It was a place that the Duke could never forget, and which he
ever avoided. He had never renewed his visit since he first gave vent,
among its reverend ruins, to his overcharged and most tumultuous heart.
They stood in silence before the holy pile with its vaulting arches and
crumbling walls, mellowed by the mild lustre of the declining sun. Not
two years had fled since here he first staggered after the breaking
glimpses of self-knowledge, and struggled to call order from out the
chaos of his mind. Not two years, and yet what a change had come over
his existence! How diametrically opposite now were all his thoughts, and
views, and feelings, to those which then controlled his fatal soul! How
capable, as he firmly believed, was he now of discharging his duty to
his Creator and his fellow-men! and yet the boon that ought to have been
the reward for all this self-contest, the sweet seal that ought to have
ratified this new contract of existence, was wanting.
'Ah!' he exclaimed aloud, and in a voice of anguish, 'ah! if I ne'er had
left the walls of Dacre, how different might have been my lot!'
A gentle but involuntary pressure reminded him of the companion whom,
for once in his life, he had for a moment forgotten.
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