Captain Wilson departed next day for the Continent. Sir Richard Musgrave's remains were interred in the vaults at the Towers; and the Earl had some trouble to clear himself of the scrape. The marriage was deferred till the 18th of December, the Earl choosing the same day he had met Ellen a year before at the Duke's ball. A letter from the Captain arrived shortly before that day, saying he was at Hamburgh; had met a delightful young Polish officer, Count Czinsky, who was also there for a similar lawless deed, and they were to proceed to St. Petersburgh almost immediately. CHAPTER IV. "From that chamber, clothed in white, The bride came forth on her wedding-night; There, in that silent room below, The dead lay in _her_ shroud of snow."--_Longfellow._ There is something peculiarly sad in the reflection that even the works of man are longer lived than himself. The gray castle, the ancestral residence of proud races, outlives its lords; the trees man plants shall wave green long after he has mouldered in the tomb; the very picture exists long after the original has ceased to be known in his place. But it is this very fact that lends so much romance to the old castle--the ancient tree, on whose trunk is carved many a long-forgotten name--the dusky portrait, which retains the likeness of old ancestors, and snatches them from the oblivion of the dead! There is little interest in the new mansion; we could well afford to dispense with all modern luxuries, could we gain some old traditionary story of the house we dwell in. The Towers was the most ancient castle in all the neighbourhood; it had been brought into the De Vere family through a Scotch heiress--her name had long been joined with De Vere, but the custom had grown into desuetude. The Towers had stood unchanged for many a century; its lords had mouldered away, not so its battlements; its chieftains had died the death, not so its buttresses; not so its four lofty towers, on one of which floated the banner of the family, and in one of which slumbered the mortal remains of many of its stout possessors and fair mistresses. It had seen every vicissitude of its owners, but owned little change itself. The bride and the bridegroom, the dead had been borne over, and the mourners had trodden its halls. If its walls could have spoken they could have divulged many a dark secret, related many a dark deed. It seemed as if in silent night it mourned the departed, as if in sunny day it rejoiced with the living. These thoughts have been suggested by the lines that head the chapter, and the sequence will show they are not wholly without their meaning.