Speech suddenly became impossible to him.

He was struck again with that sense of a will firmer and more tenacious than his own, which had visited him in a slight passing way on the first evening they ever met, and now filled him with a kind of despair.

As they pushed silently along the edge of the dripping meadow, he noticed with a pang that the stepping-stones lay just below them.

The gleam of sun had died away, the aerial valley in the clouds had vanished, and a fresh storm of rain brought back the color to Catherine's cheek.

On their left hand was the roaring of the river, on their right they could already hear the wind moaning and tearing through the trees which sheltered Burwood.
The nature which an hour ago had seemed to him so full of stimulus and exhilaration, had taken to itself a note of gloom and mourning; for he was at the age when Nature is the mere docile responsive mirror of the spirit, when all her forces and powers are made for us, and are only there to play chorus to our story.
They reached the little lane leading to the gate of Burwood.