ay.

"I cannot think, Lucilla," said Godolphin, "that you ever direct those
thoughts of yours, wandering though they be, to the future. Do they ever
extend to the space of some ten or twenty years?"

"No. But one year may contain the whole history of my future."

As she spoke, the clouds gathered round the solitary star to which
Lucilla had pointed. The storm was at hand; they felt its approach, and
turned homeward.

There is something more than ordinarily fearful in the tempests that
visit those soft and garden climes. The unfrequency of such violent
changes in the mood of nature serves to appal us as with an omen; it is
like a sudden affliction in the midst of happiness--or a wound from the
hand of one we love. For the stroke for which we are not prepared we
have rather despondency than resistance.

As they reached their home, the heavy rain-drops began to fall. They
stood for some minutes at the casement, watching the coruscations of
the lightning as it played over the black and heavy waters of the lake.
Lucilla, whom the influences of nature always strangely and mysteriously
affected, clung pale and almost trembling to Godolphin; but even in her
fear there was delight in being so near to him in whose love alone she
thought there was protection. Oh what luxury so dear to a woman as is
the sense of dependence! Poor Lucilla! it was the last evening she ever
spent with one whom she worshipped so entirely.

Godolphin remained up longer than Lucilla. When he joined her in her
room, the storm had ceased; and he found her standing by the open
window, and gazing on the skies that were now bright and serene. Far in
the deep stillness of midnight crept the waters of the lake, hushed once
more into silence, and reflecting the solemn and unfathomable stars.
That chain of hills, which but to name, awakens countless memories of
romance, stretched behind--their blue and dim summits melting into the
skies, and over one higher than the rest, paused the new risen moon,
silvering the first beneath, and farther down, breaking with one long
and yet mellower track of light over the waters of the lake.

As Godolphin approached he did so, unconsciously, with a hushed and
noiseless step. There is something in the quiet of nature like worship;
it is as if, from the breathless heart of Things, went up a prayer or
a homage to the Arch-Creator. One feels subdued by a stillness so utter
and so august; it extends itself to our own sensation