Polydore was not one to resist such an entreaty, and assented. Yet, perhaps, Randolph might have been prevailed upon at least to defer his departure, but for an invitation to do so from another quarter. A note reached the castle from Mrs. Pendarrel, in which that lady expressed her hope that its present occupants would put themselves to no inconvenience; that the demand for immediate possession was unauthorized, and that every accommodation would be granted with pleasure. This polite missive, it may be presumed, was in partial fulfilment of the intention Esther expressed to her daughter, of assisting her adversaries in their fall. But it was too much like that which she caused her husband to write in the opening of this narrative, to be received as a favour, and only served to provoke Randolph into a fresh burst of rage, and make him eager for the vehicle which should bear them away from all such insults. Before it came, however, he could not resist guiding his sister to a last visit to the haunt of their childhood, Merlin's Cave. And there for no little space they sat in silence, thinking over the happiness of by-gone days. The day was even warmer than those which had preceded it, but it was close and heavy. The sea lay before the orphans, perfectly smooth, sleeping in its might; and there was no breath of air to waft aside the lightest bubble it might leave upon the rock; but some round massive clouds were rising one behind another in the south-western horizon, which might indicate the coming of a storm. "Farewell to Trevethlan!" Randolph said. "Let me hear our old song once more." And Helen sang the ancestral ditty, but with an accent very different from that she gave it on the eve of their previous journey to the metropolis. "Farewell to Trevethlan! A farewell for ever! Farewell to the towers that stand by the sea!" "Remember, Helen," her brother said, "how you checked me when I told you your song was of ill omen. And believe me now, when I say that, like Reginald, we shall live to see a joyful revolution."