbirds and thrushes, thousands and thousands of which were warbling incessantly in the cool shadow of the yew and holly hedges. But his diseased and unhappy spirit took no delight in the animated sounds, or summer-teeming sights of rejoicing nature. No, the very joy and merriment, which seemed to pervade all nature, animate or inanimate around him, while he himself had no present joys to elevate, no future promises to cheer him, rendered him, if that were possible, darker and gloomier, and more mournful. The spirits of the departed seemed to hover about him, forbidding him ever again to admit hope or joy as an inmate to his desolate heart; and, wrapt in these dark phantasies, with his brow bent, and his eyes downcast, he wandered from terrace to terrace through the garden, until he reached its farthest boundary, and then passed out into the park, through which he strolled, almost unconscious whither, until he came to the great deer-fence of the utmost glen, through a wicket of which, just as the sun was setting, he entered into the shadowy woodland. Then a whole flood of wild and whirling thoughts rushed over his brain at once. He had strolled without a thought into the very scene of his happy rambles with the beloved, the faithless, the lost Melanie. Carried away by a rush of inexplicable feelings, he walked swiftly onward through the dim wildwood path toward the Devil’s Drinking-Cup. He came in sight of it--a woman sat by its brink, who started to her feet at the sound of his approaching footsteps. It was Melanie--alone--and if his eyes deceived him not, weeping bitterly. She gazed at him, at the first, with an earnest, half-alarmed, half-inquiring glance, as if she did not recognise his face, and, perhaps, apprehended rudeness, if not danger, from the approach of a stranger.