ghostly in her pale brow,—something unearthly in her whole appearance. Her hair was dishevelled by the wind, and dripping with the rain; her mantle torn and soiled; her small white foot bleeding and cut by the rough paths she had trod. She raised her hand to heaven, and her look was one of intense earnestness and beseeching woe, strangely blended with proud hauteur and offended majesty. She beheld him earnestly till another pause in the storm, and, in the hush that followed the blast, sung mournfully these lines:—

The sound ceased, and again the voice of the storm rose high; clouds shrouded the lady of the night, and darkness sank in treble deepness. Still something undefined, but dimly bright, shone near the renegade's bedside, and made him aware that the Abbess awaited his reply: but, like another renegade, a modern poet has so finely drawn,—

"No. Be thou living form, or fleshless spirit," he answered, "I have but one reply: I will not return like the sow to her wallowing in the mire. Having once shaken off the trammels of Rome, I will not lightly bear again her yoke, which is neither easy nor light; nay, fair cousin, methinks I have been but too merciful: to-morrow, God help me, will I raze the altar of Baal with the ground, unless this storm saves me the labour." He looked to see the effect of his reply—the dim light was gone; he only heard the wild wind.

Early next morning he rose to fulfil his threat. It was one of those beautiful mornings after a night of rain and tempest, and the sun shone brightly on the wreck left by the gale. Not a breath was stirring, and it was a strange sight to see the uprooted trees, the ruins of part of the chapel thrown down in the night, and the debris left by the Wye, which had nearly sunk to its wonted bed, lying in disjointed heaps on the sward. The silence was only broken by the robin's note, or the rush of the subsiding river, when the Earl proceeded to demolish the high altar. Rough as his soldiery were, they were not entirely freed from old superstitions, and there was not one hardy enough to obey his behest; so, after censuring them for lukewarmness in a blessed cause, he himself seized a sledgehammer from a bystander, and prepared to perform the sacrilegious act. He was a tall, stout man, of about thirty-five years, in the full strength of manhood, and he whirled the heavy instrument round his head as if it had been a withe; it descended on the altar with tremendous force, and in a moment brought down in dire destruction the marble shrine and image of the Virgin. Again he swung the hammer high—his face was red with passion, and his eye unnaturally bright. Suddenly a mortal paleness suffused his features, his powerful arm dropped down as if broken, and he fell heavily to the earth. Extreme passion had so excited him that a large blood-vessel burst, and as he lay on the earth, the red blood bubbled from his mouth. There were those who saw in his fate the retributive punishment of God for his cousin's death! He never spoke again, and after lingering some hours in great suffering, his spirit passed away, a few hours after his great chieftain's demise.

From that hour, the curse of Augusta has reigned malignantly over all his race;—the brave, the beautiful, have alike paid the debt, and one by one, but surely as the leaf falls before October's blast, have the members of that noble house succumbed to their fate. Some on the battle-field, some on the fevered couch, some in the blue lone sea, some by accidental death, some in mortal fray; but of all the many hearts that have braved life's storms, none have lived to be old in this world of sin and sorrow. They learned to love despair, ay, even to be proud of their doom!

We trust we have not wearied our reader by this introductory chapter, without which the strange fates and vicissitudes of the family whose history we are about to narrate might perhaps seem overdrawn, but whose early fall will no longer seem strange to one who knows the origin of the Weird of the Wentworths.[B]

CHAPTER II.

In a comfortably furnished parlour a family party were gathered, and about to sit down to their breakfast. The urn was hissing cheerily, as if inviting them to hasten to the repast. A handsome girl, perhaps eighteen years of age, presided over the tea-making, and was apparently too busily engaged to give much attention to the assiduous addresses of a young officer who sat on her right hand. In the window a boy of fifteen was aiding his younger sister