But such a sad breach as had been made between them this day was without a parallel. To his own mind it seemed too wide to be repaired; too gross to be atoned for by words. He, on his part, felt that the lofty character and proud spirit of Kate, though love plead never so loudly, would not brook the insult her feelings had received by the wild outbreak of his passions in her presence. He felt that he had forfeited all title to a place in her affections; and that her indignation was justly roused by the outrageous deed he had madly attempted: with bitterness of heart he acknowledged that he deserved to be banished for ever from her presence, and to be remembered by her only with contempt. But he knew not of what enduring material a maiden's heart is composed; he knew not that, when love takes possession of it, like a magnet thrown among some delicate machinery of steel communicating to every part a portion of its own mysterious nature, it penetrates and pervades every attribute, converts every passion to its own hue, and renders each feeling subservient to itself. To its arbitrament all things are referred. Reason, judgment, prudence, and even piety become secondary to the will of this autocrat of the heart; and a deaf ear is turned even to the counsels of the wise and good when they do not conform to its dictates. Such is the power of love—wondrous, vast, incomprehensible! A religion without a god or a future; unbounded in its power; universal in its extent; all-pervading in its influences!
He galloped along through the winding avenues of the silent forest, scarce roused from his sad meditations by the startled deer that fled at his approach, yet stooping mechanically as some old oak flung its gigantic arm low across the path. Unconsciously he urged on his noble horse to its utmost speed; his bonnet pressed down over his gloomy brow; his eyes dark and settled in their expression; and his hand nervously grasping the rein. At one moment he would drop his head upon his breast, and be overcome by the bitterness of grief. At the next he would throw back his head, and with eyes flashing fire, gnash his glittering teeth, shake his clinched hands above his head, and curse in the face of Heaven; while the horse, catching his fierce spirit, would erect his bristling mane, and bound madly forward like the wind. These terrible paroxysms of mingled grief and rage would pass away, and then he would ride slowly, with his arms folded, and with an expression of settled despondency. Three several times did he check his horse, and, half-turning him round towards Castle Cor, pause, and seem to deliberate between the suggestions of mingled hope and doubt. But, after a few seconds' thought, he would shake his head despairingly and again spur forward.
In one of his moods of sullen gloom, with his arms folded across his breast, his head drooped, the reins lying loosely upon the horse's neck, he came upon an old ruin half a league from Castle More, and within the boundaries of its wide domain. Here and there, amid a confusion of moss-grown fragments that everywhere strewed the ground, rose to his eye a mouldering buttress; the half of a Gothic window; a ruined tower, lifting itself in melancholy loneliness, in the last stages of decay; or, a doorway choked to its lintel with rubbish. Over all crept the ivy, that lovely emblem of charity, binding up, with its slender fingers, the wounded towers; covering with its thick robe of leaves the nakedness that time had exposed; and, where it could neither heal nor strengthen, wreathing about the dilapidated walls garlands of enduring verdure.
It was the ruins of a chapel, where, centuries before, the barons of Castle More had worshipped. Now all was desolation. Its bell was hushed; its choir for ever silent. The priests—the worshippers, where were they? sleeping beneath the ruins of the crumbling chancel; their high or holy names, which no man remembers, carved deep in the superincumbent marble. Apparently coeval with the fallen temple, near its eastern end grew an aged tree, spreading over half the ruin its huge broad arms as if it would fain protect, in its desolation, the relics of that structure whose days of honour it had witnessed. A soft evening sunlight, struggling through the tops of the surrounding forest, shed a crimson glow over the whole scene, and imparted a quiet and sacred character to the spot that took from it its aspect of desolation. It stood there lonely and majestic in its ruin, forcibly suggesting to the mind the idea (for there does exist a mysterious sympathy of association between man and inanimate objects) of calm, Christian old age, ripe in years and holiness, gathering about itself, with dignity and grace, its mantle of decay.
Wrapped in his gloomy thoughts, the horseman was absently following the path that wound among the ruins, when, as he turned a sudden angle of the pile, his horse started and nearly threw him from his saddle. Roused to a sense of his situation, he recovered his seat, seized the bridle, and looked up. Directly in his path stood a woman, in a short scarlet cloak, then, as now, the favourite colour of the Irish peasantry, leaning on a long white staff, curiously carved with mysterious figures. She was beneath the middle height, and hideously hunch-backed. Her hair was bright red, of extraordinary length, and hung down in masses nearly to the ground. Around her forehead was bound a cincture of beads, woven into singular devices, which confined a sort of turban of green silk. Her complexion was bronzed by exposure, but evidently once had been fair. Her features were stern and almost masculine, yet bearing traces of feminine beauty: the straight forehead, contracted by a rigid frown; the aquiline nose; the arched brow, and thin, well-shaped lips, with a roundly turned chin, were all, evidently, wrecks of what had once been beautiful. Her eye was large, full, and clear, and would still have been handsome but for a lurking devil in it. But the unsightly deformity of her person, if natural, must always have served to render nugatory any charm of countenance; and, whatever might have been her attractions in youth, her present appearance was calculated to excite only feelings of mingled fear and disgust. The young man gazed at her a moment as she stood in his path, and then, in a tone that was in unison with his present humour, said fiercely,
"Curses light on thee, hag! Stand from my path, or I will ride over thee, and trample thy hideous carcass with my horse's hoofs."
"Robert Lester, as men call thee," she said, without changing her position, in a cold, hard voice, and with a malicious laugh, "thou hast been crossed in thy will, and art out of temper. Dost wish revenge?"
"Woman, avaunt! I want none of thy counsel. From my path, or I will ride thee down!"
As he spoke, the impatient horseman struck his spurs deep into his horse's flanks, and urged the animal forward; the beast reared and plunged fearfully to either side, but refused to advance.
"Ha, ha, Robert More! If men will obey thee thy brute will not. He has the eye to see dangers that are hidden from mortal vision."