e small postern door:
it was a part of the old building: one of the grooms held his impatient
horse--the swiftest in his splendid stud; and the dim but flaring light,
held by another of the servitors, streamed against the dull heavens and
the imperfectly seen and frowning ruins of the ancient pile.

Godolphin, unconscious of all around, and muttering to himself, leaped
on his steed: the fire glinted from the coursers hoofs; and thus the
last lord of that knightly race bade farewell to his father's halls.
Those words which he had muttered, and which his favourite servant
caught and superstitiously remembered, were the words in Lucilla's
note--"The hour has arrived!"

CHAPTER THE LAST.

A DREAD MEETING.--THE STORM.--THE CATASTROPHE.

On the humble pallet of the village inn lay the broken form of the
astrologer's expiring daughter. The surgeon of the place sat by the
bedside, dismayed and terrified, despite his hardened vocation, by the
wild words and ghastly shrieks that ever and anon burst from the lips
of the dying woman. The words were, indeed, uttered in a foreign tongue
unfamiliar to the leech, a language not ordinarily suited to inspire
terror; the language of love, and poetry, and music, the language of the
sweet South. But, uttered in that voice where the passions of the soul
still wrestled against the gathering weakness of the frame, the soft
syllables sounded harsh and fearful; and the dishevelled locks of the
sufferer--the wandering fire of the sunken eyes--the distorted gestures
of the thin, transparent arms, gave fierce effect to the unknown words,
and betrayed the dark strength of the delirium which raged upon her.

One wretched light on the rude table opposite the bed broke the gloom of
the mean chamber; and across the window flashed the first lightnings
of the storm about to break. By the other side of the bed sat,
mute, watchful, tearless, the Moorish girl, who was Lucilla's sole
attendant--her eyes fixed on the sufferer with faithful, unwearying
love; her ears listening, with all the quick sense of her race, to
catch, amidst the growing noises of the storm, and the tread of
hurrying steps below, the expected sound of the hoofs that should herald
Godolphin's approach.

Suddenly, as if exhausted by the paroxysm of her disease, Lucilla's
voice sank into silence; and she lay so still, so motionless, that, but
for the faint and wavering pulse of the hand, which the surgeon was
now suffered to hol