But now, when memory, by one unexpected stroke, had once conjured up
the happy past of his early life and its as early blighting, true to
her nature, she raised before his mind's eye every hope connected
with it and his present doom, till, almost distracted, he quickened
his speed. He then slackened it; he quickened it again; but nothing
could rid him of those successive images which seem to glide around
him like mournful apparitions of the long-lamented dead.
When the dawn broke and the sun rose, he found himself advanced
several miles on the south side of Ponton Hill. The spiry aisles of
Harrowby Abbey were discernible through the mist, and the towers of
Somerset Castle, from their height and situation, were as distinctly
seen as if he had been at their base. Neither of these objects were
calculated to raise the spirits of Thaddeus. The sorrows of the
countess, whose eyes he so recently had closed, and the treatment
which he afterwards received from the man to whom he owed his life,
were recollections which made him turn from the Abbey with a renewed
pang and fix his eyes on Somerset. He looked towards its ivied
battlements with all the regret and all the tenderness which can
overflow a human heart. Under that roof he believed the eyes of his
almost, indeed, worshipped Mary were sealed in sleep; and in an
instant his agitated soul addressed her as if she had been present.
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