Page:Francesca Carrara 2.pdf/271

268 It was firmly believed in the New Forest, that the judgment of Heaven had struck down the cruel and arbitrary monarch in the very place which be had made desolate. The levelled cottage and the wasted field—the peasant, driven forth homeless and despairing, in the selfishness of barbarous amusement—were now avenged: the offender's pleasure had been his punishment—the visible wrong followed by the visible penalty.

The dell itself was lovely and lonely, and a favourite haunt with the Carraras. Death leaves behind its own solemnity; and, even with the sunshine checkering the grass, the place had a peculiar gloom. Though they sat beneath the shade of the hawthorn, whose blossoms strewed the ground at their feet, and with the long branches drooping around them their sweet shelter, yet their talk was grave, and often broken by long intervals of silence.

"Do not let us stay here!" at last exclaimed Francesca; "I am not happy enough to bear its melancholy. True, that the fate of the Norman king was well deserved; but how often has inexorable fate struck down the innocent as suddenly! Alas! life is full of strange chances; and it is terrible to think that on them we must depend."