No honest heart could yield long to the comforting of the fair world, knowing that some of her fairest fields would soon be crimsoned afresh with the blood of her children.  But Dorothy’s sadness was not all for her country in general.  Had she put the question honestly to her heart, she must have confessed that even the loss of her mother had less to do with a certain weight upon it, which the loveliness of the spring day seemed to render heavier, than the rarely absent feeling rather than thought, that the playmate of her childhood, and the offered lover of her youth, had thrown himself with all the energy of dawning manhood into the quarrel of the lawless and self-glorifying.  Nor was she altogether free from a sense of blame in the matter.  Had she been less imperative in her mood and bearing, more ready to give than to require sympathy,—­but ah! she could not change the past, and the present was calling upon her.

At length the towers of Raglan appeared, and a pang of apprehension shot through her bosom.  She was approaching the unknown.  Like one on the verge of a second-sight, her history seemed for a moment about to reveal itself—­where it lay, like a bird in its egg, within those massive walls, warded by those huge ascending towers.  Brought up in a retirement that some would have counted loneliness, and although used to all gentle and refined ways, yet familiar with homeliness and simplicity of mode and ministration, she could not help feeling awed at the prospect of entering such a zone of rank and stateliness and observance as the household of the marquis, who lived like a prince in expenditure, attendance, and ceremony.  She knew little of the fashions of the day, and, like many modest young people, was afraid she might be guilty of some solecism which would make her appear ill-bred, or at least awkward.  Since her mother left her, she had become aware of a timidity to which she had hitherto been a stranger.  ‘Ah!’ she said to herself, ’if only my mother were with me!’

At length they reached the brick gate, were admitted within the outer wall, and following the course taken by Scudamore and Heywood, skirted the moat which enringed the huge blind citadel or keep, and arrived at the western gate.  The portcullis rose to admit them, and they rode into the echoes of the vaulted gateway.  Turning to congratulate Dorothy on their safe arrival, Mr. Herbert saw that she was pale and agitated.

‘What ails my child?’ he said in a low voice, for the warder was near.

‘I feel as if entering a prison,’ she replied, with a shiver.

‘Is thy God the God of the grange and not of the castle?’ returned the old man.

‘But, sir,’ said Dorothy, ’I have been accustomed to a liberty such as few have enjoyed, and these walls and towers—­’

‘Heed not the look of things,’ interrupted her guardian.  ’Believe in the Will that with a thought can turn the shadow of death into the morning, give gladness for weeping, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.’