The night, though yet without a moon, was beautifully clear and
cloudless. The stars had come out with all their brightness--a soft
zephyr played drowsily and fitfully among the tops of the shrubbery,
that lay, as it were, asleep on the circling hilltops around; while the
odors of complicated charm from a thousand floral knots, which had
caught blooms from the rainbows, and dyed themselves in their stolon
splendors, thickly studding the wild and matted grass which sustained
them, brought along with them even a stronger influence than the rest of
the scene, and might have taught a ready lesson of love to much sterner
spirits than the two, now so unhappy, who were there to take their
parting in a last embrace.
The swift motion of a galloping steed was heard, and Forrester was at
the place and hour of appointment. In mournful mood, he threw himself at
the foot of one of the hills, upon one of the tufted roots of the huge
tree which sheltered the little hollow, and resigned himself to a
somewhat bitter survey of his own condition, and of the privations and
probable straits into which his rash thoughtlessness had so unhappily
involved him.
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