Falkland still continued to track the stream: it wound its way through
Mandeville's grounds, and broadened at last into the lake which was so
consecrated to his recollections. He paused at that spot for some
moments, looking carelessly over the wide expanse of waters, now dark as
night, and now flashing into one mighty plain of fire beneath the
coruscations of the lightning. The clouds swept on in massy columns,
dark and aspiring-veiling, while they rolled up to, the great heavens,
like the shadows of human doubt. Oh! weak, weak was that dogma of the
philosopher! There is a pride in the storm which, according to his
doctrine, would debase us; a stirring music in its roar; even a savage
joy in its destruction: for we can exult in a defiance of its power, even
while we share in its triumphs, in a consciousness of a superior spirit
within us to that which is around. We can mock at the fury of the
elements, for they are less terrible than the passions of the heart; at
the devastations of the awful skies, for they are less desolating than
the wrath of man; at the convulsions of that surrounding nature which has
no peril, no terror to the soul, which is more indestructible and eternal
than itself. Falkland turned towards the house which contained his
world; and as the lightning revealed at intervals the white columns of
the porch, and wrapt in sheets of fire, like a spectral throng, the tall
and waving trees by which it was encircled, and then as suddenly ceased,
and "the jaws of darkness" devoured up the scene; he compared, with that
bitter alchymy of feeling which resolves all into one crucible of
thought, those alternations of sight and shadow to the history of his own
guilty love--that passion whose birth was the womb of Night; shrouded in
darkness, surrounded by storms, and receiving only from the angry heavens
a momentary brilliance, more terrible than its customary gloom.

As he entered the saloon, Lady Margaret advanced towards him. "My dear
Falkland," said she, "how good it is in you to come in such a night. We