the sun now glimmered; its gloom rather invited than deterred her from entering it: passing, therefore, through its dreary courts, she ascended a flight of half-broken stairs that led directly to a large chamber which opened to a kind of rude balcony that stretched along one wing of the building. This was a favourite seat of Madeline's. The landscape seen through the intervening trees which rose before it never satiated her eye; upon every view some new beauty, some new charm, if possible more lovely than the last, was discovered by her.
The solemn shades surrounding her, o'er which the dusky hue of twilight was now beginning to steal, and the profound stillness of the air, only interrupted by the faint warbling of retiring birds, or the yet fainter sighing of the breeze among the trees, now and then intermingled with the hum of distant voices, by degrees calmed the painful emotions of Madeline's mind, and she became again, if not cheerful, at least composed.
