Griffith Gaunt, unknown to himself, had lost temper as well as heart before he took the desperate step of leaving the country. Now his temper was naturally good; and, ere he had ridden two miles, he recovered it. To his cost: for the sustaining force of anger being gone, he was alone with his grief. He drew the rein half mechanically, and from a spirited canter declined to a walk.
And the slower he went the chillier grew his heart, till it lay half ice, half load, in his bosom.
Parted! oh word pregnant with misery.
Never to see those heavenly eyes again nor hear that silvery voice! Never again to watch that peerless form walk the minuet; nor see it lift the grey horse over a fence with the grace and spirit that seemed inseparable from it!
Desolation streamed over him at the thought. And next his forlorn mind began to cling even to the inanimate objects that were dotted about the place which held her. He passed a little farmhouse into which Kate and he had once been driven by a storm, and had sat together by the kitchen fire; and the farmer's wife had smiled on them for sweethearts, and made them drink rum and milk, and stay till the sun was fairly out. "Ah! good-bye, little farm," he sighed, "when shall I ever see you again?"
He passed a brook where they had often stopped together and given their panting horses just a mouthful after a run with the harriers. "Good-bye, little brook!" said he: "you will ripple on as before, and warble as you go; but I shall never drink at your water more, nor hear your pleasant murmur with her I love."
He sighed and crept away, still making for the sea.
In the icy depression of his heart, his body and his senses were half paralysed, and none would have known the accomplished huntsman in this broken man, who hung anyhow over his mare's neck, and went to and fro in the saddle.
When he had gone about five miles, he came to the crest of a hill; he remembered that, once past that brow, he could see Peyton Hall no more. He turned slowly and cast a sorrowful look at it.
It was winter, but the afternoon sun had come out bright. The horizontal beams struck full upon the house, and all the western panes shone like burnished gold; her very abode, how glorious it looked! And he was to see it no more.