CHAPTER V .-- A Mysterious Meeting.
-- Description of a Summer Evening--A Jealous Vision--Letter from Squire Beaker to Lord Cumber--Lord Cumber's Reply.
The season was now about the close of May, that delightful month which presents, the heart and all our purer sensations with a twofold enjoyment; for in that sweet period have we not all the tenderness and delicacy of spring, combined with the fuller and more expanded charms of the leafy summer--like that portion of female life, in which the eye feels it difficult to determine whether the delicate beauty of the blushing girl, or the riper loveliness of the full grown maid, predominates in the person.

The time was evening, about half an hour before that soft repose of twilight, in which may be perceived the subsiding stir of busy life as it murmurs itself into slumber, after the active pursuits of day.

On a green upland lawn, that was a sheep walk, some portions of which were studded over with the blooming and fragrant furze, stood an old ecclesiastical ruin, grey from time, and breathing with that spirit of vague but dreamy reverie, which it caught from the loveliness of the season, the calmness and the golden light of the hour, accessories, that, by their influence, gave a solemn beauty to its very desolation.

It reminded one somewhat of the light which coming death throws upon the cheek of youth when he treacherously treads in the soft and noiseless steps of decline--or rather of that still purer light, which, when the aged Christian arrives at the close of a well spent life, accompanied by peace, and hope, and calmness, falls like a glory on his bed of death.

The ruin was but small, a remnant of one of those humble, but rude temples, in which God was worshipped in simplicity and peace, far from the noisy tumults and sanguinary conflicts of ambitious man.
Through this sweet upland, and close to the ruin, ran a footpath that led to a mountain village of considerable extent.