She blushed and smiled when she listened--even as he might have expected from the tenor of the letter, which, sleeping or waking, lay nearest to his heart.

But the scene suddenly changed from summer to winter--from calm to tempest, the winds and the waves rose with such a contest of surge and whirlwind as if the demons of the water and of the air had been contending for their roaring empires in rival strife.

The rising waters seemed to cut off their advance and their retreat--the increasing tempest, which dashed them against each other, seemed to render their remaining on the spot impossible, and the tumultuous sensations produced by the apparent danger awoke the dreamer.
He awoke, but although the circumstances of the vision had disappeared, and given place to reality, the noise, which had probably suggested them, still continued to sound in his ears.
Quentin's first impulse was to sit erect in bed and listen with astonishment to sounds, which, if they had announced a tempest, might have shamed the wildest that ever burst down from the Grampians, and again in a minute he became sensible that the tumult was not excited by the fury of the elements, but by the wrath of men.

He sprang from bed, and looked from the window of his apartment, but it opened into the garden, and on that side all was quiet, though the opening of the casement made him still more sensible from the shouts which reached his ears that the outside of the castle was beleaguered and assaulted, and that by a numerous and determined enemy.

Hastily collecting his dress and arms, and putting them on with such celerity as darkness and surprise permitted, his attention was solicited by a knocking at the door of his chamber.