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Title: Lodore, Vol. 2 (of 3)

Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Release date: February 14, 2021 [eBook #64556]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images generously made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LODORE, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***

LODORE.



BY THE

AUTHOR OF "FRANKENSTEIN."

In the turmoil of our lives,
Men are like politic states, or troubled seas,
Tossed up and down with several storms and tempests,
Change and variety of wrecks and fortunes;
Till, labouring to the havens of our homes,
We struggle for the calm that crowns our ends.

FORD.



IN THREE VOLUMES.


VOL. II.



LONDON:

RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET

(SUCCESSOR TO HENRY COLBURN.)

1835.




CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII




LODORE




CHAPTER I

Excellent creature! whose perfections make
Even sorrow lovely!

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.


Mr. Villiers now became the constant visitor of Mrs. Elizabeth and her
niece; and all discontent, all sadness, all listlessness, vanished in
his presence. There was in his mind a constant spring of vivacity, which
did not display itself in mere gaiety, but in being perfectly alive at
every moment, and continually ready to lend himself to the comfort and
solace of his companions. Sitting in their dingy London house, the
spirit of dulness had drawn a curtain between them and the sun; and
neither thought nor event had penetrated the fortification of silence
and neglect which environed them. Edward Villiers came; and as mist
flies before the wind, so did all Ethel's depression disappear when his
voice only met her ear: his step on the stairs announced happiness; and
when he was indeed before her, light and day displaced every remnant of
cheerless obscurity.

The abstracted, wounded, yet lofty spirit of Lodore was totally dissimilar
to the airy brightness of Villiers' disposition. Lodore had outlived a
storm, and shown himself majestic in ruin. No ill had tarnished the
nature of Villiers: he enjoyed life, he was in good-humour with the
world, and thought well of mankind. Lodore had endangered his peace from
the violence of passion, and reaped misery from the pride of his soul.
Villiers was imprudent from his belief in the goodness of his
fellow-creatures, and imparted happiness from the store that his warm
heart insured to himself. The one had never been a boy--the other had
not yet learned to be a man.

Ethel's heart had been filled by her father; and all affection, all
interest, borrowed their force from his memory. She did not think of
love; and while Villiers was growing into a part of her life, becoming
knit to her existence by daily habit, and a thousand thoughts expended on
him, she entertained his idea chiefly as having been the friend of Lodore.
"He is certainly the kindest-hearted creature in the world." This was
the third time that, when laying her gentle head on the pillow, this
feeling came like a blessing to her closing eyes. She heard his voice in
the silence of night, even more distinctly than when it was addressed to
her outward sense during the day. For the first time after the lapse of
months, she found one to whom she could spontaneously utter every
thought, as it rose in her mind. A fond, elder brother, if such ever
existed, cherishing the confidence and tenderness of a beloved sister,
might fill the place which her new friend assumed for Ethel. She thought
of him with overflowing affection; and the name of "Mr. Villiers"
sometimes fell from her lips in solitude, and hung upon her ear like
sweetest music. In early life there is a moment--perhaps of all the
enchantments of love it is the one which is never renewed--when passion,
unacknowledged to ourselves, imparts greater delight than any
after-stage of that ever-progressive sentiment. We neither wish nor
expect. A new joy has risen, like the sun, upon our lives; and we rejoice
in the radiance of morning, without adverting to the noon and twilight
that is to follow. Ethel stood on the threshold of womanhood: the door
of life had been closed before her;--again it was thrown open--and the
sudden splendour that manifested itself blinded her to the forms of the
objects of menace or injury, which a more experienced eye would have
discerned within the brightness of her new-found day.

Ethel expressed a wish to visit Eton. In talking of the past, Lord Lodore
had never adverted to any events except those which had occurred during his
boyish days. His youthful pleasures and exploits had often made a part
of their conversation. He had traced for her a plan of Eton college, and
the surrounding scenery; spoken of the trembling delight he had felt in
escaping from bounds; and told how he and Derham had passed happy hours
beside the clear streams, and beneath the copses, of that rural country.
There was one fountain which he delighted to celebrate; and the ivied
ruins of an old monastery, now become a part of a farm-yard, which had
been to these friends the bodily image of many imaginary scenes. Among
the sketches of Whitelock, were several taken in the vicinity of
Windsor; and there were, in his portfolio, studies of trees, cottages,
and also of this same abbey, which Lodore instantly recognized. To many
he had some appending anecdote, some school-boy association. He had
purchased the whole collection from Whitelock. Ethel had copied a few;
and these, together with various sketches made in the Illinois, formed
her dearest treasure, more precious in her eyes than diamonds and
rubies.

We are most jealous of what sits nearest to our hearts; and we must love
fondly before we can let another into the secret of those trivial, but
cherished emotions, which form the dearest portion of our solitary
meditations. Ethel had several times been on the point of proposing a
visit to Eton, to her aunt; but there was an awful sacredness in the
very name, which acted like a spell upon her imagination. When first it
fell from her lips, the word seemed echoed by unearthly whisperings, and
she fled from the idea of going thither,--as it is the feminine
disposition often to do, from the full accomplishment of its wishes, as
if disaster must necessarily be linked to the consummation of their
desires. But a word was enough for Villiers: he eagerly solicited
permission to escort them thither, as, being an Etonian himself, his
guidance would be of great advantage. Ethel faltered her consent; and
the struggle of delight and sensibility made that project appear
painful, which was indeed the darling of her thoughts.

On a bright day in the first week of May, they made this excursion. They
repaired to one of the inns at Salt Hill, and prolonged their walks and
drives about the country. In some of the former, where old walls were to
be scrambled up, and rivulets overleaped, Mrs. Elizabeth remained at the
hotel, and Ethel and Villiers pursued their rambles together. Ethel's
whole soul was given up to the deep filial love that had induced the
journey. Every green field was a stage on which her father had played a
part; each majestic tree, or humble streamlet, was hallowed by being
associated with his image. The pleasant, verdant beauty of the
landscape, clad in all the brightness of early summer; the sunny, balmy
day--the clouds which pranked the heavens with bright and floating
shapes--each hedgerow and each cottage, with its trim garden--each
embowered nook--had a voice which was music to her soul. From the
college of Eton, they sought the dame's house where Lodore and Derham had
lived; then crossing the bridge, they entered Windsor, and prolonged
their walk into the forest. Ethel knew even the rustic names of the
spots she most desired to visit, and to these Villiers led her in
succession. Day declined before they got home, and found Mrs. Elizabeth,
and their repast, waiting them; and the evening was enlivened by many a
tale of boyish pranks, achieved by Villiers, in these scenes. The
following morning they set forth again; and three days were spent in
these delightful wanderings. Ethel would willingly never have quitted
this spot: it appeared to her as if, seeing all, still much remained to
be seen--as if she could never exhaust the variety of sentiments and
deep interest which endeared every foot of this to her so holy ground.
Nor were her emotions silent, and the softness of her voice, and the
flowing eloquence with which she expressed herself, formed a new charm
for her companion.

Sometimes her heart was too full to admit of expression, and grief for
her father's loss was renewed in all its pristine bitterness. One day,
on feeling herself thus overcome, she quitted her companions, and sought
the shady walks of the garden of the hotel, to indulge in a gush of
sorrow which she could not repress. There was something in her gesture
and manner as she left them, that reminded Villiers of Lady Lodore. It was
one of those mysterious family resemblances, which are so striking and
powerful, and yet which it is impossible to point out to a stranger. A
_bligh_ (as this indescribable resemblance is called in some parts of
England) of her mother-struck Villiers forcibly, and he suddenly asked
Mrs. Elizabeth, "If Miss Fitzhenry had never expressed a desire to see
Lady Lodore."

"God forbid!" exclaimed the old lady; "it was my brother's dying wish, that
she should never hear Lady Lodore's name, and I have religiously observed
it. Ethel only knows that she was the cause of her father's misfortunes,
that she deserted every duty, and is unworthy of the name she bears."

Villiers was astonished at this tirade falling from the lips of the
unusually placid maiden, whose heightened colour bespoke implacable
resentment. "Do not mention that woman's name, Mr. Villiers," she
continued, "I am convinced that I should die on the spot if I saw her;
she is as much a murderess, as if she had stabbed her husband to the
heart with a dagger. Her letter to me that I sent to my poor brother in
America, was more the cause of his death, I am sure, than all the duels
in the world. Lady Lodore! I often wonder a thunderbolt from heaven does
not fall on and kill her!"

Mrs. Elizabeth's violence was checked by seeing Ethel cross the road to
return. "Promise not to mention her name to my niece," she cried.

"For the present be assured that I will not," Villiers answered. He had
been struck most painfully by some of Mrs. Elizabeth's expressions, they
implied so much more of misconduct on Lady Lodore's part, than he had ever
suspected--but she must know best; and it seemed to him, indeed, the
probable interpretation of the mystery that enveloped her separation
from her husband. The account spread by Lady Santerre, and current in
the world, appeared inadequate and improbable; Lodore would not have
dared to take her child from her, but on heavier grounds; it was then
true, that a dark and disgraceful secret was hidden in her heart, and
that her propriety, her good reputation, her seeming pride of innocence,
were but the mask to cover the reality that divided her from her
daughter for ever.

Villiers was well acquainted with Lady Lodore; circumstances had caused him
to take a deep interest in her--these were now at an end: but the singular
coincidences that had brought him in contact with her daughter, renewed
many forgotten images, and caused him to dwell on the past with mixed
curiosity and uneasiness. Mrs. Elizabeth's expressions added to the
perplexity of his ideas; their chief effect was to tarnish to his mind
the name of Lady Lodore, and to make him rejoice at the termination that
had been put to their more intimate connexion.




CHAPTER II


One, within whose subtle being,
As light and wind within some delicate cloud,
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky.
Genius and youth contended.

SHELLEY.


The party returned to town, and on the following evening they went to
the Italian Opera. For the first time since her father's death, Ethel
threw aside her mourning attire: for the first time also, she made one
of the audience at the King's Theatre. She went to hear the music, and
to spend the evening with the only person in the world who was drawn
towards her by feelings of kindness and sympathy--the only person--but
that sufficed. His being near her, was the occasion of more delight than
if she had been made the associate of regal splendour. Yet it was no
defined or disturbing sentiment, that sat so lightly on her bosom and
shone in her eyes. Her's was the first gentle opening of a girl's heart,
who does not busy herself with the future, and reposes on the serene
present with unquestioning confidence. She looked round on the gay world
assembled, and thought, "All are as happy as I am." She listened to the
music with a subdued but charmed spirit, and turned now and then to her
companions with a glad smile, expressive of her delight. Fewer words
were spoken in their little box, probably than in any in the house; but
in none were congregated three hearts so guileless, and so perfectly
satisfied with the portion allotted to them.

At length both opera and ballêt were over, and, leaning on the arm of
Villiers, the ladies entered the round-room. The house had been very
full and the crowd was great. A seat was obtained for Aunt Bessy on one
of the sofas near the door, which opened on the principal staircase.
Villiers and Ethel stood near her. When the crowd had thinned a little,
Villiers went to look for the servant, and Ethel remained surveying the
moving numbers with curiosity, wondering at her own fate, that while
every one seemed familiar one to the other, she knew, and was known by,
none. She did not repine at this; Villiers had dissipated the sense of
desertion which before haunted her, and she was much entertained, as she
heard the remarks and interchange of compliments going on about her. Her
attention was particularly attracted by a very beautiful woman, or
rather girl she seemed, standing on the other side of the room,
conversing with a very tall personage, to whom she, being not above the
middle size, looked up as she talked; which action, perhaps, added to
her youthful appearance. There was an ease in her manners that bespoke a
matron as to station. She was dressed very simply in white, without any
ornament; her cloak hung carelessly from her shoulders, and gave to view
her round symmetrical figure; her silky, chesnut-coloured hair, fell in
thick ringlets round her face, and was gathered with inimitable elegance
in large knots on the top of her head. There was something bewitching in
her animated smile, and sensibility beamed from her long and dark grey
eyes; her simple gesture as she placed her little hand on her cloak, her
attitude as she stood, were wholly unpretending, but graceful beyond
measure. Ethel watched her unobserved, with admiration and interest, so
that she almost forgot where she was, until the voice of Villiers
recalled her. "Your carriage is up--will you come?" The lady turned as
he spoke, and recognized him with a cordial and most sweet smile. They
moved on, while Ethel turned back to look again, as her carriage was
loudly called, and Mrs. Elizabeth seizing her arm, whispered out of
breath, "O my dear, do make haste!" She hurried on, therefore, and her
glance was momentary; but she saw with wonder, that the lady was looking
with eagerness at the party; she caught Ethel's eye, blushed and turned
away, while the folding doors closed, and with a kind of nervous
trepidation her companions descended the stairs. In a moment the ladies
were in their carriage, which drove off, while Mrs. Elizabeth exclaimed
in the tone of one aghast, "Thank God, we got away! O, Ethel, that was
Lady Lodore!"

"My mother!--impossible!"

"O, that we had never come to town," continued her aunt. "Long have I
prayed that I might never see her again;--and she looking as if nothing
had happened, and that Lodore had not died through her means! Wicked,
wicked woman! I will not stay in London a day longer!"

Ethel did not interrupt her ravings: she remembered Captain Markham, and
could not believe but that her aunt laboured under some similar mistake;
it was ridiculous to imagine, that this girlish-looking, lovely being,
had been the wife of her father, whom she remembered with his high
forehead rather bare of hair, his deep marked countenance, his look that
bespoke more than mature age. Her aunt was mistaken, she felt sure; and
yet when she closed her eyes, the beautiful figure she had seen stole,
according to the Arabian image, beneath her lids, and smiled sweetly,
and again started forward to look after her. This little act seemed to
confirm what Mrs. Elizabeth said; and yet, again, it was impossible!
"Had she been named my sister, there were something in it--but my
mother,--impossible!"

Yet strange as it seemed, it was so; in this instance, Mrs. Elizabeth
had not deceived herself; and thus it was that two so near of kin as
mother and daughter, met, it might be said, for the first time. Villiers
was inexpressibly shocked; and believing that Lady Lodore must suffer
keenly from so strange and unnatural an incident, his first kindly impulse
was to seek to see her on the following morning. During her absence, the
violent attack of her sister-in-law had weighed with him, but her look
at once dissipated his uneasy doubts. There was that in this lady, which
no man could resist; she had joined to her beauty, the charm of engaging
manners, made up of natural grace, vivacity, intuitive tact, and soft
sensibility, which infused a kind of idolatry into the admiration with
which she was universally regarded. But it was not the beauty and
fashion of Lady Lodore which caused Villiers to take a deep interest in
her. His intercourse with her had been of long standing, and the object
of his very voyage to America was intimately connected with her.

Edward Villiers was the son of a man of fortune. His father had been
left a widower young in life, with this only child, who, thus single and
solitary in his paternal home, became almost adopted into the family of
his mother's brother, Viscount Maristow. This nobleman being rich,
married, and blessed with a numerous progeny, the presence of little
Edward was not felt as a burthen, and he was brought up with his cousins
like one of them. Among these it would have been hard if Villiers could
not have found an especial friend: this was not the elder son, who, much
his senior, looked down upon him with friendly regard; it was the
second, who was likewise several years older. Horatio Saville was a
being fashioned for every virtue and distinguished by every excellence;
to know that a thing was right to be done, was enough to impel Horatio
to go through fire and water to do it; he was one of those who seem not
to belong to this world, yet who adorn it most; conscientious, upright,
and often cold in seeming, because he could always master his passions;
good over-much, he might be called, but that there was no pedantry nor
harshness in his nature. Resolute, aspiring, and true, his noble
purposes and studious soul, demanded a frame of iron, and he had one of
the frailest mechanism. It was not that he was not tall, well-shaped,
with earnest eyes, a brow built up high to receive and entertain a
capacious mind; but he was thin and shadowy, a hectic flushed his cheek,
and his voice was broken and mournful. At school he held the topmost
place, at college he was distinguished by the energy with which he
pursued his studies; and these, so opposite from what might have been
expected to be the pursuits of his ardent mind, were abstruse
metaphysics--the highest and most theoretical mathematics, and
cross-grained argument, based upon hair-fine logic; to these he addicted
himself. His desire was knowledge; his passion truth; his eager and
never-sleeping endeavour was to inform and to satisfy his understanding.
Villiers waited on him, as an inferior spirit may attend on an
archangel, and gathered from him the crumbs of his knowledge, with
gladness and content. He could not force his boyish mind to similar
exertions, nor feel that keen thirst for knowledge that kept alive his
cousin's application, though he could admire and love these with
fervour, when exhibited in another. It was indeed a singular fact, that
this constant contemplation of so superior a being, added to his
careless turn of mind. Not to be like Horatio was to be nothing--to be
like him was impossible. So he was content to remain one of the
half-ignorant, uninformed creatures most men are, and to found his pride
upon his affection for his cousin, who, being several years older, might
well be advanced even beyond his emulation. Horatio himself did not
desire to be imitated by the light-hearted Edward; he was too familiar
with the exhaustion, the sadness, the disappointment of his pursuits; he
could not be otherwise himself, but he thought all that he aspired
after, was well exchanged for the sparkling eyes, exhaustless spirits,
and buoyant step of Villiers. We none of us wish to exchange our
identity for that of another; yet we are never satisfied with ourselves.
The unknown has always a charm, and unless blinded by miserable vanity,
we know ourselves too well to appreciate our especial characteristics at
a very high rate. When Horace, after deep midnight study, felt his brain
still working like a thousand millwheels, that cannot be stopped; when
sleep fled from him, and yet his exhausted mind could no longer continue
its labours--he envied the light slumbers of his cousin, which followed
exercise and amusement. Villiers loved and revered him; and he felt
drawn closer to him than towards any of his brothers, and strove to
refine his taste and regulate his conduct through his admonitions and
example, while he abstained from following him in the steep and thorny
path he had selected.

Horatio quitted college; he was no longer a youth, and his manhood
became as studious as his younger days. He had no desire but for
knowledge, no thought but for the nobler creations of the soul, and the
discernment of the sublime laws of God and nature. He nourished the
ambition of showing to these latter days what scholars of old had been,
though this feeling was subservient to his instinctive love of learning,
and his wish to adorn his mind with the indefeasible attributes of
truth. He was universally respected and loved, though little understood.
His young cousin Edward only was aware of the earnestness of his
affections, and the sensibility that nestled itself in his warm heart.
He was outwardly mild, placid, and forbearing, and thus obtained the
reputation of being cold--though those who study human nature ought to
make it their first maxim, that those who are tolerant of the follies of
their fellows--who sympathize with, and assist their wishes, and who
apparently forget their own desires, as they devote themselves to the
accomplishment of those of their friends, must have the quickest
feelings to make them enter into and understand those of others, and the
warmest affections to be able to conquer their wayward humours, so that
they can divest themselves of selfishness, and incorporate in their own
being the pleasures and pains of those around them.

The sparkling eye, the languid step, and flushed cheek of Horatio
Saville, were all tokens that there burnt within him a spirit too strong
for his frame; but he never complained; or if he ever poured out his
pent-up emotions, it was in the ear of Edward only; who but partly
understood him, but who loved him entirely. What that thirst for
knowledge was that preyed on him, and for ever urged him to drink of the
purest streams of wisdom, and yet which ever left him unsatisfied,
fevered, and mournful, the gay spirit of Edward Villiers could not
guess: often he besought his cousin to close his musty books, to mount a
rapid horse, to give his studies to the winds, and deliver his soul to
nature. But Horace pointed to some unexplained passage in Plato the
divine, or some undiscovered problem in the higher sciences, and turned
his eyes from the sun; or if indeed he yielded, and accompanied his
youthful friend, some appearance of earth or air would awaken his
curiosity, rouze his slumbering mind again to inquire, and making his
study of the wide cope of heaven, he gave himself up to abstruse
meditation, while nominally seeking for relaxation from his heavier
toils.

Horatio Saville was nine-and-twenty when he first met Lady Lodore, who was
nearly the same age. He had begun to feel that his health was shaken,
and he tried to forget for a time his devouring avocations. He changed
the scene, and went on a visit to a friend, who had a country house not
far from Hastings. Lady Lodore was expected as a guest, together with
her mother. She was much talked of, having become an object of interest
or curiosity to the many. A mystery hung over her fate; but her
reputation was cloudless, and she was warmly supported by the leaders of
fashion. Saville heard of her beauty and her sufferings; the injustice
with which she had been treated--of her magnanimity and desolate
condition; he heard of her talents, her powers of conversation, her
fashion. He figured to himself (as we are apt to incarnate to our
imagination the various qualities of a human being, of whom we hear
much) a woman, brilliant, but rather masculine, majestic in figure, with
wild dark eyes, and a very determined manner. Lady Lodore came: she
entered the room where he was sitting, and the fabric of his fancy was
at once destroyed. He saw a sweet-looking woman; serene, fair, and with
a countenance expressive of contented happiness. He found that her
manners were winning, from their softness; her conversation was
delightful, from its total want of pretension or impertinence.

What the power was that from the first moment they met, drew Horatio
Saville and Lady Lodore together is one of those natural secrets which it
is impossible to explain. Though a student, Saville was a gentleman, with
the manners and appearance of the better specimens of our aristocracy.
There might be something in his look of ill health, which demanded
sympathy; something in his superiority to the rest of the persons about
her, in the genius that sat on his brow, and the eloquence that flowed
from his lips; something in the contrast he presented to every one else
she had ever seen--neither entering into their gossiping slanders, nor
understanding their empty self-sufficiency, that possessed a charm for
one satiated with the world's common scene. It was less of wonder that
Cornelia pleased the student. There were no rough corners, no harshness
about her; she won her way into any heart by her cheerful smiles and
kind tones; and she listened to Saville when he talked of what other
women would have lent a languid ear to, with such an air of interest,
that he found no pleasure so great as that of talking on.

Saville was accustomed to find the men of his acquaintance ignorant. All
the knowledge of worldlings was as a point in comparison with his vast
acquirements. He did not seek Lady Lodore's society either to learn or to
teach, but to forget thought, and to feel himself occupied and diverted
from the sense of listlessness that haunted him in society, without
having recourse to the, to him dangerous, attraction of his books.

Lady Lodore had, in the very brightness of her earliest youth, selected a
proud and independent position. She had refused to bend to her husband's
will, or to submit to the tyranny, as she named it, which he had attempted
to exercise. Youth is bold and fearless. The forked tongue of scandal, the
thousand ills with which woman is threatened in society, without a guide
or a protector--all the worldly considerations which might lead her to
unite herself again to her husband, she had rejected with unbounded
disdain. Her mother was there to stand between her and the shafts of
envy and calumny, and she conceived no mistrust of herself; she believed
that she could hold her course with taintless feelings and security of
soul, through a thousand dangers. At first she had been somewhat annoyed
by ill-natured observations, but Lady Santerre poured the balm of
flattery on her wounds, and a few tears shed in her presence dissipated
the gathering cloud.

Cornelia had every motive a woman could have for guarding her conduct
from reproach. She lived in the midst of polished society, and was
thoroughly imbued with its maxims and laws. She witnessed the downfall
of several, as young and lovely as herself, and heard the sarcasms and
beheld the sneers which were heaped as a tomb above their buried fame.
She had vowed to herself never to become one of these. She was applauded
for her pride, and held up as a pattern. No one feared her. She was no
coquette, though she strove universally to please. She formed no
intimate friendships, though every man felt honoured by her notice. She
had no prudery on her lips, but her conduct was as open and as fair as
day. Here lay her defence against her husband; and she preserved even
the outposts of such bulwarks with scrupulous yet unobtrusive
exactitude.

Her spirits, as well as her spirit, held her up through many a year. More
than ten years had passed since her separation from Lodore--a long time
to tell of; but it had glided away, she scarcely knew how--taking little
from her loveliness, adding to the elegance of her appearance, and the
grace of her manners. Season after season came, and went, and she had no
motive for counting them anxiously. She was sought after and admired; it
was a holiday life for her, and she wondered what people meant when they
spoke of the delusions of this world, and the dangers of our own hearts.
She saw a gay reality about her, and felt the existence of no internal
enemy. Nothing ever moved her to sorrow, except the reflection that now
and then came across, that she had a child--divorced for ever from her
maternal bosom. The sight of a baby cradled in its mother's arms, or
stretching out its little hands to her, had not unoften caused her to
turn abruptly away, to hide her tears; and once or twice she had been
obliged to quit a theatre to conceal her emotion, when such sentiments
were brought too vividly before her. But when her eyes were drowned in
tears, and her bosom heaved with sad emotion, pride came to check the
torrent, and hatred of her oppressor gave a new impulse to her swelling
heart.

She had rather avoided female friendships, and had been warned from them
by the treachery of one, and the misconduct of another, of her more
intimate acquaintances. Lady Lodore renounced friendship, but the world
began to grow a little dull. The frivolity of one, the hard-heartedness of
another, disgusted. She saw each occupied by themselves and their
families, and she was alone. Balls and assemblies palled upon
her--country pleasures were stupid--she had began to think all things
"stale and unprofitable," when she became acquainted with Horatio
Saville. She was glad again to feel animated with a sense of living
enjoyment; she congratulated herself on the idea that she could take
interest in some one thing or person among the empty shapes that
surrounded her; and without a thought beyond the amusement of the
present moment, most of her hours were spent in his company.




CHAPTER III


Ah now, ye gentle pair,--now think awhile,
Now, while ye still can think and still can smile.
* * *
So did they think
Only with graver thoughts, and smiles reduced.

LEIGH HUNT.


A month stole away as if it had been a day, and Lady Lodore was engaged to
pass some weeks with another friend in a distant county. It was easily
contrived, without contrivance, by Saville, that he should visit a
relation who lived within a morning's ride of her new abode. The
restriction placed upon their intercourse while residing under different
roofs contrasted painfully with the perfect freedom they had enjoyed
while inhabiting the same. Their attachment was too young and too
unacknowledged to need the zest of difficulty. It required indeed the
facility of an unobstructed path for it to proceed to the accustomed
bourne; and a straw thrown across was sufficient to check its course for
ever.

The impatience and restlessness which Cornelia experienced during her
journey; the rush of transport that thrilled through her when she heard
of Saville's arrival at a neighbouring mansion, awoke her in an instant
to a knowledge of the true state of her heart. Her pride was, happily
for herself, united to presence of mind and fortitude. She felt the
invasion of the enemy, and she lost not a moment in repelling the
dangers that menaced her. She resolved to be true to the line of conduct
she had marked out for herself--she determined not to love. She did not
alter her manner nor her actions. She met Horatio with the same sweet
smile--she conversed with the same kind interest; but she did not
indulge in one dream, one thought--one reverie (sweet food of love)
during his absence, and guarded over herself that no indication of any
sentiment less general than the friendship of society might appear.
Though she was invariably kind, yet his feelings told him that she was
changed, without his being able to discover where the alteration lay;
the line of demarcation, which she took care never to pass, was too
finely traced, for any but feminine tact to discern, though it
obstructed him as if it had been as high and massive as a city wall. Now
and then his speaking eye rested on her with a pleading glance, while
she answered his look with a frank smile, that spoke a heart at ease,
and perfect self-possession. Indeed, while they remained near each
other, in despite of all her self-denying resolves, Cornelia was happy.
She felt that there was one being in the world who took a deep and
present interest in her, whose thoughts hovered round her and whose mind
she could influence to the conception of any act or feeling she might
desire. That tranquillity yet animation of spirit--that gratitude on
closing her eyes at night--that glad anticipation of the morrow's
sun--that absence of every harsh and jarring emotion, which is the
disposition of the human soul the nearest that we can conceive to
perfect happiness, and which now and then visits sad humanity, to teach
us of what unmeasured and pure joy our fragile nature is capable,
attended her existence, and made each hour of the day a new-born
blessing.

This state of things could not last. An accident revealed to Saville the
true state of his heart; he became aware that he loved Cornelia, deeply
and fervently, and from that moment he resolved to exile himself for
ever from her dear presence. Misery is the child of love when happiness
is not; this Horatio felt, but he did not shrink from the endurance. All
abstracted and lofty as his speculations were, still his place had been
in the hot-bed of patrician society, and he was familiar with the
repetition of domestic revolutions, too frequent there. For worlds he
would not have Cornelia's name become a byeword and mark for
scandal--that name which she had so long kept bright and unreachable.
His natural modesty prevented him from entertaining the idea that he
could indeed destroy her peace; but he knew how many and easy are the
paths which lead to the loss of honour in the world's eyes. That it
could be observed and surmised that one man had approached Lady Lodore with
any but sentiments of reverence, was an evil to be avoided at any cost.
Saville was firm as rock in his resolves--he neither doubted nor
procrastinated. He left the neighbourhood where she resided, and,
returning to his father's house, tried to acquire strength to bear the
severe pain which he could not master.

His gentle and generous nature, ever thoughtful for others, and prodigal
of self, was not however satisfied with this mere negative act of
justice towards one who honoured him, he felt conscious, with her
friendship and kindest thoughts. He was miserable in the idea that he
could not further serve her. He revolved a thousand plans in his mind,
tending to her advantage. In fancy he entered the solitude of her
meditations, and tried to divine what her sorrows or desires were, that
he might minister to their solace or accomplishment. Their previous
intercourse had been very unreserved, and though Cornelia spoke but
distantly and coldly of Lodore, she frequently mentioned her child, and
lamented, with much emotion, the deprivation of all those joys which
maternal love bestows. Often had Saville said, "Why not appeal more
strongly to Lord Lodore? or, if he be inflexible, why calmly endure an
outrage shocking to humanity? The laws of your country may assist you."

"They would not," said Cornelia, "for his reply would be so fraught with
seeming justice, that the blame would fall back on me. He asks but the
trivial sacrifice of my duty to my mother--my poor mother! who, since I
was born, has lived with me and for me, and who has no existence except
through me. I am to tear away, and to trample upon the first of human
ties, to render myself worthy of the guardianship of my child! I cannot
do it--I should hold myself a parricide. Do not let us talk more of
these things; endurance is the fate of woman, and if I have more than my
share, let us hope that some other poor creature, less able to bear, has
her portion lightened in consequence. I should be glad if once indeed I
were permitted to see my cherub girl, though it were only while she
slept; but an ocean rolls between us, and patience must be my
comforter."

The soft sweetness of her look and voice, the angelic grace that
animated every tone and glance, rendered these maternal complaints
mournful, yet enchanting music to the ear of Saville. He could have
listened for ever. But when exiled from her, they assumed another form. He
began to think whether it were not possible to convince Lord Lodore of the
inexcusable cruelty of his conduct; and again and again, he imaged the
exultation of heart he should feel, if he could succeed in placing her
lost babe in the mother's arms.

Saville was the frankest of human beings. Finding his cousin Edward on a
visit at Maristow castle, he imparted his project to him, of making a
voyage to America, seeking out Lord Lodore, and using every argument and
persuasion to induce him to restore her daughter to his wife. Villiers
was startled at the mention of this chivalrous intent. What could have
rouzed the studious Horace to such sudden energy? By one of those
strange caprices of the human mind, which bring forth discord instead of
harmony, Edward had never liked Lady Lodore--he held her to be false and
dangerous. Circumstances had brought him more in contact with her mother
than herself, and the two were associated and confounded in his mind,
till he heard Lady Santerre's falsetto voice in the sweet one of
Cornelia, and saw her deceitful vulgar devices in the engaging manners
of her daughter. He was struck with horror when he discovered that
Saville loved, nay, idolized this beauteous piece of mischief, as he
would have named her. He saw madness and folly in his Quixotic
expedition, and argued against it with all his might. It would not do;
Horatio was resolved to dedicate himself to the happiness of her he
loved; and since this must be done in absence and distance, what better
plan than to restore to her the precious treasure of which she had been
robbed?

Saville resolved to cross the Atlantic, and, though opposed to his
scheme, Villiers offered to accompany him. A voyage to America was but a
trip to an active and unoccupied young man; the society of his cousin
would render the journey delightful; he preferred it at all times to the
commoner pleasures of life, and besides, on this occasion, he was
animated with the hope of being useful to him. There was nothing
effeminate in Saville. His energy of purpose and depth of thought
forbade the idea. Still there was something that appeared to require
kindness and support. His delicate health, of which he took no care,
demanded feminine attentions; his careless reliance upon the uprightness
of others, and total self-oblivion, often hurried him to the brink of
dangers; and though fearlessness and integrity were at hand to extricate
him, Edward, who knew his keen sensibility and repressed quickness of
temper, was not without fear, that on so delicate a mission his ardent
feelings might carry him beyond the mark, and that, in endeavouring to
serve a woman whom he loved with enthusiastic adoration, he might rouze
the angry passions of her husband.

With such feelings the cousins crossed the Atlantic and arrived at New
York. Thence they proceeded to the west of America, and passing and his
daughter on the road without knowing it, arrived at the Illinois after
their departure. They were astonished to find that Mr. Fitzhenry, as he
was named to them, had broken up his establishment, sold his farm, and
departed with the intention of returning to Europe. What this change
might portend they could not guess. Whether it were the result of any
communication with Lady Lodore--whether a reconciliation was under
discussion, or whether it were occasioned by caprice merely they could
not tell; at any rate, it seemed to put an end to Saville's mediation.
If Lodore returned to England, it was probable that Cornelia would
herself make an exertion to have her child restored to her. Whether he
could be of any use was problematical, but untimely interference was to
be deprecated; events must be left to take their own course: Saville was
scarcely himself aware how glad he was to escape any kind of intercourse
with the husband of Cornelia.

This feeling, however unacknowledged, became paramount with him. Now that
Lodore was about to leave America, he wished to linger in it; he planned a
long tour through the various states, he studied their laws and customs,
he endeavoured to form a just estimate of the institutions of the New
World, and their influence on those governed by them.

Edward had little sympathy in these pursuits; he was eager to return to
London, and felt more inclined to take his gun and shoot in the forests,
than to mingle in the society of the various towns. This difference of
taste caused the cousins at various times to separate. Saville was at
Washington when Villiers made a journey to the borders of Canada, to the
falls of the Niagara, and returned by New York; a portion of the United
States which his cousin avoided visiting, until Lodore should have quitted
it.

Thus it was that a strange combination of circumstances brought Villiers
into contact with this unfortunate nobleman, and made him a witness of
and a participator in the closing scene of his disastrous and wasted
life. Villiers did not sympathize in his cousin's admiration of
Cornelia, and was easily won to take a deep interest in the fortunes of her
husband. The very aspect of Lodore commanded attention; his voice entered
the soul: ill-starred, and struck by calamity, he rose majestically from
the ruin around him, and seemed to defy fate. The first thought that
struck Villiers was, how could Lady Lodore desert such a man; how
pitifully degraded must she be, who preferred the throng of fools to the
society of so matchless a being! The gallantry with which he rushed to
his fate, his exultation in the prospect of redeeming his honour, his
melting tenderness towards his daughter, filled Villiers with respect
and compassion. It was all over now. Lodore was dead: his passions, his
wrongs, his errors slept with him in the grave. He had departed from the
busy stage, never to be forgotten--yet to be seen no more.

Lodore was dead, and Cornelia was free. Her husband had alluded to the
gladness with which she would welcome liberty; and Villiers knew that there
was another, also, whose heart would rejoice, and open itself at once to
the charming visitation of permitted love. Villiers sighed to think that
Saville would marry the beautiful widow; but he did not doubt that this
event would take place.

Having seen that Ethel was in kind hands, and learnt the satisfactory
arrangements made for her return to England, he hastened to join his
cousin, and to convey the astounding intelligence. Saville's generous
disposition prevented exultation, and subdued joy. Still the prospect of
future happiness became familiar to him, shadowed only by the fear of
not obtaining the affections of her he so fervently loved. For, strange
to say, Saville was diffident to a fault: he could not imagine any
qualities in himself to attract a beautiful and fashionable woman. His
hopes were slight; his thoughts timid: the pain of eternal division was
replaced by the gentler anxieties of love; and he returned to England,
scarcely daring to expect that crown to his desires, which seemed too
high an honour, too dear a blessing, for earthly love to merit.




CHAPTER IV


Ma la fede degli Amanti
È come l'Araba fenice;
Che vi sia, ciaschun' lo dice.
Ma dove sia, nessun lo sa.

METASTASIO.


Meanwhile Lady Lodore had been enduring the worst miseries of ill-fated
love. The illness of Lady Santerre, preceding her death, had demanded all
her time; and she nursed her with exemplary patience and kindness. During
her midnight watchings and solitary days, she had full time to feel how
deep a wound her heart had received. The figure and countenance of her
absent friend haunted her in spite of every effort; and when death
hovered over the pillow of her mother, she clung, with mad desperation,
to the thought, that there was still one, when this parent should be
gone, to love her, even though she never saw him more.

Lady Santerre died. After the first burst of natural grief, Cornelia
began to reflect that Lord Lodore might now imagine that every obstacle to
their reconciliation was removed. She had looked upon her husband as her
enemy and injurer; she had regarded him with indignation and fear;--but
now she hated him. Strong aversion had sprung up, during the struggles
of passion, in her bosom. She hated him as the eternal barrier between
her and one who loved her with rare disinterestedness. The human heart
must desire happiness;--in spite of every effort at resignation, it must
aspire to the fulfilment of its wish. Lord Lodore was the cause why she
was cut off from it for ever. He had foreseen that this feeling, this
combat, this misery, would be her doom, in the deserted situation she
chose for herself: she had laughed his fears to scorn. Now she abhorred
him the more for having divined her destiny. While she banished the
pleasant thoughts of love, she indulged in the poisoned ones of hate;
and while she resisted each softer emotion as a crime, she opened her
heart to the bitterest resentment, as a permitted solace; nor was she
aware that thus she redoubled all her woes. It was under the influence
of these feelings, that she had written to Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry that
harsh, decided letter, which Lodore received at New York. The
intelligence of his violent death came as an answer to her expressions
of implacable resentment. A pang of remorse stung her, when she thought
how she had emptied the vials of her wrath on a head which had so soon
after been laid low for ever.

The double loss of husband and mother caused Lady Lodore to seclude
herself, not in absolute solitude, but in the agreeable retreat of friendly
society. She was residing near Brighton, when Saville returned from
America, and, with a heart beating high with its own desires, again
beheld the mistress of his affections. His delicate nature caused him to
respect the weeds she wore, even though they might be termed a mockery:
they were the type of her freedom and his hopes; yet, as the tokens of
death, they were to be respected. He saw her more beautiful than ever,
more courted, more waited on; and he half despaired. How could he, the
abstracted student, the man of dreams, the sensitive and timid invalid,
ensnare the fancy of one formed to adorn the circles of wealth and
fashion?

Thus it was that Saville and Cornelia were further off than ever, when
they imagined themselves most near. Neither of them could afterwards
comprehend what divided them; or why, when each would have died for the
other's sake, cobweb barriers should have proved inextricable; and
wherefore, after weathering every more stormy peril, they should perish
beneath the influence of a summer breeze.

The pride of Cornelia's heart, hid by the artificial courtesies of
society, was a sentiment resolved, confirmed, active, and far beyond her
own controul. The smallest opposition appeared rebellion to her majesty
of will; while her own caprices, her own desires, were sacred decrees.
She was too haughty to admit of discussion--too firmly intrenched in a
sense of what was due to her, not to start indignantly from
remonstrance. It is true, all this was but a painted veil. She was
tremblingly alive to censure, and wholly devoted to the object of her
attachment; but Saville was unable to understand these contradictions.
His modesty led him to believe, that he, of all men, was least
calculated to excite love in a woman's bosom. He saw in Cornelia a
beautiful creation, to admire and adore; but he was slow to perceive the
tenderness of soul, which her disposition made her anxious to conceal,
and he was conscious of no qualities in himself that could entitle him
to a place in her affections. Except that he loved her, what merit had
he? And the interests of his affection he was willing to sacrifice at
the altar of her wishes, though his life should be the oblation
necessary to insure their accomplishment.

This is not the description of true love on either side; for, to be
perfect, that sentiment ought to exist through the entireness of mutual
sympathy and trust: but not the less did their passionate attachment
engross the minds of both. All might have been well, indeed, had the
lovers been left to themselves; but friends and relations interfered to
mar and to destroy. The sisters of Saville accused Lady Lodore of
encouraging, and intending to marry, the Marquess of C--. Saville instantly
resolved to be no obstacle in the way of her ambition. Cornelia was fired
with treble indignation to perceive that he at once conceded the place to
his rival. One word or look of gentleness would have changed this; but she
resolved to vanquish by other arms, and to force him to show some
outward sign of jealousy and resentment. Saville had a natural dignity
of mind, founded on simplicity of heart and directness of purpose.
Cornelia knew that he loved her;--on that his claim rested: all that
might be done to embellish and elevate her existence, he would study to
achieve; but he could not enter into, nor understand, the puerile
fancies of a spoiled Beauty: and while she was exerting all her powers,
and succeeded in fascinating a crowd of flatterers, she saw Saville
apart, abstracted from such vanities, pursuing a silent course; ready to
approach her when her attention was disengaged, but at no time making
one among her ostentatious admirers.

There was no moment of her life in which Cornelia did not fully
appreciate her lover's value, and her own good fortune in having
inspired him with a serious and faithful attachment. But she imagined
that this must be known and acknowledged; and that to ask any
demonstration of gratitude, was ungenerous and tyrannical. An untaught
girl could not have acted with more levity and wilfulness. It was worse
when she found that she was accused of encouraging a wealthier and more
illustrious rival. She disdained to exculpate herself from the charge of
such low ambition, but rather furnished new grounds for accusation; and,
in the arrogance of conscious power, smiled at the pettiness of the
attempts made to destroy her influence. Proud in the belief that she
could in an instant dispel the clouds she had conjured athwart her
heaven, she cared not how ominously the thunder muttered, nor how dark
and portentous lowered the threatening storm. It came when she least
expected it: convinced of the fallacy of his confidence, made miserable
by her caprices, agonized by the idea that he only lingered to add
another trophy to his rival's triumph, Saville, who was always impetuous
and precipitate, suddenly quitted England.

This was a severe blow at first; but soon Cornelia smiled at it. He
would return--he must. The sincerity of their mutual preference would
overcome the petty obstacles of time and distance. She never felt more
sure of his devotion than now; and she looked so happy, and spoke so
gaily, that those who were more ready to discern indifference, than
love, in her sentiments, assured the absent Saville, that Lady Lodore
rejoiced at his absence, as having shaken off a burthen, and got rid of an
impediment, which, in spite of herself, was a clog to her brilliant
career. The trusting love that painted her face in smiles was a traitor
to itself and while she rose each day in the belief that the one was
near at hand which would bring her lover before her, dearer and more
attached than ever, she was in reality at work in defacing the whole web
of life, and substituting dark, blank, and sad disappointment, for the
images of light and joy with which her fancy painted it.

Saville had been gone five months. It was strange that he did not
return; and she began to ponder upon how she must unbend, and what
demonstration she must make, to attract him again to her side. The
Marquess of C--was dismissed; and she visited the daughters of Lord
Maristow, to learn what latest news they had received of their brother.
"Do you know, Lady Lodore," said Sophia Saville, "that this is Horatio's
wedding-day? It is too true: we regret it, because he weds a
foreigner--but there is no help now. He is married."

Had sudden disease seized on the frame-work of her body, and dissolved
and scattered with poisonous influence and unutterable pains, the atoms
that composed it, Lady Lodore would have been less agonized, less
terrified. A thousand daggers were at once planted in her bosom. Saville
was false! married! divided from her for ever! She was stunned:--scarcely
understanding the meaning of the phrases addressed to her, and, unable
to conceal her perturbation, she replied at random, and hastened to
shorten her visit.

But no interval of doubt or hope was afforded. The words she had heard
were concise, true to their meaning and all-sufficing. Her heart died
within her. What had she done? Was she the cause? She longed to learn
all the circumstances that led to this hasty marriage, and whether
inconstancy or resentment had impelled him to the fatal act. Yet
wherefore ask these things? It was over; the scene was closed. It were
little worth to analyze the poison she had imbibed, since she was past
all mortal cure.

Her first resolve was to forget--never, never to think of the false one
more. But her thoughts never wandered from his image, and she was
eternally busied in retrospection and conjecture. She was tempted at one
time to disbelieve the intelligence, and to consider it as a piece of
malice on the part of Miss Saville; then the common newspaper told her,
that at the Ambassador's house at Naples, the Honourable Horatio Saville
had married Clorinda, daughter of the Principe Villamarina, a Neapolitan
nobleman of the highest rank.

It was true therefore--and how was it true? Did he love his bride? why
else marry?--had he forgotten his tenderness towards her? Alas! it
needed not forgetting; it was a portion of past time, fleeting as time
itself; it had been borne away with the hours as they passed, and
remembered as a thing which had been, and was no more. The reveries of
love which for months had formed all her occupation, were a blank; or
rather to be replaced by the agonies of despair. Her native haughtiness
forsook her. She was alone and desolate--hedged in on all sides by
insuperable barriers, which shut out every glimpse of hope. She was
humbled in her own eyes, through her want of success, and heartily
despised herself, and all her caprices and vanities, which had led her
to this desart, and then left her to pine. She detested her position in
society, her mechanism of being, and every circumstance, self-inherent,
or adventitious, that attended her existence. All seemed to her sick
fancy so constructed as to ensure disgrace, desertion, and contempt. She
lay down each night feeling as if she could never endure to raise her
head on the morrow.

The unkindness and cruelty of her lover's conduct next presented
themselves to her contemplation. She had suffered much during the past
years, more than she had ever acknowledged, even to herself; she had
suffered of regret and sorrow, while she brooded over her solitary
position, and the privation of every object on whom she might bestow
affection. She had had nothing to hope. Saville had changed all this; he
had banished her cares, and implanted hope in her heart. Now again his
voice recalled the evils, his hand crushed the new-born expectation of
happiness. He was the cause of every ill; and the adversity which she
had endured proudly and with fortitude while it seemed the work of fate,
grew more bitter and heavy when she felt that it arose through the
agency of one, whose kind affection and guardianship she had fondly
believed would hereafter prove a blessing sent as from Heaven itself, be
to the star of her life.

This fit passed off; with struggles and relapses she wore down the first
gush of sorrow, and her disposition again assumed force over her. She
had found it difficult to persuade herself, in spite of facts, that she
was not loved; but it was easy, once convinced of the infidelity of her
lover, to regard him with indifference. She now regretted lost
happiness--but Saville was no longer regretted. She wept over the
vanished forms of delight, lately so dear to her; but she remembered
that he who had called them into life had driven them away; and she
smiled in proud scorn of his fleeting and unworthy passion. It was not
to this love that she had made so tender and lavish a return. She had
loved his constancy, his devotion, his generous solicitude for her
welfare--for the happiness which she bestowed on him, and for the
sympathy that so dearly united them. These were fled; and it were vain
to consecrate herself to an empty and deformed mockery of so beautiful a
truth.

Then she tried to hate him--to despise and to lessen him in her own
estimation. The attempt recoiled on herself. The recollection of his
worth stole across her memory, to frustrate her vain endeavours: his
voice haunted--his expressive eyes beamed on her. It were better to
forget. Indifference was her only refuge, and to attain this she must
wholly banish his image from her mind. Cornelia was possessed of
wonderful firmness of purpose. It had carried her on so long unharmed,
and now that danger was at hand, it served effectually to defend her.
She rose calm and free, above unmerited disaster. She grew proud of the
power she found that she possessed of conquering the most tyrannical of
passions. Peace entered her soul, and she hailed it as a blessing.

The clause in her husband's will which deprived her of the guardianship
of her daughter had been forgotten during this crisis. Before, under the
supposition that she should marry, she had deferred taking any step to
claim her. The idea of a struggle to be made, unassisted, unadvised, and
unshielded, was terrible. She had not courage to encounter all the
annoyances that might ensue. To get rid for a time of the necessity of
action and reflection, she went abroad. She changed the scene--she
travelled from place to place. She gave herself up in the solitude of
continental journies to the whole force of contending passions; now
overcome by despair, and again repressing regret, asserting to herself
the lofty pride of her nature.

By degrees she recovered a healthier tone of mind--a distant and faint,
yet genuine sense of duty dawned upon her; and she began to think on
what her future existence was to depend, and how she could best secure
some portion of happiness. Her heart once again warmed towards the image
of her daughter--and she felt that in watching the development of her
mind, and leading her to love and depend on her, a new interest and real
pleasure might spring up in life. She reproached herself for having so
long, by silence and passive submission, given scope to the belief that
she was willing to be a party against herself, in the injustice of Lodore;
and she returned to England with the intention of instantly enforcing her
rights over her child, and taking to her bosom and to her fondest care
the little being, whose affection and gratitude was to paint her future
life with smiles.

She called to mind Lady Santerre's worldly maxims, and her own
experience. She knew that the first step to success is the appearance of
prosperity and power. To command the good wishes and aid of her friends
she must appear independent of them. She was earnest therefore to hide
the wounds her heart had received, and the real loathing with which she
regarded all things. She arrayed herself in smiles, and banished, far
below into the invisible recesses of her bosom, the contempt and disgust
with which she viewed the scene around her.

She returned to England. She appeared at the height of the season, in
the midst of society, as beautiful, as charming, as happy in look and
manner, as in her days of light-hearted enjoyment. She paused yet a
moment longer, to reflect on what step she had better take on first
enforcing her claim; but her mind was full of its intention, and set
upon the fulfilment.

At this time, but a few days after her arrival in London, she went to
the opera. She heard the name of Fitzhenry called in the lobby--she saw
and recognized Mrs. Elizabeth--the venerable sister Bessy, so little
altered, that time might be said to have touched, but not trenched her
homely kindly face. With her, in attendance on her, she beheld Horatio
Saville's favourite cousin--the gay and fashionable Edward Villiers. It
was strange; her curiosity was strongly excited. It had not long to
languish: the next morning Villiers called, and was readily admitted.




CHAPTER V


And as good lost is seld or never found.

SHAKSPEARE.


Lady Lodore and Villiers met for the first time since Horatio Saville's
marriage. Neither were exactly aware of what the other knew or thought.
Cornelia was ignorant how far her attachment to his cousin was known to
him; whether he shared the general belief in her worldly coquetry, or
what part he might have had in occasioning their unhappy separation. She
could not indeed see him without emotion. He had been Lodore's second,
and received the last dying breath of him who had, in her brightest
youth, selected her from the world, to share his fortunes. Those days
were long past; yet as she grew older, disappointed, and devoid of
pleasurable interest in the present, she often turned her thoughts
backward, and wondered at the part she had acted.

Similar feelings were in Edward's mind. He was prejudiced against her in
every way. He despised her worldly calculations, as reported to him, and
rejoiced in their failure. He believed these reports, and despised her;
yet he could not see her without being moved at once with admiration and
pity. The moon-lit hill, and tragic scene, in which he had played his
part, came vividly before his eyes. He had been struck by the nobleness
of Lodore's appearance--the sensibility that sat on his countenance--his
gentle, yet dignified manners. Ethel's idolatry of her father had
confirmed the favourable prepossession. He could not help
compassionating Cornelia for the loss of her husband, forgetting, for
the moment, their separation. Then again recurred to him the eloquent
appeals of Saville; his eulogiums; his fervent, reverential affection.
She had lost him also. Could she hold up her head after such miserable
events? The evidence of the senses, and the ideas of our own minds, are
more forcibly present, than any notion we can form of the feelings of
others. In spite, therefore, of his belief in her heartlessness,
Villiers had pictured Cornelia attired in dismal weeds, the victim of
grief. He saw her, beaming in beauty, at the opera;--he now beheld her,
radiant in sweet smiles, in her own home. Nothing touched--nothing
harmed her; and the glossy surface, he doubted not, imaged well the
insensible, unimpressive soul within.

Lady Lodore would have despised herself for ever had she betrayed the
tremor that shook her frame when Villiers entered. Her pride of sex was in
arms to enable her to convince him, that no regret, no pining, shadowed her
days. The reality was abhorrent, and should never be confessed. Thus
then they met--each with a whole epic of woe and death alive in their
memory; but both wearing the outward appearance of frivolity and
thoughtlessness. He saw her as lovely as ever, and as kind. Her softest
and sweetest welcome was extended to him. It was this frequent show of
frank cordiality which gained her "golden opinions" from the many. Her
haughtiness was all of the mind;--a desire to please, and constant
association with others, had smoothed the surface, and painted it in the
colours most agreeable to every eye.

They addressed each other as if they had met but the day before. At
first, a few questions and answers passed,--as to where she had been on
the continent, how she liked Baden, &c.;--and then Lady Lodore
said--"Although I have not seen her for several years, I instantly
recognized a relative of mine with you yesterday evening. Does Miss
Fitzhenry make any stay in town?"

The idea of Ethel was uppermost in Villiers's mind, and struck by the
manner in which the woman of fashion spoke of her daughter, he replied,
"During the season, I believe; I scarcely know. Miss Fitzhenry came up
for her health; that consideration, I suppose, will regulate her
movements."

"She looked very well last night--perhaps she intends to remain till she
gets ill, and country air is ordered?" observed Lady Lodore.

"That were nothing new at least," replied Villiers, trying to hide the
disgust he felt at her mode of speaking; "the young and blooming too
often protract their first season, till the roses are exchanged for
lilies."

"If Miss Fitzhenry's roses still bloom," said the lady, "they must be
perennial ones; they have surely grown more fit for a herbal than a
vase."

Villiers now perceived his mistake, and replied, "You are speaking of
Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry, as the good lady styles herself--I spoke
of--her niece--"

"Has Ethel been ill?" Lady Lodore's hurried question, and the
use of the christian name, as most familiar to her thoughts, brought
home to Villiers's heart the feeling of their near relationship. There
was something more than grating; it was deeply painful to speak to a
mother of a child who had been torn from her--who did not know--who had
even been taught to hate her. He wished himself a hundred miles off, but
there was no help, he must reply. "You might have seen last night that
she is perfectly recovered."

Lady Lodore's imagination refused to image her child in the tall, elegant,
full-formed girl she had seen, and she said, "Was Ethel with you? I did
not see her--probably she went home before the opera was over, and I
only perceived your party in the crush-room--you appear already
intimate."

"It is impossible to see Miss Fitzhenry and not to wish to be intimate,"
replied Villiers with his usual frankness. "I, at least, cannot help
being deeply interested in every thing that relates to her."

"You are very good to take concern in my little girl. I should have
imagined that you were too young yourself to like children."

"Children!" repeated Villiers, much amazed; "Miss Fitzhenry!--she is not
a child."

Lady Lodore scarcely heard him; a sudden pang had shot across her heart, to
think how strangers--how every one might draw near her daughter, and be
interested for her, while she could not, without making herself the tale
of the town, the subject, through the medium of news-papers, for every
gossip's tea-table in England--where her sentiments would be scanned,
and her conduct criticized--and this through the revengeful feelings of
her husband, prolonged beyond the grave. Tears had been gathering in her
eyes during the last moments; she turned her head to hide them, and a
quick shower fell on her silken dress. Quite ashamed of this
self-betrayal, she exerted herself to overcome her emotion. Villiers
felt awkwardly situated; his first impulse had been to rise to take her
hand, to soothe her; but before he could do more than the first of these
acts, as Lady Lodore fancied for the purpose of taking his leave, she
said, "It is foolish to feel as I do; yet perhaps more foolish to
attempt to conceal from one, as well acquainted as you are with every
thing, that I do feel pained at the unnatural separation between me and
Ethel, especially when I think of the publicity I must incur by
asserting a mother's claims. I am ashamed of intruding this subject on
you; but she is no longer the baby cherub I could cradle in my arms, and
you have seen her lately, and can tell me whether she has been well
brought up--whether she seems tractable--if she promises to be pretty?"

"Did you not think her lovely?" cried Villiers with animation; "you saw
her last night, taking my arm."

"Ethel!" cried the lady. "Could that be Ethel? True, she is now
sixteen--I had indeed forgot"--her cheeks became suffused with a deep
blush as she remembered all the solicisms she had been committing. "She
is sixteen," she continued, "and a woman--while I fancied a little girl
in a white frock and blue sash: this alters every thing. We have been
indeed divided, and must now remain so for evermore. I will not injure
her, at her age, by making her the public talk--besides, many, many
other considerations would render me fearful of making myself
responsible for her future destiny."

"At least," said Villiers, "she ought to wait on you."

"That were beyond Lord Lodore's bond," said the lady; "and why should she
wait on me? Were she impelled by affection, it were well. But this is
talking very simply--we could only be acquaintance, and I would rather be
nothing. I confess, that I repined bitterly, that I was not permitted to
have my little girl, as I termed her, for my plaything and
companion--but my ideas are now changed: a dear little tractable child
would have been delightful--but she is a woman, with a will of her
own--prejudiced against me--brought up in that vulgar America, with all
kinds of strange notions and ways. Lord Lodore was quite right, I
believe--he fashioned her for himself and--Bessy. The worst thing that
can happen to a girl, is to have her prejudices and principles unhinged;
no new ones can flourish like those that have grown with her growth; and
mine, I fear, would differ greatly from those in which she has been
educated. A few years hence, she may feel the want of a friend, who
understands the world, and who could guide her prudently through its
intricacies; then she shall find that friend in me. Now, I feel
convinced that I should do more harm than good."

A loud knock at the street door interrupted the conversation. "One thing
only I cannot endure," said the lady hastily, "to present a domestic
tragedy or farce to the Opera House--we must not meet in public. I shall
shut up my house and return to Paris."

Mere written words express little. Lady Lodore's expressions were nothing;
but her countenance denoted a change of feeling, a violence of emotion, of
which Villiers hardly believed her capable; but before he could reply,
the servant threw open the door, and her brow immediately clearing,
serenity descended on her face. With her blandest smile she extended her
hand to her new visitor. Villiers was too much discomposed to imitate
her, so with a silent salutation he departed, and cantered round the
park to collect his thoughts before he called in Seymour-street.

The ladies there were not less agitated than Lady Lodore, and displayed
their feelings with the artlessness of recluses. The first words that Mrs.
Elizabeth had addressed to her niece, at the breakfast table, were an
awkwardly expressed intimation, that she meant instantly to return to
Longfield. Ethel looked up with a face of alarm: her aunt continued; "I
do not want to speak ill of Lady Lodore, my dear--God forgive her--that
is all I can say. What your dear father thought of her, his last will
testifies. I suppose you do not mean to disobey him."

"His slightest word was ever a law with me," said Ethel; "and now that
he is gone, I would observe his injunctions more religiously than ever.
But--"

"Then, my dear, there is but one thing to be done: Lady Lodore will
assuredly force herself upon us, meet us at every turn, oblige you to pay
her your duty; nor could you avoid it. No, my dear Ethel, there is but one
escape--your health, thank God, is restored, and Longfield is now in all
its beauty; we will return to-morrow."

Ethel did not reply; she looked very disconsolate--she did not know what
to say; at last, "Mr. Villiers will think it so odd," dropped from her
lips.

"Mr. Villiers is nothing to us, my dear," said aunt Bessy--"not the most
distant relation; he is an agreeable, good-hearted young gentleman--but
there are so many in the world."

Ethel left her breakfast untasted and went out of the room: she felt
that she could no longer restrain her tears. "My father!" she exclaimed,
while a passionate burst of weeping choked her utterance, "my only
friend! why, why did you leave me? Why, most cruel, desert your poor
orphan child? Gracious God! to what am I reserved! I must not see my
mother--a name so dear, so sweet, is for me a curse and a misery! O my
father, why did you desert me!"

Her calm reflections were not less bitter; she did not suffer her
thoughts to wander to Villiers, or rather the loss of her father was
still so much the first grief of her heart, that on any new sorrow, it
was to this she recurred with agony. The form of her youthful mother
also flitted before her; and she asked herself, "Can she be so wicked?"
Lord Lodore had never uttered her name; it was not until his death had put
the fatal seal on all things, that she heard a garbled exaggerated
statement from her aunt, over whose benevolent features a kind of sacred
horror mantled, whenever she was mentioned. The will of Lord Lodore, and
the stern injunction it contained, that the mother and daughter should
never meet, satisfied Ethel of the truth of all that her aunt said; so that
educated to obedience and deep reverence for the only parent she had
ever known, she recoiled with terror from transgressing his commands,
and holding communication with the cause of all his ills. Still it was
hard, and very, very sad; nor did she cease from lamenting her fate,
till Villiers's horse was heard in the street, and his knock at the
door; then she tried to compose herself. "He will surely come to us at
Longfield," she thought; "Longfield will be so very stupid after
London."

After London! Poor Ethel! she had lived in London as in a desert; but
lately it had appeared to her a city of bliss, and all places else the
abode of gloom and melancholy. Villiers was shocked at the appearance of
sorrow which shadowed her face; and, for a moment, thought that the
rencounter with her mother was the sole occasion of the tears, whose
traces he plainly discerned. His address was full of sympathetic
kindness;--but when she said, "We return to-morrow to Essex--will you
come to see us at Longfield?"--his soothing tones were exchanged for
those of surprise and vexation.

"Longfield!--impossible! Why?"

"My aunt has determined on it. She thinks me recovered; and so, indeed,
I am."

"But are you to be entombed at Longfield, except when dying? If so, do,
pray, be ill again directly! But this must not be. Dear Mrs. Fitzhenry,"
he continued, as she came in, "I will not hear of your going to
Longfield. Look; the very idea has already thrown Miss Fitzhenry into a
consumption;--you will kill her. Indeed you must not think of it."

"We shall all die, if we stay in town," said Mrs. Elizabeth, with
perplexity at her niece's evident suffering.

"Then why stay in town?" asked Villiers.

"You just now said, that we ought not to return to Longfield," answered
the lady; "and I am sure if Ethel is to look so ill and wretched, I
don't know what I am to do."

"But there are many places in the world besides either London or
Longfield. You were charmed with Richmond the other day: there are
plenty of houses to be had there; nothing can be prettier or more
quiet."

"Well, I don't know," said Aunt Bessy, "I never thought of that, to be
sure; and I have business which makes our going to Longfield very
inconvenient. I expect Mr. Humphries, our solicitor, next week; and I
have not seen him yet. You really think, Mr. Villiers, that we could get
a house to suit us at Richmond?"

"Let us drive there to-day," said Villiers; "we can dine at the Star and
Garter. You can go in the britzska--I on horseback. The days are long:
we can see every thing; and take your house at once."

This plan sounded very romantic and wild to the sober spinster; but
Ethel's face, lighted up with vivid pleasure, said more in its favour,
than what the good lady called prudence could allege against it. "Silly
people you women are," said Villiers: "you can do nothing by yourselves:
and are always running against posts, unless guided by others. This will
make every thing easy--dispel every difficulty." His thoughts recurred
to Lady Lodore, and her intended journey to Paris, as he said this: and
again they flew to a charming little villa on the river's side, whither he
could ride every day, and find Ethel among her flowers, alone and happy.

The excursion of this morning was prosperous. The day was warm yet
fresh; and as they quitted town, and got surrounded by fields, and
hedges, and trees, nature reassumed her rights, and awakened transport
in Ethel's heart. The boyish spirits of Villiers communicated themselves
to her; and Mrs. Elizabeth smiled, also, with the most exquisite
complacency. A few inquiries conducted them to a pretty rural box,
surrounded by a small, but well laid-out shrubbery; and this they
engaged. The dinner at the inn, the twilight walk in its garden;--the
fair prospect of the rich and cultivated country, with its silvery,
meandering river at their feet; and the aspect of the cloudless heavens,
where one or two stars silently struggled into sight amidst the pathless
wastes of sky, were objects most beautiful to look on, and prodigal of
the sweetest emotions. The wide, dark lake, the endless forests, and
distant mountains, of the Illinois, were not here; but night bestowed
that appearance of solitude, which habit rendered dear to Ethel; and
imagination could transform wooded parks and well-trimmed meadows into
bowery seclusions, sacred from the foot of man, and fresh fields,
untouched by his hand.

A few days found Ethel and her aunt installed at their little villa, and
delighted to be away from London. Education made loneliness congenial to
both: they might seek transient amusements in towns, or visit them for
business; but happiness, the agreeable tenor of unvaried daily life, was
to be found in the quiet of the country only;--and Richmond was the
country to them; for, cut off from all habits of intercourse with their
species, they had but to find trees and meadows near them, at once to
feel transported, from the thick of human life, into the most noiseless
solitude.

Ethel was very happy. She rose in the morning with a glad and grateful
heart, and gazed from her chamber window, watching the early sunbeams as
they crept over the various parts of the landscape, visiting with light
and warmth each open field or embowered nook. Her bosom overflowed with
the kindest feelings, and her charmed senses answered the tremulous
beating of her pure heart, bidding it enjoy. How beautiful did earth
appear to her! There was a delight and a sympathy in the very action of
the shadows, as they pranked the sunshiny ground with their dark and
fluctuating forms. The leafy boughs of the tall trees waved gracefully,
and each wind of heaven wafted a thousand sweets. A magic spell of
beauty and bliss held in one bright chain the whole harmonious universe;
and the soul of the enchantment was love--simple, girlish,
unacknowledged love;--the love of the young, feminine heart, which feels
itself placed, all bleakly and dangerously, in a world, scarce formed to
be its home, and which plumes itself with Love to fly to the covert and
natural shelter of another's protecting care.

Ethel did not know--did not fancy--that she was in love; nor did any of
the throes of passion disturb the serenity of her mind. She only felt
that she was very, very happy; and that Villiers was the kindest of
human beings. She did not give herself up to idleness and reverie. The
first law of her education had been to be constantly employed. Her
studies were various: they, perhaps, did not sufficiently tend to
invigorate her understanding, but they sufficed to prevent every
incursion of listlessness. Meanwhile, during each, the thought of
Villiers strayed through her mind, like a heavenly visitant, to gild all
things with sunny delight. Some time, during the day, he was nearly sure
to come; or, at least, she was certain of seeing him on the morrow; and
when he came, their boatings and their rides were prolonged; while each
moment added to the strength of the ties that bound her to him. She
relied on his friendship; and his society was as necessary to her life,
as the air she breathed. She so implicitly trusted to his truth, that
she was unaware that she trusted at all--never making a doubt about it.
That chance, or time, should injure or break off the tie, was a
possibility that never suggested itself to her mind. As the silver
Thames traversed in silence and beauty the landscape at her feet, so did
love flow through her soul in one even and unruffled stream--the great
law and emperor of her thoughts; yet more felt from its influence, than
from any direct exertion of its power. It was the result and the type of
her sensibility, of her constancy, of the gentle, yet lively sympathy,
it was her nature to bestow, with guileless confidence. Those around her
might be ignorant that her soul was imbued with it, because, being a
part of her soul, there was small outward demonstration. None, indeed,
near her thought any thing about it: Aunt Bessy was a tyro in such
matters; and Villiers--he had resolved, when he perceived love on her
side, to retreat for ever: till then he might enjoy the dear delight
that her society afforded him.




CHAPTER VI


Alas! he knows
The laws of Spain appoint me for his heir;
That all must come to me, if I outlive him,
Which sure I must do, by the course of nature.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.


Edward Villiers was the only child of a man of considerable fortune, who
had early in life become a widower. From the period of this event,
Colonel Villiers (for his youth had been passed in the army, where he
obtained promotion) had led the careless life of a single man. His son's
home was at Maristow Castle, when not at school; and the father seldom
remembered him except as an incumbrance; for his estate was strictly
entailed, so that he could only consider himself possessed of a life
interest in a property, which would devolve, without restriction, on his
more fortunate son.

Edward was brought up in all the magnificence of his uncle's lordly
abode. Luxury and profusion were the elements of the air he breathed. To
be without any desired object that could be purchased, appeared baseness
and lowest penury. He, also, was considered the favoured one of fortune
in the family circle. The elder brother among the Savilles rose above,
but the younger fell infinitely below, the undoubted heir of eight
thousand a year, and one of the most delightful seats in England. He was
brought up to look upon himself as a rich man, and to act as such; and
meanwhile, until his father's death, he had nothing to depend on, except
any allowance he might make him.

Colonel Villiers was a man of fashion, addicted to all the extravagances
and even vices of the times. He set no bounds to his expenses. Gambling
consumed his nights, and his days were spent at horse-races, or any
other occupation that at once excited and impoverished him. His income
was as a drop of water in the mighty stream of his expenditure.
Involvement followed involvement, until he had not a shilling that he
could properly call his own.

Poor Edward heard of these things, but did not mark them. He indulged in
no blameworthy pursuits, nor spent more than beseemed a man in his rank
of life. The idea of debt was familiar to him: every one--even Lord
Maristow--was in debt, far beyond his power of immediate payment. He
followed the universal example, and suffered no inconvenience, while his
wants were obligingly supplied by the fashionable tradesmen. He regarded
the period of his coming of age as a time when he should become
disembarrassed, and enter upon life with ample means, and still more
brilliant prospects.

The day arrived. It was celebrated with splendour at Maristow Castle.
Colonel Villiers was abroad; but Lord Maristow wrote to him to remind
him of this event, which otherwise he might have forgotten. A kind
letter of congratulation was, in consequence, received from him by
Edward; to which was appended a postscript, saying, that on his return,
at the end of a few weeks, he would consult concerning some arrangements
he wished to make with regard to his future income.

His return was deferred; and Edward began to experience some of the
annoyances of debt. Still no real pain was associated with his feelings;
though he looked forward with eagerness to the hour of liberation.
Colonel Villiers came at last. He spoke largely of his intended
generosity, which was shown, meanwhile, by his persuading Edward to join
in a mortgage for the sake of raising an immediate sum. Edward scarcely
knew what he was about. He was delighted to be of service to his father;
and without thought or idea of having made a sacrifice, agreed to all
that was asked of him. He was promised an allowance of six hundred a
year.

The few years that had passed since then were full of painful experience
and bitter initiation. His light and airy spirit was slow to conceive
ill, or to resent wrong. When his annuity remained unpaid, he listened
to his father's excuses with implicit credence, and deplored his
poverty. One day, he received a note from him, written, as usual, in
haste and confusion, but breathing anxiety and regret on his account,
and promising to pay over to him the first money he could obtain. On the
evening of that day, Edward was led by a friend into the gambling room
of a celebrated club. The first man on whom his eyes fell, was his
father, who was risking and losing rouleaus and notes in abundance. At
one moment, while making over a large sum, he suddenly perceived his
son. He grew pale, and then a deep blush spread itself over his
countenance. Edward withdrew. His young heart was pierced to the core.
The consciousness of a father's falsehood and guilt acted on him as the
sudden intelligence of some fatal disaster would have done. He breathed
thick--the objects swam round him--he hurried into the streets--he
traversed them one after the other. It was not this scene alone--this
single act; the veil was withdrawn from a whole series of others
similar; and he became aware that his parent had stepped beyond the line
of mere extravagance; that he had lost honourable feeling; that lies
were common in his mouth; and every other--even his only child--was
sacrificed to his own selfish and bad passions.

Edward never again asked his father for money. The immediate result of
the meeting in the gambling-room, had been his receiving a portion of
what was due to him; but his annuity was always in arrear, and paid so
irregularly, that it became worse than nothing in his eyes; especially,
as the little that he received was immediately paid over to creditors,
and to defray the interest of borrowed money.

He never applied again to Colonel Villiers. He would have considered
himself guilty of a crime, had he forced his father to forge fresh
subterfuges, and to lie to his own son. Brought up in the midst of the
wealthy, he had early imbibed a horror of pecuniary obligation; and this
fastidiousness grew more sensitive and peremptory with each added day of
his life. Yet with all this, he had not learnt to set a right value upon
money; and he squandered whatever he obtained with thoughtless
profusion. He had no friend to whose counsel he could recur. Lord
Maristow railed against Colonel Villiers; and when he heard of Edward's
difficulties, offered to remonstrate and force his brother-in-law to
extricate him: but here ended his assistance, which was earnestly
rejected. Horatio's means were exceedingly limited; but on a word from
his cousin, he eagerly besought him to have recourse to his purse. To
avoid his kindness, and his uncle's interference, Edward became
reserved: he had recourse to Jews and money-lenders; and appeared at
ease, while he was involving himself in countless and still increasing
embarrassments.

Edward was naturally extravagant; or, to speak more correctly, his
education and position implanted and fostered habits of expense and
prodigality, while his careless disposition was unapt to calculate
consequences: his very attempts at economy frequently cost him more than
his most expensive whims. He was not, like his father, a gambler; nor
did he enter into any very reprehensible pleasures: but he had little to
spend, and was thoughtless and confiding; and being always in arrear,
was forced, in a certain way, to continue a system which perpetually led
him further into the maze, and rendered his return impossible. He had no
hope of becoming independent, except through his father's death: Colonel
Villiers, meanwhile, had no idea of dying. He was not fifty years of
age; and considering his own a better life than his son's, involuntarily
speculated on what he should do if he should chance to survive him. He
was a handsome and a fashionable man: he often meditated a second
marriage, if he could render it advantageous; and repined at his
inability to make settlements, which was an insuperable impediment to
his project. Edward's death would overcome this difficulty. Such were
the speculations of father and son; and the portion of filial and
paternal affection which their relative position but too usually
inspires.

Until he was twenty-one, Edward had never spent a thought upon his
scanty resources. Three years had past since then--three brief years,
which had a little taught him of what homely stuff the world is made;
yet care and even reflection had not yet disturbed his repose. Days,
months sped on, and nothing reminded him of his relative wealth or
poverty in a way to annoy him, till he knew Ethel. He had been
interested for her in America--he had seen her, young and lovely,
drowned in grief--sorrowing with the heart's first prodigal sorrow for
her adored father. He had left her, and thought of her no more--except,
as a passing reflection, that in the natural course of things, she was
now to become the pupil of Lady Lodore, and consequently, that her
unsophisticated feelings and affectionate heart would speedily be
tarnished and hardened under her influence. He anticipated meeting her
hereafter in ball-rooms and assemblies, changed into a flirting, giddy,
yet worldly-minded girl, intent upon a good establishment, and a
fashionable partner.

He encountered her under the sober and primitive guardianship of Mrs.
Fitzhenry, unchanged and unharmed. The same radiant innocence beamed
from her face; her sweet voice was still true and heart-reaching in its
tones; her manner mirrored the purity and lustre of a mind incapable of
guile, and adorned with every generous and gentle sentiment. He drew near
her with respect and admiration, and soon no other object showed fair in
his eyes except Ethel. She was the star of the world, and he felt happy
only when the light of her presence shone upon him. Her voice and smile
visited his dreams, and spoke peace and delight to his heart. She was to
him as a jewel (yet sweeter and lovelier than any gem) shut up in a
casket, of which he alone possessed the key--as a pearl, of whose
existence an Indian diver is aware beneath the waves of ocean, deep
buried from every other eye.

There was all in Ethel that could excite and keep alive imaginative and
tender love. In characterizing a race of women, a delightful writer has
described her individually. "She was in her nature a superior being. Her
majestic forehead, her dark, thoughtful eye, assured you that she had
communed with herself. She could bear to be left in solitude--yet what a
look was her's if animated by mirth or love! She was poetical, if not a
poet; and her imagination was high and chivalrous."[1] The elevated tone of
feeling fostered by her father, her worship of his virtues, and the
loneliness of her life in the Illinois, combined to render her
dissimilar to any girl Villiers had ever before known or admired. When
unobserved, he watched her countenance, and marked the varying tracery
of high thoughts and deep emotions pass over it; her dark eye looked out
from itself on vacancy, but read there a meaning only to be discerned by
vivid imagination. And then when that eye, so full of soul, turned on
him, and affection and pleasure at once animated and softened its
glances--when her sweet lips, so delicate in their shape, so balmy and
soft in their repose, were wreathed into a smile--he felt that his whole
being was penetrated with enthusiastic admiration, and that his nature
had bent to a law, from which it could never again be liberated.

That she should mingle with the world--enter into its contaminating
pursuits--be talked of in it with that spirit of depreciation and
impertinence, which is its essence, was odious to him, and he was
overjoyed to have her safe at Richmond--secure from Lady Lodore--shut up
apart from all things, except nature--her unsophisticated aunt, and his own
admiration--a bird of beauty, brooding in its own fair nest,
unendangered by the fowler. These were his feelings; but by degrees
other reflections forced themselves on him; and love which, when it has
knocked and been admitted, _will_ be a tyrant, obliged him to entertain
regrets and fears which agonized him. His hourly aspiration was to make
her his own. Would that dear heart open to receive into its recesses his
image, and thenceforward dedicate itself to him only? Might he become
her lover, guardian, husband--and they tread together the jungle of
life, aiding each other to thread its mazes, and to ward off every
danger that might impend over them.

Bitter worldly considerations came to mar the dainty colours of this
fair picture. He could not conceal from himself the poverty that must
attend him during his father's life. Lord Lodore's singular will reduced
Ethel's property to almost nothing: should he then ally her to his
scanty means and broken fortune? His resolution was made. He would not
deny himself the present pleasure of seeing her, to spare any future
pain in which he should be the only sufferer; but on the first token of
exclusive regard on her side, he would withdraw for ever.


[Footnote 1: Coleridge's "Six Months in the West Indies."]




CHAPTER VII


The world is too much with us.

WORDSWORTH.


Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry's morning task was to read the newspapers--the
only intercourse she held with the world, and all her knowledge of it,
was derived from these daily sheets. Ethel never looked at them--her
thoughts held no communion with the vulgar routine of life, and she was
too much occupied by her studies and reveries to spend any time upon
topics so uninteresting as the state of the nation, or the scandal of
the day.

One morning, while she was painting, her aunt observed, in her usual
tone of voice, scarce lifting her eyes from the paper, "Mr. Villiers did
not tell us this--he is going to be married; I wonder who to!"

"Married!" repeated Ethel.

"Yes, my dear, here it is. 'We hear from good authority that Mr.
Villiers, of Chiverton Park, is about to lead to the hymeneal altar a
young and lovely bride, the only child of a gentleman, said to be the
richest commoner in England.'--Who can it be?"

Ethel did not reply, and the elder lady went on to other parts of the
newspaper. The poor girl, on whom she had dealt all unaware this chance
mortal blow, put down her brush, and hurried into the shrubbery to
conceal her agitation. Why did she feel these sharp pangs? Why did a
bitter deluge of anguish overflow and seem to choke her breathing, and
torture her heart?--she could scarcely tell. "Married!--then I shall
never see him more!" And a passion of tears, not refreshing, but forced
out by agony, and causing her to feel as if her heart was bursting,
shook her delicate frame. At that moment the well-known sound, the
galloping of Villiers's horse up the lane, met her ear. "Does he come
here to tell us at last of his wedding-day?" The horse came on--it
stopped--the bell was rung. Little acts these, which she had watched
for, and listened to, for two months, with such placid and innocent
delight, now they seemed the notes of preparation for a scene of
despair. She wished to retreat to her own room to compose herself; but
it was too late; he was already in that through which she must pass--she
heard his voice speaking to her aunt. "Now is he telling her," she
thought. No idea of reproach, or of accusation of unkindness in him,
dawned on her heart. No word of love had passed between them--even yet
she was unaware that she loved herself; it was the instinctive result of
this despot sentiment, which exerted its sway over her, without her
being conscious of the cause of her sufferings.

The first words of Mrs. Fitzhenry had been to speak of the paragraph in
the newspaper, and to show it her visitor. Villiers read it, and
considered it curiously. He saw at once, that however blunderingly
worded, his father was its hero; and he wondered what foundation there
might be for the rumour. "Singular enough!" he said, carelessly, as he
put the paper down.

"You have kept your secret well," said Mrs. Elizabeth.

"My secret! I did not even know that I had one."

"I, at least, never heard that you were going to be married."

"I!--married! Where is Miss Fitzhenry?"

The concatenation of ideas presented by these words fell unremarked on
the blunt senses of the good lady, and she replied, "In the shrubbery, I
believe, or upstairs: she left me but a moment ago."

Villiers hastened to the garden and soon discerned the tearful girl, who
was bending down to pluck and arrange some flowers, so to hide her
disturbed countenance.

Could we, at the moment of trial, summon our reason and our foregone
resolves--could we put the impression of the present moment at a
distance, which, on the contrary, presses on us with a power as
omnipotent over our soul, as a pointed sword piercing the flesh over our
life, we might become all that we are not--angels or demigods, or any
other being that is not human. As it is, the current of the blood and
the texture of the brain are the machinery by which the soul acts, and
their mechanism is by no means tractable or easily worked; once put in
motion, we can seldom controul their operations; but our serener
feelings are whirled into the vortex they create. Thus Edward Villiers
had a thousand times in his reveries thought over the possibility of a
scene occurring, such as the one he was called upon to act in now--and
had planned a line of conduct, but, like mist before the wind, this
gossamer of the mind was swept away by an immediate appeal to his heart
through his outward sensations. There stood before him, in all her
loveliness, the creature whose image had lived with him by day and by
night, for several long months; and the gaze of her soft tearful eyes,
and the faultering tone of her voice, were the laws to which his sense
of prudence, of right, was immediately subjected.

A few confused sentences interchanged, revealed to him that she
participated in her aunt's mistake, and her simple question, "Why did
you conceal this from me?" spoke the guilelessness of her thoughts,
while the anguish which her countenance expressed, betrayed that the
concealment was not the only source of her grief.

This young pair were ignorant how dear they were to each other. Ethel's
affection was that generous giving away of a young heart which is
unaware of the value of the gift it makes--she had asked for and thought
of no return, though her feeling was the result of a reciprocal one on
his side; it was the instinctive love of the dawn of womanhood, subdued
and refined by her gentle nature and imaginative mind. Edward was more
alive to the nature of his own sentiments--but his knowledge stood him
in no stead to fortify him against the power of Ethel's tears. In a
moment they understood each other--one second sufficed to cause the
before impervious veil to fall at their feet: they had stept beyond this
common-place world, and stood beside each other in the new and
mysterious region of which Love is emperor.

"Dearest Ethel," said Villiers, "I have much to tell you. Do arrange
that we should ride together. I have very much to tell you. You shall
know every thing, and judge for us both, though you should condemn me."

She looked up in his face with innocent surprise; but no words could
destroy the sunshine that brightened her soul: to know that she was
loved sufficed then to fill her being to overflowing with happiness, so
that there was no room for a second emotion.

The lovers rode out together, and thus secured the tête-à-tête which
Villiers especially yearned for. Although she was country-bred, Mrs.
Fitzhenry was too timid to mount on horseback, yet she could not feel
fear for her niece who, under her father's guidance, sat her steed with
an ease and perfect command of the animal, which long habit rendered
second nature to her. As they rode on, considerably in advance of the
groom, they were at first silent--the deep sweet silence which is so
eloquent of emotion--till with an effort, slackening his pace, and
bringing his horse nearer, Villiers began. He spoke of debt, of
difficulties, of poverty--of his unconquerable aversion to the making
any demands on his father--fruitless demands, for he knew how involved
Colonel Villiers was, and how incapable even of paying the allowance he
nominally made his son. He declared his reluctance to drag Ethel into
the sea of cares and discomforts that he felt must surround his youth.
He besought her forgiveness for having loved her--for having linked her
heart to his. He could not willingly resign her, while he believed that
he, all unworthy, was of any worth in her eyes; but would she not
discard him for ever, now that she knew that he was a beggar? and that
all to which he could aspire, was an engagement to be fulfilled at some
far distant day--a day that might never come--when fortune should smile
on him. Ethel listened with exquisite complacency. Every word Villiers
spoke was fraught with tenderness; his eye beamed adoration and
sincerest love. Consciousness chained her tongue, and her faltering
voice refused to frame any echo to the busy instigations of her virgin
heart. Yet it seemed to her as if she must speak; as if she were called
upon to avow how light and trivial were all worldly considerations in
her eyes. With bashful confusion she at length said, "You cannot think
that I care for fortune--I was happy in the Illinois."

Her simplicity of feeling was at this moment infectious. It appeared the
excess of selfishness to think of any thing but love in a desart--while
she had no desire beyond. Indeed, in England or America, she lived in a
desart, as far as society was concerned, and felt not one of those
tenacious though cobweb-seeming ties, that held sway over Villiers. All
his explanations therefore went for nothing. They only felt that this
discourse concerning him had drawn them nearer to each other, and had
laid the first stone of an edifice of friendship, henceforth to be
raised beside the already established one of love. A sudden shower
forced them also to return home with speed, and so interrupted any
further discussion.

In the evening Villiers left them; and Ethel sought, as speedily as she
might, the solitude of her own chamber. She had no idea of hiding any
circumstance from Mrs. Fitzhenry; but confidence is, more than any other
thing, a matter of interchange, and cannot be bestowed unless the giver
is certain of its being received. They had too little sympathy of taste
or idea, and were too little in the habit of communicating their inmost
thoughts, to make Ethel recur to her aunt. Besides, young love is ever
cradled in mystery;--to reveal it to the vulgar eye, appears at once to
deprive it of its celestial loveliness, and to marry it to the clodlike
earth. But alone--alone--she could think over the past day--recall its
minutest incident; and as she imaged to herself the speaking fondness of
her lover's eyes, her own closed, and a thrilling sense of delight swept
through her frame. What a different world was this to what it had been
the day before! The whole creation was invested by a purer atmosphere,
balmy as paradise, which no disquieting thought could penetrate. She
called upon her father's spirit to approve her attachment; and when she
reflected that Edward's hand had supported his dying head--that to
Edward Villiers's care his latest words had intrusted her,--she felt as if
she were a legacy bequeathed to him, and that she fulfilled Lodore's last
behests in giving herself to him. So sweetly and fondly did her gentle
heart strive to make a duty of her wishes; and the idea of her father's
approbation set the seal of perfect satisfaction on her dream of bliss.

It was somewhat otherwise with Villiers. Things went on as before, and
he came nearly every day to Richmond; but while Ethel rested satisfied
with seeing him, and receiving slight, cherished tokens of his unabated
regard,--as his voice assumed a more familiar tone, and his attentions
became more affectionate;--while these were enough for Ethel, he thought
of the future, and saw it each day dressed in gloomier colours. In
Ethel's presence, indeed, he forgot all but her. He loved her fervently,
and beheld in her all that he most admired in woman: her clearness of
spirit, her singleness of heart, her unsuspicious and ingenuous
disposition, were irresistibly fascinating;--and why not spend their
lives thus in solitude?--his--their mutual fortune might afford
this:--why not for ever thus--the happy--the beloved?--his life might
pass like a dream of joy; and that paradise might be realized on earth,
the impossibility of which philosophers have demonstrated, and
worldlings scoffed at.

Thus he thought while in the same room with Ethel;--while on his evening
ride back to town, her form glided before him, and her voice sounded in
his ears, it seemed that where Ethel was, no one earthly bliss could be
wanting; where she was not, a void must exist, dark and dreary as a
starless night. But his progress onward took him out of the magic circle
her presence drew; a portion of his elevated feeling deserted him at
each step; it fell off, like the bark pealing from a tree, in successive
coats, till he was left with scarce a vestige of its brightness;--as the
hue and the scent deserts the flower, when deprived of light,--so, when
away from Ethel, her lover lost half the excellence which her presence
bestowed.

Edward Villiers was eminently sociable in his disposition. He had been
brought up in the thick of life, and knew not how to live apart from it.
His frank and cordial heart danced within his bosom, when he was among
those who sympathized with, and liked him. He was much courted in
society, and had many favourites: and how Ethel would like these, and be
liked by them, was a question he perpetually asked himself. He knew the
worldliness of many,--their defective moral feeling, and their narrow
views; but he believed that they were attached to him, and no man was
ever less a misanthrope than he. He wished, if married to Ethel, to see
her a favourite in his own circle; but he revolted from the idea of
presenting her, except under favourable auspices, surrounded by the
decorations of rank and wealth. To give up the world, the English world,
formed no portion of his picture of bliss; and to occupy a subordinate,
degraded, permitted place in it, was, to one initiated in its
supercilious and insolent assumptions, not to be endured.

The picture had also a darker side, which was too often turned towards
him. If he felt hesitation when he regarded its brighter aspect, as soon
as this was dimmed, the whole current of his feelings turned the other
way; and he called himself villain, for dreaming of allying Ethel, not
to poverty alone, but to its worst consequences and disgrace, in the
shape of debt. "I am a beggar," he thought; "one of many wants, and
unable to provide for any;--the most poverty-stricken of beggars, who
has pledged away even his liberty, were it claimed of him. I look
forward to the course of years with disgust. I cannot calculate the ills
that may occur, or with how tremendous a weight the impending ruin may
fall. I can bear it alone; but did I see _her_ humiliated, whom I would
gladly place on a throne,--by heavens! I could not endure life on such
terms! and a pistol, or some other dreadful means, would put an end to
an existence become intolerable."

As these thoughts fermented within him, he longed to pour them out
before Ethel; to unload his mind of its care, to express the sincere
affection that led him to her side, and yet urged him to exile himself
for ever. He rode over each day to Richmond, intent on such a design;
but as he proceeded, the fogs and clouds that thickened round his soul
grew lighter. At first his pace was regulated; as he drew nearer, he
pressed his horse's flank with impatient heel, and bounded forward. Each
turn in the road was a step nearer the sunshine. Now the bridge, the
open field, the winding lane, were passed; the walls of her abode, and
its embowered windows, presented themselves;--they met; and the glad
look that welcomed him drove far away every thought of banishment, and
dispelled at once every remnant of doubt and despondency.

This state of things might have gone on much longer,--already had it
been protracted for two months,--but for an accidental conversation
between Lady Lodore and Villiers. Since the morning after the opera, they
had scarcely seen each other. Edward's heart was too much occupied to
permit him to join in the throng of a ball-room; and they had no chance of
meeting, except in general society. One evening, at the opera, the lady
who accompanied Lady Lodore, asked a gentleman, who had just come into
their box, "What had become of Edward Villiers?--he was never to be
seen?"

"He is going to be married," was the reply: "he is in constant
attendance on the fair lady at Richmond."

"I had not heard of this," observed Lady Lodore, who, for Horatio's sake,
felt an interest for his favourite cousin.

"It is very little known. The _fiancée_ lives out of the world, and no
one can tell any thing about her. I did hear her name. Young Craycroft
has seen them riding together perpetually in Richmond Park and on
Wimbledon Common, he told me. Miss Fitzroy--no;--Miss Fitz-something it
is;--Fitzgeorge?--no;--Fitzhenry?--yes; Miss Fitzhenry is the name."

Cornelia reddened, and asked no more questions. She controlled her
agitation; and at first, indeed, she was scarcely aware how much she
felt: but while the whole house was listening to a favourite air, and
her thoughts had leisure to rally, they came on her painfully, and
involuntary tears filled her eyes. It was sad, indeed, to hear of her
child as of a stranger; and to be made to feel sensibly how wide the
gulf was that separated them. "My sweet girl--my own Ethel!--are you,
indeed, so lost to me?" As her heart breathed this ejaculation, she felt
the downy cheek of her babe close to her's, and its little fingers press
her bosom. A moment's recollection brought another image:--Ethel, grown
up to womanhood, educated in hatred of her, negligent and
unfilial;--this was not the little cherub whose loss she lamented. Let
her look round the crowd then about her; and among the fair girls she
saw, any one was as near her in affection and duty, as the child so
early torn from her, to be for ever estranged and lost.

The baleful part of Cornelia's character was roused by these
reflections; her pride, her selfwill, her spirit of resistance. "And for
this she has been taken from me," she thought, "to marry, while yet a
child, a ruined man--to be wedded to care and indigence. Thus would it
not have been had she been entrusted to me. O, how hereafter she may
regret the injuries of her mother, when she feels the effects of them in
her own adversity! It is not for me to prevent this ill-judged union.
The aunt and niece would see in my opposition a motive to hasten it:
wise as they fancy themselves--wise and good--what I, the reviled,
reprobated, they would therefore pursue with more eagerness. Be it
so--my day will yet come!"

A glance of triumph shot across her face as she indulged in this emotion
of revenge; the most deceitful and reprehensible of human
feelings--revenge against a child--how sad at best--how sure to bring
with it its recompense of bitterness of spirit and remorse! But
Cornelia's heart had been rudely crushed, and in the ruin of her best
affections, her mother had substituted noxious passions of many
kinds--pride chief of all.

While thus excited and indignant, she saw Edward Villiers. He came into
her box; the lady with her was totally unaware of what had been passing
in her thoughts, nor reverted to the name mentioned as having any
connexion with her. She asked Villiers if it were true that he was going
to be married? Lady heard the question; she turned on him her eyes full
of significant meaning, and with a smile of scorn answered for him, "O
yes, Mr. Villiers is going to be married. His bride is young, beautiful,
and portionless; but he has the tastes of a hermit--he means to emigrate
to America--his simple and inexpensive habits are admirably suited to
the wilderness."

This was said as if in jest, and answered in the same tone. The third in
the trio joined in, quite unaware of the secret meaning of the
conversation. Several bitter allusions were made by Lady Lodore, and the
truth of all she said sent her words home to Edward's heart. She drew, as
if playfully, a representation of highbred indigence, that made his blood
curdle. As if she could read his thoughts, she echoed their worst
suggestions, and unrolled the page of futurity, such as he had often
depicted it to himself, presenting in sketchy, yet forcible colours, a
picture from which his soul recoiled. He would have escaped, but there
was a fascination in the topic, and in the very bitterness of spirit
which she awakened. He rather encouraged her to proceed, while he
abhorred her for so doing, acknowledging the while the justice of all
she said. Lady Lodore was angry, and she felt pleasure in the pain she
inflicted; her wit became keener, her sarcasm more pointed, yet stopping
short with care of any thing that should betray her to their companion,
and avoiding, with inimitable tact, any expression that should convey to
one not in the secret, that she meant any thing more than raillery or
good-humoured quizzing, as it is called.

At length Villiers took his leave. "Were I," he said, "the unfortunate
man you represent me to be, you would have to answer for my life this
night. But re-assure yourself--it is all a dream. I have no thoughts of
marrying; and the fair girl, whose fate as my wife Lady Lodore so kindly
compassionates, is safe from every danger of becoming the victim of my
selfishness and poverty."

This was said laughing, yet an expressive intonation of voice conveyed
his full meaning to Cornelia. "I have done a good deed if I have
prevented this marriage," she thought; "yet a thankless one. After all,
he is a gentleman, and under sister Bessy's guardianship, poor Ethel
might fall into worse hands."

While Lady Lodore thus dismissed her anger and all thought of its cause,
Villiers felt more resentment than had ever before entered his kind
heart. The truths which the lady had spoken were unpalatable, and the
mode in which they were uttered was still more disagreeable. He hated
her for having discovered them, and for presenting them so vividly to
his sight. At one moment he resolved never to see Ethel more; while he
felt that he loved her with tenfold tenderness, and would have given
worlds to become the source of all happiness to her--wishing this the
more ardently, because her mother had pictured him as being the cause to
her of every ill.

Edward's nature was very impetuous, but perfectly generous. The tempest
of anger allayed, he considered all that Lady Lodore had said impartially;
and while he felt that she had only repeated what he had told himself a
thousand times, he resolved not to permit resentment to controul him,
and to turn him from the right path. He felt also, that he ought no
longer to delay acting on his good resolutions. His intercourse with
Miss Fitzhenry had begun to attract attention, and must therefore cease.
Once again he would ride over to Richmond--once again see her--say
farewell, and then stoically banish every pleasant dream--every
heart-enthralling hope--willingly sacrificing his dearest wishes at the
shrine of her welfare.




CHAPTER VIII


She to a window came, that opened west,
Towards which coast her love his way addrest,
There looking forth, she in her heart did find
Many vain fancies working her unrest,
And sent her winged thoughts more swift than wind
To bear unto her love the message of her mind.

THE FAERIE QUEEN.


Ethel, happy in her seclusion, was wholly unaware of her mother's
interference and its effects. She had not the remotest suspicion that it
would be considered as conducive to her welfare to banish the only
friend that she had in the world. In her solitary position, life was a
blank without Edward; and while she congratulated herself on her good
fortune in the concurrence of circumstances that had brought them
together, and, as she believed, established her happiness on the dearest
and most secure foundations, she was far from imagining that he was
perpetually revolving the necessity of bidding her adieu for ever. If
she had been told two years before, that all intercourse between her and
her father were to cease, it would scarcely have seemed more unnatural
or impossible, than that such a decree should be issued to divide her
from one to whom her young heart was entirely given. She relied on him
as the support of her life--her guide and protector--she loved him as
the giver of good to her--she almost worshipped him for the many
virtues, which he either really possessed, or with which her fondness
bounteously gifted him.

Meanwhile the unacute observations of Mrs. Fitzhenry began to be
awakened. She gave herself great credit for discovering that there was
something singular in the constant attendance of Edward, and yet, in
fact, she owed her illumination on this point to her man of law. Mr.
Humphries, whom she had seen on business the day before, finding how
regular a visitor Villiers was, and their only one, first elevated his
eyebrows and then relaxed into a smile, as he said, "I suppose I am soon
to wish Miss Fitzhenry joy." This same day Edward had ridden down to
them; a violent storm prevented his return to town; he slept at the inn
and breakfasted with the ladies in the morning. There was something
familiar and home-felt in his appearance at the breakfast-table, that
filled Ethel with delight. "Women," says the accomplished author of Paul
Clifford, "think that they must always love a man whom they have seen in
his nightcap." There is deep philosophy in this observation, and it was
a portion of that feeling which made Ethel feel so sweetly complacent,
when Villiers, unbidden, rang the bell, and gave his orders to the
servant, as if he had been at home.

Aunt Bessy started a little; and while the young people were strolling
in the shrubbery and renewing the flowers in the vases, she was
pondering on the impropriety of their position, and wondering how she
could break off an intimacy she had hitherto encouraged. But one way
presented itself to her plain imagination, the old resource, a return to
Longfield. With light heart and glad looks, Ethel bounded up stairs to
dress for dinner, and she was twining her ringlets round her taper
fingers before the glass, when her aunt entered with a look of serious
import. "My dear Ethel, I have something important to say to you."

Ethel stopped in her occupation and turned inquiring eyes on her aunt;
"My dear," continued Mrs. Fitzhenry, "we have been a long time away; if
you please, we will return to Longfield."

This time Ethel did not grow pale; she turned again to the mirror,
saying with a smile that lighted her whole countenance, "Dear aunt, that
is impossible--I would rather not."

No negative could have been more imposing on the good lady than this;
she did not know how to reply, how to urge her wish. "Dearest aunt,"
continued her niece, "you are losing time--dinner will be announced, and
you are not dressed. We will talk of Longfield to-morrow--we must not
keep Mr. Villiers waiting."

It was often the custom of Aunt Bessy, like the father of Hamlet, to
sleep after dinner, she did not betake herself to her orchard, but her
arm-chair, for a few minutes' gentle doze. Ethel and Villiers meanwhile
walked out, and, descending to the river side, they were enticed by the
beauty of the evening to go upon the water. Ethel was passionately fond
of every natural amusement; boating was a pleasure that she enjoyed
almost more than any other, and one with which she was seldom indulged;
for her spinster aunt had so many fears and objections, and considered
every event but sitting still in her drawing-room, or a quiet drive with
her old horses, as so fraught with danger and difficulty, that it
required an absolute battle ever to obtain her consent for her niece to
go on the river--she would have died before she could have entered a
boat herself, and, walking at the water's edge, she always insisted that
Ethel should keep close to the bank, while, by the repetition of
expressions of alarm and entreaties to return, she destroyed every
possibility of enjoyment.

The river sped swiftly on, calm and free. There is always life in a
stream, of which a lake is frequently deprived, when sleeping beneath a
windless sky. A river pursues for ever its course, accomplishing the
task its Creator has imposed, and its waters are for ever changing while
they seem the same. It was a balmy summer evening; the air seemed to
brood over the earth, warming and nourishing it. All nature reposed, and
yet not as a lifeless thing, but with the same enjoyment of rest as
gladdened the hearts of the two beings, who, with gratitude and love,
drank in the influence of this softest hour of day. The equal splash of
the oar, or its dripping when suspended, the clear reflection of tree
and lawn in the river, the very colour of the stream, stolen as it was
from heaven itself, the plash of the wings of the waterfowl who skimmed
the waves towards their rushy nests,--every sound and every appearance
was beautiful, harmonious, and soothing. Ethel's soul was at peace;
grateful to Heaven, and satisfied with every thing around her, a
tenderness beamed from her eyes, and was diffused over her attitude, and
attuned her voice, which acted as a spell to make Edward forget every
thing but herself.

They had both been silent for some time, a sweet silence more eloquent
than any words, when Ethel observed, "My aunt wishes to return to
Longfield."

Villiers started as if he had trodden upon a serpent, exclaiming, "To
Longfield! O yes! that were far best--when shall you go?"

"Why is it best? Why should we go?" asked Ethel with surprise.

"Because," replied Villiers impetuously, "it had been better that you
had never left it--that we had never met! It is not thus that I can
fulfil my promise to your father to guard and be kind to his child. I am
practising on your ignorance, taking advantage of your loneliness, and
doing you an injury, for which I should call any other a villain, were
he guilty."

It was the very delight that Edward had been a moment before enjoying,
the very beauty and calmness of nature, and the serenity and kindness of
the sweet face turned towards him, which stirred such bitterness;
checking himself, however, he continued after a pause, in a more
subsided tone.

"Are there any words by which I can lay bare my heart to you,
Ethel?--None! To speak of my true and entire attachment, is almost an
insult; and to tell you, that I tear myself from you for your own sake,
sounds like impertinence. Yet all this is true; and it is the reverence
that I have for your excellence, the idolatry which your singleness of
heart and sincere nature inspires, which prompts me to speak the truth,
though that be different from the usual language of gallantry, or what
is called love.

"Will you hate me or pity me most, when I speak of my determination
never to see you more? You cannot guess how absolutely I am a ruined
man--how I am one of those despicable hangers-on of the rich and noble,
who cover my rags with mere gilding. I am a beggar--I have not a
shilling that I can call my own, and it is only by shifts and meannesses
that I can go on from day to day, while each one menaces me with a
prison or flight to a foreign country.

"I shall go--and you will regret me, Ethel, or you will despise me. It
were best of all that you forgot me. I am not worthy of you--no man
could be; that I have known you and loved you--and for your sake,
banished myself from you, will be the solitary ray of comfort that will
shed some faint glow over my chilled and darkened existence. Will you
say even now one word of comfort to me?"

Ethel looked up; the pure affectionateness of her heart prevented her
from feeling for herself, she thought only of her lover. "Would that I
could comfort you," she said. "You will do what you think right, and
that will be your best consolation. Do not speak of hatred, or contempt,
or indifference. I shall not change though we part for ever: how is it
possible that I should ever cease to feel regard for one who has ever
been kind, considerate, and generous to me? Go, if you think it right--I
am a foolish girl, and know nothing of the world; and I will not doubt
that you decide for the best."

Villiers took her hand and held it in his; his heart was penetrated by
her disinterested self-forgetfulness and confidence. He felt that he was
loved, and that he was about to part from her for ever. The pain and
pleasure of these thoughts mingled strangely--he had no words to express
them, he felt that it would be easier to die than to give her up.

Aunt Bessy, on the river's bank imploring their return, recalled them
from the fairy region to which their spirits had wandered. For one
moment they had been united in sentiment; one kindred emotion of perfect
affection had, as it were, married their souls one to the other; at the
alien sound of poor Bessy's voice the spell fled away on airy wings,
leaving them disenchanted. The rudder was turned, the boat reached the
shore, and unable to endure frivolous talk about any subject except the
one so near his heart, Villiers departed and rode back to town,
miserable yet most happy--despairing yet full of joy; to such a riddle,
love, which finds its completion in sympathy, and knows no desire
beyond, is the only solution.

The feelings of Ethel were even more unalloyed. She had no doubts about
the future, the present embraced the world. She did not attempt to
unravel the dreamy confusion of her thoughts, or to clear up the golden
mist that hung before, curtaining most gloriously the reality beyond.
Her step was buoyant, her eyes sparkling and joyous. Love and gladness
sat lightly on her bosom, and gratitude to Heaven for bestowing so deep
a sense of happiness was the only sentiment that mingled with these.
Villiers, on leaving them, had promised to return the next day; and on
the morrow she rose, animated with such a spirit as may be kindled
within the bosom of an Enchantress, when she pronounces the spell which
is to controul the movements of the planetary orbs. She was more than
queen of the world, for she was empress of Edward's heart, and ruling
there, she reigned over the course of destiny, and bent to her will the
conflicting elements of life.

He did not come. It was strange. Now hope, now fear, were interchanged
one for the other, till night and certain disappointment arrived. Yet it
was not much--the morrow's sun would light him on his way to her. To
cheat the lagging hours of the morrow, she occupied herself with her
painting and music, tasking herself to give so many hours to her
employments, thus to add speed to the dilatory walk of time. The long
day was passed in fruitless expectation--another and another succeeded.
Was he ill? What strange mutation in the course of nature had occurred
to occasion so inexplicable an absence?

A week went by, and even a second was nearly spent. She had not
anticipated this estrangement. Day by day she went over in her mind
their last conversation, and Edward's expressions gathered decision and
a gloomy reality as she pondered on them. The idea of an heroic
sacrifice on his part, and submission to his will on hers, at first
soothed her--but never to see him more, was an alternative that tasked
her fortitude too high; and while her heart felt all the tumults of
despair, she found herself asking what his love could be, that could
submit to lose her? Love in a cottage is the dream of many a high-born
girl, who is not allowed to dance with a younger brother at Almack's;
but a secluded, an obscure, an almost cottage life, was all that Ethel
had ever known, and all that she coveted. Villiers rejected this--not
for her sake, that could not be, but for the sake of a world, which he
called frivolous and vain, and yet to whose tyranny he bowed. To
disentwine the tangled skein of thought which was thus presented, was
her task by day and night. She awoke in the morning, and her first
thought was, "Will he come?" She retired at night, and sleep visited her
eyes, while she was asking herself, "Why has he not been?" During the
day, these questions, in every variety, forced her attention. To escape
from her aunt, to seek solitude, to listen to each sound that might be
his horse, and to feel her heart sicken at the still renewed
disappointment, became, in spite of herself, all her occupation: she
might bend over her drawing, or escape from her aunt's conversation to
the piano; but these were no longer employments, but rather means
adopted to deliver herself up more entirely to her reveries.

The third, the fourth week came, and the silence of death was between
Ethel and her friend. O but for one word, one look to break the spell!
Was she indeed never to see him more? Was all, all over?--was the
harmony their two hearts made, jarred into discord?--was she again the
orphan, alone in the world?--and was the fearless reliance she had
placed upon fate and Edward's fidelity, mere folly or insanity?--and was
desecration and forgetfulness to come over and to destroy the worship
she had so fondly cherished? Nothing had she to turn to--nothing to
console her. Her life became one thought, it twined round her soul like
a serpent, and compressed and crushed every other emotion with its
folds. "I could bear all," she thought, "were I permitted to see him
only once again."

She and Mrs. Fitzhenry were invited by Mrs. Humphries to dine with her.
They were asked to the awful ceremony of spending a long day, which, in
the innocence of her heart, Mrs. Fitzhenry fancied the most delightful
thing in the world. She thought that kindness and friendship demanded of
her that she should be in Montague-square by ten in the morning.
Notwithstanding every exertion, she could not get there till two, and
then, when luncheon was over, she wondered why the gap of time till
seven appeared so formidable. This was to be got over by a drive in
Hyde-park. Ethel had shown peculiar pleasure in the idea of visiting
London; she had looked bright and happy during their journey to town,
but anxiety and agitation clouded her face, at the thought of the park,
of the crisis about to arrive, at the doubt and hope she entertained of
finding Villiers there.

The park became crowded, but he was not in the drive; at length he
entered in the midst of a bevy of fair cousins, whom Ethel did not know
as such. He entered on horseback, flanked on either side by pretty
equestrians, looking as gay and light-hearted, as she would have done,
had she been one, the chosen one among his companions. Twice he passed.
The first time his head was averted--he saw nothing, she even did not
see his face: the next time, his eye caught the aspect of the well-known
chariot--he glanced eagerly at those it contained, kissed his hand, and
went on. Ethel's heart died within her. It was all over. She was the
neglected, the forgotten; but while she turned her face to the other
window of the carriage, so to hide its saddened expression from her
companion, a voice, the dearest, sweetest voice she had ever heard, the
soft harmonious voice, whose accents were more melodious than music,
asked, "Are you in town? have you left Richmond?" In spite of herself, a
smile mantled over her countenance, dimpling it into gladness, and she
turned to see the beloved speaker who had not deserted her--who was
there; she turned, but there was no answering glance of pleasure in the
face of Villiers--he looked grave, and bowed, as if in this act of
courtesy he fulfilled all of friendly interchange that was expected of
him, and rode off. He was gone--and seen no more.




CHAPTER IX


Sure, when the separation has been tried,
That we, who part in love, shall meet again.

WORDSWORTH.


This little event roused Ethel to the necessity of struggling with the
sentiment to which hitherto she had permitted unquestioned power. There
had been a kind of pleasure mingled with her pain, while she believed
that she suffered for her lover's sake, and in obedience to his will. To
love in solitude and absence, was, she well knew, the lot of many of her
sex, and all that is imaginative and tender lends poetry to the emotion.
But to love without return, her father had taught her was shame and
folly--a dangerous and undignified sentiment that leads many women into
acts of humiliation and misery. He spoke the more warmly on this
subject, because he desired to guard his daughter by every possible
means from a fate too common. He knew the sensibility and constancy of
her nature. He dreaded to think that these should be played upon, and
that her angelic sweetness should be sacrificed at the altar of hopeless
passion. That all the powers he might gift her with, all the fortitude
and all the pride that he strove to instil, might be insufficient to
prevent this one grand evil, he too well knew; but all that could should
be done, and his own high-souled Ethel should rise uninjured from the
toils of the snarer, the heartless game of the unfaithful lover.

She steeled her heart against every softer thought, she tasked herself
each day to devote her entire attention to some absorbing employment; to
languages and the composition of music, as occupations that would not
permit her thoughts to stray. She felt a pain deep-seated in her inmost
heart; but she refused to acknowledge it. When a thought, too sweet and
bitter, took perforce possession of the chambers of her brain, she drove
it out with stern and unshaken resolve. She pondered on the best means
to subdue every rebel idea. She rose with the sun, and passed much time
in the open air, that when night came, bodily fatigue might overpower
mental regrets. She conversed with her aunt again about her dear lost
father; that, by renewing images, so long the only ones dear to her,
every subsequent idea might be driven from the place it had usurped.
Always she was rewarded by the sense of doing right, often by really
mitigating the anguish which rose and went to rest with her, and
awakening her in the morning, stung her to renew her endeavours, while
it whispered too audibly, "I am here." She grew pale and thin, and her
eyes again resumed that lustre which spoke a quick and agitated life
within. Her endeavours, by being unremitting, gave too much intensity to
every feeling, and made her live each moment of her existence a
sensitive, conscious life, wearing out her frame, and threatening, while
it accelerated the pulses, to exhaust betimes the animal functions.

She felt this; and she roused herself to contend afresh with her own
heart. As a last resource she determined to quit Richmond. Her
struggles, and the energy called into action by her fortitude, gave a
tone of superiority to her mind, which her aunt felt and submitted to.
Now when a change of residence was determined upon, she at once
negatived the idea of returning to Longfield--yet whither else betake
themselves? Ethel no longer concealed from herself that she and the
worthy spinster were solitary wanderers on earth, cut off from human
intercourse. A bitter sense of desolation had crept over her from the
moment that she knew herself to be deserted by Villiers. All that was
bright in her position darkened into shadow. She shrunk into herself
when she reflected, that should the ground at her feet open and swallow
her, not one among her fellow-creatures would be sensible that the whole
universe of thought and feeling, which emanated from her breathing
spirit, as water from a living spring, was shrunk up and strangled in a
narrow, voiceless grave. A short time before she had regarded death
without terror, for her father had been its prey, and his image was
often shadowed forth in her fancy, beckoning her to join him. Now it had
become more difficult to die. Nature and love were wedded in her mind,
and it was a bitter pang for one so young to bid adieu to both for ever.
Turning her thoughts from Villiers, she would have been glad to discover
any link that might enchain her to the mass. She reverted to her mother.
Her inexperience, her youth, and the timidity of her disposition,
prevented her from making any endeavour to break through the wall of
unnatural separation raised between them. She could only lament. One sign,
one word from Lady Lodore, would have been balm to her poor heart, and
she would have met it with fervent gratitude. But she feared to offend.
She had no hope that any advance would have been met by other than a
disdainful repulse; and she shrunk from intruding herself on her
unwilling parent. She often wept to think that there was none near to
support and comfort her, and yet that at the distance of but a few miles
her mother lived--whose very name was the source of the dearest,
sweetest, and most cruel emotions. She thought, therefore, of her
surviving parent only to despair, and to shrink with terror from the
mere possibility of an accidental meeting.

She earnestly desired to leave England, which had treated her with but a
step-mother's welcome, and to travel away, she knew not whither. Yet
most she wished to go to Italy. Her father had often talked of taking
her to that country, and it was painted in her eyes with the hues of
paradise. She spoke of her desire to her aunt, who thought her mad, and
believed that it was as easy to adventure to the moon, as for two
solitary women to brave alps and earthquakes, banditti and volcanoes, a
savage people and an unknown land. Still, even while she trembled at the
mere notion, she felt that Ethel might lead her thither if she pleased.
It is one of the most beneficent dispensations of the Creator, that
there is nothing so attractive and attaching as affection. The smile of
an infant may command absolutely, because its source is in dependent
love, and the human heart for ever yearns for such demonstration from
another. What would this strange world be without that "touch of
nature?" It is to the immaterial universe, what light is to the visible
creation, scent to the flower, hue to the rainbow; hope, joy, succour,
and self-forgetfulness, where otherwise all would be swallowed up in
vacant and obscure egotism.

No one could approach Ethel without feeling that she possessed an
irresistible charm. The overflowing and trusting affectionateness of her
nature was a loadstone to draw all hearts. Each one felt, even without
knowing wherefore, that it was happiness to obey, to gratify her. Thus
while a journey to Italy filled Mrs. Elizabeth with alarm, a consent
hovered on her lips, because she felt that any risk was preferable to
disappointing a wish of her gentle niece.

And yet even then Ethel paused. She began to repent her desire of
leaving the country inhabited by her dearest friend. She felt that she
should have an uncongenial companion in her aunt--the child of the
wilderness and the good lady of Longfield, were like a living and dead
body in conjunction--the one inquiring, eager, enthusiastic even in her
contemplativeness, sensitively awake to every passing object; while the
other dozed her hours away, and fancied that pitfalls and wild beasts
menaced her, if she dared step one inch from the beaten way.

At this moment, while embarrassed by the very yielding to her desires,
and experiencing a lingering sad regret for all that she was about to
leave behind, Ethel received a letter from Villiers. Her heart beat, and
her fingers trembled, when first she saw, as now she held a paper, which
might be every thing, yet might be nothing to her; she opened it at
last, and forced herself to consider and understand its contents. It was
as follows:--


"DEAR MISS FITZHENRY,

"Will your aunt receive me with her wonted
kindness when I call to-morrow? I fear to have offended by an appearance
of neglect, while my heart has never been absent from Richmond. Plead my
cause, I entreat you. I leave it in your hands.

"Ever and ever yours.

"EDWARD VILLIERS."

_Grosvenor Square, Saturday._


"Dearest Ethel, have you guessed at my sufferings? Shall you hail with
half the joy that I do, a change which enables you to revoke the decree
of absence so galling at least to one of us? If indeed you have not
forgotten me, I shall be rewarded for the wretchedness of these last
weeks."


Ethel kissed the letter and placed it near her heart. A calm joy
diffused itself over her mind; and that she could indeed trust and
believe in him she loved, was the source of a grateful delight, more
medicinal than all the balmy winds of Italy and its promised pleasures.

When Villiers had last quitted Richmond, he had resolved not to expose
himself again to the influence of Ethel. It was necessary that they
should be divided--how far better that they should never meet again! He
was not worthy of her. Another, more fortunate, would replace him, if he
sacrificed his own selfish feelings, and determinately absented himself
from her. As if to confirm his view of their mutual interest, his elder
cousin, Mr. Saville, had just offered his hand to the daughter of a
wealthy Earl, and had been accepted. Villiers took refuge from his
anxious thoughts among his pretty cousins, sisters of the bridegroom,
and with them the discussion of estates, settlements, princely mansions,
and equipages, was the order of the day. Edward sickened to reflect how
opposite would be the prospect, if his marriage with Ethel were in
contemplation. It was not that a noble establishment would be exchanged
for a modest, humble dwelling--he loved with sufficient truth to feel
that happiness with Ethel transcended the wealth of the world. It was
the absolute penury, the debt, the care, that haunted him and made such
miserable contrast with the tens and hundreds of thousands that were the
subject of discussion on the present occasion. His resolution not to
entangle Ethel in this wilderness of ills, gained strength by every
chance word that fell from the lips of those around him; and the image,
before so vivid, of her home at Richmond, which he might at each hour
enter, of her dear face, which at any minute might again bless his
sight, faded into a far-off vision of paradise, from which he was
banished for ever.

For a time he persevered in his purpose, if not with ease, yet with less
of struggle than he himself anticipated. That he could at any hour break
the self-enacted law, and behold Ethel, enabled him day after day to
continue to obey it, and to submit to the decree of banishment he had
passed upon himself. He loved his pretty cousins, and their kindness and
friendship soothed him; he spent his days with them, and the familiar,
sisterly intercourse, hallowed by long association, and made tender by
the grace and sweetness of these good girls, compensated somewhat for
the absence of deeper interest. They talked of Horatio also, and that
was a more touching string than all. The almost worship, joined to pity
and fear for him, with which Edward regarded his cousin, made him cling
fondly to those so closely related to him, and who sympathized with, and
shared, his enthusiastic affection.

This state of half indifference did not last long. His meeting with
Ethel in Hyde Park operated an entire change. He had seen her face but a
moment--her dear face, animated with pleasure at beholding him, and
adorned with more than her usual loveliness. He hurried away, but the
image still pursued him. All at once the world around grew dark and
blank; at every instant his heart asked for Ethel. He thirsted for the
sweet delight of gazing on her soft lustrous eyes, touching her hand,
listening to her voice, whose tones were so familiar and beloved. He
avoided his cousins to hide his regrets; he sought solitude, to commune
with memory; and the intense desire kindled within him to return to her,
was all but irresistible. He had received a letter from Horace Saville
entreating him to join him at Naples; he had contemplated complying, as
a means of obtaining forgetfulness. Should he not, on the contrary, make
this visit with Ethel for his companion? It was a picture of happiness
most enticing; and then he recollected with a pang, that it was
impossible for him to quit England; that it was only by being on the
spot, that he obtained the supplies necessary for his existence. With
bitterness of spirit he recognized once again his state of beggary, and
the hopelessness that attended on all his wishes.

All at once he was surprised by a message from his father, through Lord
Maristow. He was told of Colonel Villiers's intended marriage with the
only daughter of a wealthy commoner, which yet could not be arranged
without the concurrence of Edward, or rather without sacrifices on his
part for the making of settlements. The entire payment of his debts, and
the promise of fifteen hundred a year for the future, were the bribes
offered to induce him to consent. Edward at once notified his
compliance. He saw the hour of freedom at hand, and the present was too
full of interest, too pregnant with misery or happiness, to allow the
injury done to his future prospects to weigh with him for a moment. Thus
he might purchase his union with Ethel--claim her for his own. With the
thought, a whole tide of tenderness and joy poured quick and warm into
his heart, and it seemed as if he had never loved so devotedly as now.
How false an illusion had blinded him! he fancied that he had banished
hope, while indeed his soul was wedded to her image, and the very
struggle to free himself, had served to make the thought of her more
peremptory and indelible.

With these thoughts, he again presented himself at Richmond. He asked
Mrs. Fitzhenry's consent to address her niece, and became the accepted
lover of Ethel. The meeting of their two young hearts in the security of
an avowed attachment, after so many hours wasted in despondency and
painful struggles, did not visit the fair girl with emotions of burning
transport: she felt it rather like a return to a natural state of
things, after unnatural deprivation. As if, a young nestling, she had
been driven from her mother's side, and was now restored to the dear
fosterage of her care. She delivered herself up to a calm reliance upon
the future, and saw in the interweaving of duty and affection, the
fulfilment of her destiny, and the confirmation of her earthly
happiness. They were to be joined never to part more! While each
breathed the breath of life, no power could sever them; health or
sickness, prosperity or adversity--these became mere words; her health
and her riches were garnered in his heart, and while she bestowed the
treasures of her affection upon him, could he be poor? It was not
therefore to be her odious part to crush the first and single attachment
of her soul--to tear at once the "painted veil of life," delivering
herself up to cheerless realities--to know that, to do right, she must
banish from her recollection those inward-spoken vows which she should
deem herself of a base inconstant disposition ever to forget. It was not
reserved for her to pass joyless years of solitude, reconciling herself
to the necessity of divorcing her dearest thoughts from their wedded
image. The serene and fair-showing home she coveted was open before
her--she might pass within its threshold, and listen to the closing of
the doors behind, as they shut out the world from her, with pure and
unalloyed delight.

Ethel was very young, yet in youth such feelings are warmer in our
hearts than in after years. We do not know then that we can ever change;
or that, snake-like, casting the skin of an old, care-worn habit, a new
one will come fresh and bright in seeming, as the one before had been,
at the hour of its birth. We fancy then, that if our present and first
hope is disappointed, our lives are a mere blank, not worth a "pin's
fee;" the singleness of our hearts has not been split into the million
hair-like differences, which, woven by time into one texture, clothes us
in prudence as with a garment. We are as if exposed naked to the action
of passions and events, and receive their influence with keen and
fearful sensitiveness. Ethel scarcely heard, and did not listen to nor
understand, the change of circumstances that brought Villiers back to
her--she only knew, that he was confirmed her own. Satisfied with this
delightful conclusion to her sufferings, she placed her destiny in his
hands, without fear or question.

Mrs. Elizabeth thought her niece very young to marry; but Villiers, who
had, while hesitating, done his best to hide his sweet Ethel away from
every inquisitive eye, now that she was to be his own, hastened to
introduce Lord Maristow (Lady Maristow had died two years before) to
her, and to bring her among his cousins, whom he regarded as sisters.
The change was complete and overwhelming to the fair recluses. Where
before they lived in perpetual tête-à-tête, or separated but to be
alone, they were now plunged into what appeared to them a crowd. Sophia,
Harriet, and Lucy Saville, were high-born, high-bred, and elegant girls,
accustomed to what they called the quiet of domestic life, amidst a
thousand relations and ten thousand acquaintances. No female relative
had stepped into their mother's place, and they were peculiarly
independent and high-spirited; they had always lived in what they called
the world, and knew nothing but what that world contained. Their manners
were easy, their tempers equable and affectionate. If their dispositions
were not all exactly alike, they had a family resemblance that drew them
habitually near each other. They received Ethel among their number with
cordiality, bestowing on her every attention which politeness and
kindness dictated. Yet Ethel felt somewhat as a wild antelope among tame
ones. Their language, the topics of their discourse, their very
occupations, were all new to her. She lent herself to their customs with
smiles and sweetness, but her eye brightened when Edward came, and she
often unconsciously retreated to his side as a shelter and a refuge.
Edward's avocations had been as worldly perhaps as those of his pretty
cousins; but a man is more thrown upon the reality of life, while girls
live altogether in a factitious state. He had travelled much, and seen
all sorts of people. Besides, between him and Ethel, there was that mute
language which will make those of opposite sexes intelligible to one
another, even when literally not understanding each other's dialect.
Villiers found no deficiency of intelligence or sympathy in Ethel, while
the fashionable girls to whom he had introduced her felt a little at a
loss how to entertain the stranger.

Lord Maristow and his family had been detained in town till after Mr.
Saville's marriage, and were now very eager to leave it. They remained
out of compliment to Edward, and looked forward impatiently to his
wedding as the event that would set them free. London was empty, the
shooting season had begun; yet still he was delayed by his father. He
wished to sign the necessary papers, and free himself from all business,
that he and his bride might immediately join Horatio at Naples. Yet
still Colonel Villiers's marriage was delayed; till at last he intimated
to his son, that it was postponed for the present, and begged that he
would not remain in England on his account.

Edward was somewhat staggered by this intelligence. Yet as the letter
that communicated it contained a considerable remittance, he quieted
himself. To give up Ethel now was a thought that did not for a moment
enter his mind; it was but the reflection of the difficulties that would
surround them, if his prospects failed, that for a few seconds clouded
his brow with care. But it was his nature usually to hope the best, and
to trust to fortune. He had never been so prudent as with regard to his
marriage with Ethel; but that was for her sake. This consideration could
not again enter; for, like her, he would, under the near hope of making
her his, have preferred the wilds of the Illinois, with her for his
wife, than the position of the richest English nobleman, deprived of
such a companion. His heart, delivered up to love, was complete in its
devotion and tenderness. He was already wedded to her in soul, and would
sooner have severed his right arm from his body, than voluntarily have
divided himself from this dearer part of himself. This "other half,"
towards whom he felt as if literally he had, to give her being,


"Lent
Out of his side to her, nearest his heart;
Substantial life, to have her by his side,
Henceforth an individual solace dear."


With these feelings, an early day was urged and named; and, drawing
near, Ethel was soon to become a bride. On first making his offer,
Villiers had written to Lady Lodore; and Mrs. Fitzhenry, much against her
will, by the advice of her solicitor, did the same. Lady Lodore was in
Scotland. No answer came. The promised day approached; but still she
preserved this silence: it became necessary to proceed without her
consent. Banns were published; and Ethel became the wife of Villiers on
the 25th of October. Lord Maristow hastened down to his Castle to kill
pheasants: while, on her part, Mrs. Fitzhenry took her solitary way to
Longfield, half consoled for separating from Ethel, by this return to
the habits of more than sixty years. In vain had London or Richmond
wooed her stay; in vain was she pressed to pay a visit to Maristow
Castle: to return to her home was a more enticing prospect. Her good old
heart danced within her when she first perceived the village steeple;
the chimneys of her own house made tears spring into her eyes; and when,
indeed, she found herself by the familiar hearth, in the accustomed
arm-chair, and her attentive housekeeper came to ask if she would not
take any thing after her journey, it seemed to her as if all the
delights of life were summed up in this welcome return to monotony and
silence.




CHAPTER X


Let me
Awake your love to my uncomforted brother.

OLD PLAY.


Meanwhile Villiers and his bride proceeded on their way to Naples. It
mattered little to Ethel whither they were going, or to whom. Edward was
all in all to her; and the vehicle that bore them along in their journey
was a complete and perfect world, containing all that her heart desired.
They avoided large towns, and every place where there was any chance of
meeting an acquaintance. They passed up the Rhine, and Ethel often
imaged forth, in her fancy, a dear home in a secluded nook; and longed
to remain there, cut off from the world, for ever. She had no thought
but for her husband, and gratitude to Heaven for the happiness showered
on her. Her soul might have been laid bare, each faculty examined, each
idea sifted, and one spirit, one sentiment, one love, would have been
found pervading and uniting them all. The heart of a man is seldom as
single and devoted as that of a woman. In the present instance, it was
natural that Edward should not be so absolutely given up to one thought
as was his bride. Ethel's affections had never been called forth except
by her father, and by him who was now her husband. When it has been
said, that she thought of heaven to hallow and bless her happiness, it
must be understood that the dead made a part of that heaven, to which
she turned her eyes with such sweet thankfulness. She was constant to
the first affection of her heart. She might be said to live perpetually
in thought beside her father's grave. Before she had wept and sorrowed
near it; now she placed the home of her happy married life close to the
sacred earth, and fancied that its mute inhabitant was the guardian
angel to watch over and preserve her.

Villiers had lived among many friends, and was warmly attached to
several. His cousin Horatio was dearer to him than any thing had ever
been, till he knew Ethel. Even now he revered him more, and felt a kind
of duteous attachment drawing him towards him. He wanted Horatio to see
and approve of Ethel:--not that he doubted what his opinion of her would
be; but the delight which his own adoration of her excellence imparted
to him would be doubled, when he saw it shared and confirmed by his
friend. Besides this, he was anxious to see Horace on his own account.
He wished to know whether he was happy in his marriage; whether Clorinda
were worthy of him; and if Lady Lodore were entirely forgotten. As they
advanced on their journey, his desire to see his cousin became more and
more present to his mind; and he talked of him to Ethel, and imparted to
her a portion of his fervent and affectionate feelings.

Entering Switzerland, they came into a world of snow. Here and there, on
the southern side of a mountain, a lawny upland might disclose itself in
summer verdure; and the brawling torrents, increased by the rains, were
not yet made silent by frost. Edward had visited these scenes before;
and he could act the guide to his enraptured Ethel, who remembered her
father's glowing descriptions; and while she gazed with breathless
admiration, saw his step among the hills, and thought that his eye had
rested on the wonders she now beheld. Soon the mountains, the
sky-seeking "palaces of nature," were passed, and they entered fair,
joyous Italy. At each step they left winter far behind. Ethel would
willingly have lingered in Florence and Rome; but once south of the
Appenines, Edward was eager to reach Naples; and the letters he got from
Saville spurred him on to yet greater speed.

Before leaving England, Lucy Saville had said to Ethel,--"You are now
taking our other comfort from us; and what we are to do without either
Horatio or Edward, I am unable to conjecture. We shall be like a house
without its props. Divided, they are not either of them half what they
were joined. Horace is so prudent, so wise, so considerate, so
sympathizing; Edward so active and so kind-hearted. In any difficulty,
we always asked Horace what we ought to do; and Edward did the thing
which he pointed out.

"Horatio's marriage was a sad blow to us all. You will bring Edward
back, and we shall be the happier for your being with him; but shall we
ever see our brother again?--or shall we only see him to lament the
change? Not that he can ever really alter; his heart, his understanding,
his goodness, are as firm as rock; but there is that about him which
makes him too much the slave of those he is in immediate contact with.
He abhors strife; the slightest disunion is mortal to him. He is not of
this world. Pure-minded as a woman, honourable as a knight of old, he is
more like a being we read of, and his match is not to be found upon
earth. Horatio never loved but once, and his attachment was unfortunate.
He loved Lady----" Here recollection dyed Miss Saville's cheeks with
crimson: she had forgotten that Lady Lodore was the mother of Ethel. After
a moment's hesitation she continued:--"I have no right to betray the
secrets of others. Horace was a discarded lover; and he was forced to
despise the lady whom he had imagined possessed of every excellence. For
the first time he was absorbed in what may be termed a selfish
sentiment. He could not bear to see any of us: he fled even from Edward,
and wandering away, we heard at last that he was at Naples, whither he
had gone quite unconscious of the spot of earth to which he was bending
his steps. The first letter we got from him was dated from that place.
His letter was to me; for I am his favourite sister; and God knows my
devoted affection, my worship of him, deserves this preference. You
shall read it; it is the most perfect specimen of enthusiastic and
heart-moving eloquence ever penned. He had been as in a trance, and
awoke again to life as he looked down from Pausilippo on the Bay of
Naples. The attachment to one earthly object, which preyed on his being,
was suddenly merged in one universal love and adoration. He saw that the
"creation was good;" he purged his heart at once of the black spot which
had blotted and marred its beauty; and opened his whole soul to pure,
elevated, heavenly love. I tamely quote his burning and transparent
expressions, through which you may discern, as in a glass, the glorious
excellence of his soul."

"But, alas! this state of holy excitement could not endure; something
human will still creep in to mingle with and sully our noblest
aspirations. Horatio was taken by an acquaintance to see a beautiful
girl at a convent; in a fatal moment an English lady said to him, 'Come,
and I will show you what perfect beauty is:' and those words decided my
poor brother's destiny. Of course I only know our new sister through his
letters. He told us that Clorinda was shut up in this convent through
the heartless vanity of her mother, who dreaded her as a rival, to wait
there till her parents should find some suitable match, which she must
instantly accept, or be doomed to seclusion for ever. In his younger
days Horace had said, 'I am in love with an idea, and therefore women
have no power over me.' But the time came when his heart was to be the
dupe of his imagination--so was it with his first love--so now, I fear,
did he deceive himself with regard to Clorinda. He declared indeed that
his love for her was not an absorbing passion like his first, but a
mingling of pity, admiration, and that tenderness which his warm heart
was ever ready to bestow. He described her as full of genius and
sensibility, a creature of fire and power, but dimmed by sorrow, and
struggling with her chains. He visited her again; he tried to comfort,
he offered to serve her. It was the first time that a manly, generous
spirit had ever presented itself to the desponding girl. The high-souled
Englishman appeared as a god beside her sordid countrymen; indeed,
Horatio would have seemed such compared with any of his sex; his
fascination is irresistible--Clorinda felt it; she loved him with
Italian fervour, and the first word of kindness from him elicited a
whole torrent of gratitude and passion. Horace had no wish to marry; his
old wound was by no means healed, but rather opened, and bled afresh,
when he was called upon to answer the enthusiastic ardour of the Italian
girl. He felt at once the difference of his feeling for her, and the
engrossing sentiment of which he had been nearly the victim. But he
could rescue her from an unworthy fate, and make her happy. He acted
with his usual determination and precipitancy, and within a month she
became his wife. Here ends my story; his letters were more concise after
his marriage. At first I attributed this to his having a new and dearer
friend, but latterly when he has written he has spoken with such
yearning fondness for home, that I fear--And then when I offered to
visit him, he negatived my proposition. How unlike Horatio! it can only
mean that his wife was averse to my coming. I have questioned slightly
any travellers from Italy. Mrs. Saville seldom appears in English
society except at balls, and then she is always surrounded by Italians.
She is decidedly correct in her conduct, but more I cannot tell. Her
letters to us are beautifully written, and of her talents, even her
genius, I do not entertain a doubt. Perhaps I am prejudiced, but I fear
a Neapolitan, or rather, I should say, I fear a convent education; and
that taste which leads her to associate with her own demonstrative,
unrefined countrymen, instead of trying to link herself to her husband's
friends. I may be wrong--I shall be glad to be found so. Will you tell
me whether I am? I rather ask you than Edward, because your feminine
eyes will discern the truth of these things quicker than he. Happy girl!
you are going to see Horatio--to find a new, gifted, fond friend; one as
superior to his fellow-creatures, as perfection is superior to frailty."

This account, remembered with more interest now that she approached the
subject of it, excited Ethel's curiosity, and she began, as they went on
their way from Rome to Naples, in a great degree to participate in
Edward's eagerness to see his cousin.




CHAPTER XI


Sad and troubled?
How brave her anger shows! How it sets off
Her natural beauty! Under what happy star
Was Virolet born, to be beloved and sought
By two incomparable women?

FLETCHER.


It was the month of December when the travellers arrived at this "piece
of heaven dropt upon earth," as the natives themselves name it. The moon
hung a glowing orb in the heavens, and lighted up the sea to beauty. A
blood-red flash shot up now and then from Vesuvius; a summer softness
was in the atmosphere, while a thousand tokens presented themselves of a
climate more friendly, more joyous, and more redundant than that of the
northern Isle from which they came. It was very late at night when they
reached their hotel, and they were heartily fatigued, so that it was not
till the next morning, that immediately after breakfast, Villiers left
Ethel, and went out to seek the abode of his cousin.

He had been gone some little time, when a waiter of the hotel, throwing
open Ethel's drawing-room door, announced "Signor Orazio." Quite new to
Italy, Ethel was ignorant of the custom in that country, of designating
people by their christian names; and that Horatio Saville, being a
resident in Naples, and married to a Neapolitan, was known everywhere by
the appellation which the servant now used. Ethel was not in the least
aware that it was Lucy's brother who presented himself to her. She saw a
gentleman, tall, very slight in person, with a face denoting habitual
thoughtfulness, and stamped by an individuality which she could not tell
whether to think plain, and yet it was certainly open and kind. An
appearance of extreme shyness, almost amounting to awkwardness, was
diffused over him, and his words came hesitatingly; he spoke English,
and was an Englishman--so much Ethel discovered by his first words,
which were, "Villiers is not at home?" and then he began to ask her
about her journey, and how she liked the view of the bay of Naples,
which she beheld from her windows. They were in this kind of trivial
conversation when Edward came bounding up-stairs, and with exclamations
of delight greeted his cousin. Ethel, infinitely surprised, examined her
guest with more care. In a few minutes she began to wonder how she came
to think him plain. His deep-set, dark-grey eyes struck her as
expressive, if not handsome. His features were delicately moulded, and
his fine forehead betokened depth of intellect; but the charm of his
face was a kind of fitful, beamy, inconstant smile, which diffused
incomparable sweetness over his physiognomy. His usual look was cold and
abstracted--his eye speculated with an inward thoughtfulness--a chilling
seriousness sat on his features, but this glancing and varying
half-smile came to dispel gloom, and to invite and please those with
whom he conversed. His voice was modulated by feeling, his language was
fluent, graceful in its turns of expression, and original in the
thoughts which it expressed. His manners were marked by high breeding,
yet they were peculiar. They were formed by his individual disposition,
and under the dominion of sensibility. Hence they were often abrupt and
reserved. He forgot the world around him, and gave token, by absence of
mind, of the absorbing nature of his contemplations. But at a touch this
vanished, and a sweet earnestness, and a beaming kindliness of spirit,
at once displaced his abstraction, rendering him attentive, cordial, and
gay.

Never had Horatio Saville appeared to so little advantage as during his
short tête-à-tête with his new relative. At all times, when
quiescent, he had a retiring manner, and an appearance, whose want of
pretension did not at first allure, and yet which afterwards formed his
greatest attraction. He was always unembarrassed, and Ethel could not
guess that towards her alone he felt as timid and shy as a girl. It was
with considerable effect that Horatio had commanded himself to appear
before the daughter of Lady Lodore. There was something incongruous and
inconceivable in the idea of the child of Cornelia a woman, married to
his cousin. He feared to see in her an image of the being who had
subdued his heart of hearts, and laid prostrate his whole soul; he
trembled to catch the sound of her voice, lest it might echo tones which
could disturb to their depths his inmost thoughts. Ethel was so unlike
her mother, that by degrees he became reassured; her eyes, her hair, her
stature, and tall slender shape, were the reverse of Lady Lodore; so
that in a little while he ventured to raise his eyes to her face, and to
listen to her, without being preoccupied by a painful sensation, which,
in its violence, resembled terror. It is true that by degrees this
dissimilarity to her mother became less; she had gestures, smiles, and
tones, that were all Lady Lodore, and which, when discerned, struck his
heart with a pang, stealing away his voice, and causing him to stand
suspended in the act he was about, like one acted upon by magic.

While this mute and curious examination was going on in the minds of
Ethel and her visitant, the conversation had not tarried. Edward had
never been so far south, and the wonders of Naples were as new to him as
to Ethel. Saville was eager to show them, and proposed going that very
day to Pompeii. For, as he said, all their winter was not like the
present day, so that it was best to seize the genial weather while it
lasted. Was Mrs. Villiers too much fatigued? On the contrary, Ethel was
quite on the alert; but first she asked whether Mrs. Saville would not
accompany them.

"Clorinda," said Horatio, "promises herself much pleasure from your
acquaintance, and intends calling on you to-day at twenty-four o'clock,
that is, at the Ave Maria: how stupid I am," he continued, laughing, "I
quite forget that you are not Italianized, as I am, and do not know the
way in which the people here count their time. Clorinda will call late
in the afternoon, the usual visiting hour at Naples, but she would find
no pleasure in visiting a ruined city and fallen fragments. One house in
the Chiaja is worth fifty Pompeiis in the eyes of a Neapolitan, and
Clorinda is one, heart and soul. I hope you will be pleased with her,
for she is an admirable specimen of her countrywomen, and they are
wonderful and often sublime creatures in their way; but do not mistake
her for an English woman, or you will be disappointed--she has not one
atom of body, one particle of mind, that bears the least affinity to
England. And now, is your carriage ordered?--there it is at the door;
so, as I should say to one of my own dear sisters, put on your bonnet,
Ethel, quickly, and do not keep us waiting; for though at Naples, days
are short in December, and we have none of their light to lose."

When, after this explanation, Ethel first saw Clorinda, she was inclined
to think that Saville had scarcely done his wife justice. Certainly she
was entirely Italian, but she was very beautiful; her complexion was
delicate, though dark and without much colour. Her hair silken and
glossy as the raven's wing; her large bright black eyes resplendent; the
perfect arch of her brows, and the marmoreal and harmonious grace of her
forehead, such as is never seen in northern lands, except in sculpture
imitated from the Greeks. The lower part of her face was not so good;
her smile was deficient in sweetness, her voice wanted melody, and
sounded loud to an English ear. Her gestures were expressive, but quick
and wanting in grace. She was more agreeable when silent and could be
regarded as a picture, than when called into action. She was
complimentary in her conversation, and her manners were winning by their
frankness and ease. She gesticulated too much, and her features were too
much in motion,--too pantomimely expressive, so to speak, not to impress
disagreeably one accustomed to the composure of the English. Still she
was a beautiful creature; young, artless, desirous to please, and
endowed, moreover, with the vivacious genius, the imaginative talent of
her country. She spoke as if she were passionately attached to her
husband; but when Ethel mentioned his English home and his relations, a
cloud came over the lovely Neapolitan's countenance, and a tremor shook
her frame. "Do not think hardly of me," she said, "I do not hate
England, but I fear it. I am sure I should be disliked there--I should
be censured, perhaps taunted, for a thousand habits and feelings as
natural to me as the air I breathe. I am proud, and I should retort
impertinence, and, displeasing my husband, become miserable beyond
words. Stay with us; you I love, and should be wretched to part from.
Stay and enjoy this paradise with us. Intreat his sisters, if they wish
to see Horatio, to come over. I will be more than a sister to them; but
let us all forget that such a place as that cold, distant England
exists."

This was Clorinda's usual mode of speaking of her husband's native
country: but once, when Ethel had urged her going there with more
earnestness than usual, suddenly her countenance became disturbed; and
with a lowering and stormy expression of face, that her English friend
could never afterwards forget, she said, "Say not another word, I pray.
Horatio loved--he loves an Englishwoman--it is torture enough for me to
know this. I would rather be torn in quarters by wild horses, broken in
pieces on the rack, than set foot in England. My cousin, as you have
pity for me, and value the life of Horace, use your influence to prevent
his only dreaming of a return to England. Methinks I could strike him
dead, if I only knew that such a thought lived for a second in his
heart."

These words said, Clorinda resumed her smiles, and was, more than usual,
desirous of flattering and pleasing Ethel; so that she softened, though
she could not erase, the impression her vehemence had made. However,
there appeared no necessity for Ethel to exert her influence. Horace was
equally averse to going to England. He loved to talk of it; he
remembered, with yearning fondness, its verdant beauty, its pretty
villages, its meandering streams, its embowered groves; the spots he had
inhabited, the trivial incidents of his daily life, were recalled with
affection: but he did not wish to return. Villiers attributed this
somewhat to his unforgotten attachment to Lady Lodore; but it was more
strange that he negatived the idea of one of his sisters visiting
him:--"She would not like it," was all the explanation he gave.

Several months passed lightly over the heads of the new-married pair;
while they, bee-like, sipped the honey of life, and, never cloyed, fed
perpetually on sweets. Naples, its galleries, its classic and beautiful
environs, offered an endless succession of occupation and amusement. The
presence of Saville elevated their pleasures; for he added the living
spirit of poetry to their sensations, and associated the treasures of
human genius with the sublime beauty of nature. He had a tact, a
delicacy, a kind of electric sympathy in his disposition, that endeared
him to every one that approached him. His very singularities, by keeping
alive an interest in him, added to the charm. Sometimes he was so
abstracted as to do the most absent things in the world; and the quick
alternations of his gaiety and seriousness were often ludicrous from
their excess. There was one thing, indeed, to which Ethel found it
difficult to accustom herself, which was his want of punctuality, which
often caused hours to be lost, and their excursions spoiled. Nor did he
ever furnish good excuses, but seemed annoyed at being questioned on the
subject.

Clorinda never joined them in their drives and rides out of the city.
She feared to trust herself to winds and waves; the heat, the breeze,
the dust, annoyed her; and she found no pleasure in looking at
mountains, which, after all, were only mountains; or ruins, which were
only ruins--stones, fit for nothing but to be removed and thrown away.
But Clorinda had an empire of her own, to which she gladly admitted her
English relatives, and the delights of which they fully appreciated.
Music, heard in such perfection at the glory of Naples, the theatre of
San Carlo, and the heavenly strains which filled the churches with an
atmosphere of sound more entrancing than incense--all these were hers;
and her own voice, rich, full, and well-cultivated, made a temple of
melody of her own home.

There was--it could not be called a wall--but there was certainly a
paling, of separation between Ethel and Clorinda. The young English girl
could not discover in what it consisted, or why she could not pass
beyond. The more she saw of the Neapolitan, the more she believed that
she liked her--certainly her admiration increased;--still she felt that
on the first day that Clorinda had visited her, with her caressing
manners and well-turned flatteries, she was quite as intimate with her
as now, after several weeks. She had surely nothing to conceal; all was
open in her conduct; yet often Ethel thought of her as a magician
guarding a secret treasure. Something there was that she watched over
and hid. There was often a look of anxiety about her which Ethel
unconsciously dispelled by some chance word; or a cloud all at once
dimmed her face, and her magnificent and dazzling eyes flashed sudden
fire, without apparent cause. There was something in her manner that
always said, "You are English, I am Italian; and there is natural war
between my fire and your snow." But no word, no act, ever betrayed
alienation of feeling. Thus a sort of mystery pervaded their
intercourse, which, though it might excite curiosity, and was not unakin
to admiration, kept the affections in check.

Sometimes Ethel thought that Clorinda feared to compromise her
salvation, for she was a Catholic. During the revelries of the Carnival,
this difference of religion was not so apparent; but when Lent began, it
showed itself, and divided them, on various occasions, more than before.
At last, Lent also was drawing to a close; and as Villiers and Ethel
were anxious to see the ceremonies of Passion Week at Rome, it was
arranged that they, and Mr. and Mrs. Saville, should visit the Eternal
City together. Horatio manifested a distaste even to the short residence
that it was agreed they should make together during the month they were
to spend at Rome; but Clorinda showed herself particularly anxious for
the fulfilment of this plan, and, the majority prevailing, the whole
party left Naples together.

Full soon was the veil of mystery then withdrawn, and Villiers and his
wife let into the arcana of their cousin's life. Horatio had yielded
unwillingly to Clorinda's intreaties, and extracted many promises from
her before he gave his consent; but all would not do--the natural, the
uncontrollable violence of her disposition broke down every barrier; and
in spite of his caution, and her struggles with herself, the reality
opened fearfully upon the English pair. The lava torrent of Neapolitan
blood flowed in her veins; and restraining it for some time, it at last
poured itself forth with volcanic violence. It was at the inn at
Terracina, on their way to Rome, that a scene took place, such as an
English person must cross Alps and Apennines to behold. Ethel had seen
that something was wrong. She saw the beauty of Clorinda vanished,
changed, melted away and awfully transformed into actual ugliness: she
saw tiger like glances from her eyes, and her lips pale and quivering.
Poor Saville strove, with gentle words, to allay the storm to which some
jealous freak gave rise: perceiving that his endeavours were vain, he
rose to quit the room. They were at dinner: she sprung on him with a
knife in her hand: Edward seized her arm; and she sunk on the floor in
convulsions. Ethel was scarcely less moved. Seeing her terrified beyond
all expression, Horatio led her from the room. He was pale--his voice
failed him. He left her; and sending Edward to her, returned to his
wife.

The same evening he said to Villiers,--"Do not ask me to stay;--let me
go without another word. You see how it is. With what Herculean labour I
have concealed this sad truth so long, is scarcely conceivable. When
Ethel's sweet smile has sometimes reproached my tardiness, I have
escaped, but half alive, from a scene like the one you witnessed.

"In a few hours, it is true, Clorinda will be shocked--full of
remorse--at my feet;--that is worse still. Her repentance is as violent
as her rage; and both transform her from a woman into something too
painful to dwell upon. She is generous, virtuous, full of power and
talent; but this fatal vehemence more than neutralizes her good
qualities. I can do nothing; I am chained to the oar. I have but one
hope: time, reason, and steadiness of conduct on my part, may subdue
her; and as she will at no distant period become a mother, softer
feelings may develop themselves. Sometimes I am violently impelled to
fly from her for ever. But she loves me, and I will not desert her. If
she will permit me, I will do my duty to the end. Let us go back now.
You will return to Naples next winter; and with this separation, which
will gall her proud spirit to its core, as a lesson, I hope by that time
that she will prove more worthy of Ethel's society."

Nothing could be said to this. Saville, though he asked, "Let us go
back," had decreed, irrevocably, in his own mind, not to advance another
step with his companions. The parting was melancholy and ominous. He
would not permit Clorinda to appear again; for, as he said, he feared
her repentance more than her violence, and would not expose Ethel as the
witness of a scene of humiliation and shame. A thousand times over, his
friends promised to return immediately to Naples, not deferring their
visit till the following winter. He was to take a house for them, for
the summer, at Castel à Mare, or Sorrento; and immediately after Easter
they were to return. These kind promises were a balm to his disturbed
mind. He watched their carriage from the inn at Terracina, as it skimmed
along the level road of the Pontine Marshes, and could not despair while
he expected its quick return. Turning his eyes away, he resumed his yoke
again; and, melancholy beyond his wont, joined his remorseful wife. They
were soon on their way back to Naples:--she less demonstrative in her
repentance, because more internally and deeply touched, than she had
ever been before.




CHAPTER XII


Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade.

SHAKSPEARE.


Parting thus sadly from their unfortunate cousin, Villiers and Ethel
were drawn together yet nearer, and, if possible, with a deeper
tenderness of affection than before. Here was an example before their
eyes, that all their fellow-creatures were not equally fortunate in the
lottery of life, and that worse than a blank befell many, while the
ticket which they had drawn was a prize beyond all summing. Edward felt
indeed disappointed at losing his cousin's society, as well as deeply
grieved at the wretched fate which he had selected for himself. Ethel,
on the contrary, was in her heart glad that he was absent. She had no
place in that heart to spare away from her husband; and however much she
liked Horatio, and worthy as he was of her friendship, she felt him as
an encroacher. Now she delivered herself up to Edward, and to the
thought of Edward solely, with fresh and genuine delight. No one stood
between her and him--none called off his attention, or forced her to
pass one second of time unoccupied by his idea. When she expressed these
feelings to Villiers, he called her selfish and narrow-hearted, yet his
pride and his affection were gratified; for he knew how true was every
word she uttered, and how without flaw or blot was her faith and her
attachment.

"And yet, my Ethel," he said, "I sometimes ask myself, how this boasted
affection of yours will stand the trials which I fear are preparing for
it."

"What trials?" she asked anxiously.

"Care, poverty; the want of all the luxuries, perhaps of the comforts of
life."

Ethel smiled again. "That is your affair," she replied, "do you rouse
your courage, if you look upon these as evils. I shall feel nothing of
all this, while near you; care--poverty--want! as if I needed any thing
except your love--you yourself--who are mine."

"Yes, dear," replied Villiers, "that is all very well at this moment;
rolling along in a comfortable carriage--an hotel ready to receive us,
with all its luxuries; but suppose us without any of these,
Ethel--suppose yourself in a melancholy, little, dingy abode, without
servants, without carriage, going out on foot."

"Not alone," replied his wife, laughing, and kissing his hand; "I shall
have you to wait on me--to wait upon--"

"You take it very well now,"
said Edward; "I hope that you will never be put to the trial. I am far
from anticipating this excess of wretchedness, of course, but I cannot
help feeling, that the prospects of to-morrow are uncertain, and I am
anxious for my long-delayed letters from England."

With Ethel's deep and warm affection, had she been ten or only five
years older, she also must have participated in Edward's inquietude. But
care is a word, not an emotion, for the very young. She was only
seventeen. She had never attended to the disbursements of money--she was
ignorant of the mechanism of giving and receiving, on which the course
of our life depends. It was in vain that she sought in the interior of
her mind for an image that should produce fear or regret, with regard to
the absence or presence of money. No one reflection or association
brought into being an idea on the subject. Again she kissed Edward's
hand, and looked on him with her soft clear eyes, thinking only, "He is
here--and Heaven has given me all I ask."

Left again to themselves, they were anxious to avoid acquaintances. Yet
this was impossible during the Holy Week at Rome. Villiers found many
persons whom he knew; women of high rank and fashion, men of wealth, or
with the appearance of it, enjoying the present, and, while away from
England, unencumbered by care. Mr. and Mrs. Villiers were among these,
and of them; their rank and their style of living resembling theirs,
associated them together. All this was necessary to Edward, for he had
been accustomed to it--it was natural to Ethel, because, being wholly
inexperienced, she did as others did, and as Villiers wished her to do,
without reflection or forethought.

Yet each day added to Edward's careful thoughts. Easter was gone, and
the period approached when they had talked of returning to Naples. The
covey of English had taken flight towards the north; they were almost
the only strangers in the ancient and silent city, whose every stone
breathes of a world gone by--whose surpassing beauty crowns her still
the glory of the world. The English pair, left to themselves, roamed
through the ruins and loitered in the galleries, never weary of the very
ocean of beauty and grandeur which they coursed over in their summer
bark. The weather grew warm, for the month of May had commenced, and
they took refuge in the vast churches from the heat; at twilight they
sought the neighbouring gardens, or scrambled about the Coliseum, or the
more ruined and weedgrown baths of Caracalla. The fire-flies came out,
and the splashing of the many fountains reached their ears from afar,
while the clear azure of the Roman sky bent over them in beauty and
peace.

Ethel never alluded to their proposed return to Naples--she feared each
day to hear Villiers mention it--she was so happy where she was, she
shrunk from any change. The majesty, the simplicity, the quiet of Rome,
were in unison with the holy stillness that dwelt in her soul, absorbed
as it was by one unchanging image. She had reached the summit of human
happiness--she had nothing more to ask; her full heart, not bursting,
yet gently overflowing in its bliss, thanked Heaven, and drew nearer
Edward, and was at peace.

"God help us!" exclaimed Villiers, "I wonder what on earth will become
of us!"

They were sitting together on fragment of the Coliseum; they had
clambered up its fallen wall, and reached a kind of weed-grown chasm
whose depth, as it was moonlight, they could not measure by the eye; so
they sat beside it on a small fragment, and Villiers held Ethel close to
him lest she should fall. The heartfelt and innocent caress of two
united in the sight of Heaven, wedded together for the endurance of the
good and ills of life, hallowed the spot and hour; and then, even while
Ethel nestled nearer to him in fondness, Edward made the exclamation
that she heard with a wonder which mingled with, yet could not disturb,
the calm joy which she felt.

"What but good can come of us, while we are thus?" she asked.

"You will not listen to me, nor understand me," replied her husband.
"But I do assure you, that our position is more than critical. No
remittances, no letters come from England; we are in debt here--in debt
in Italy! A thousand miles from our resources! I grope in the dark and
see no outlet--every day's post, with the nothing that it brings, adds
to my anxiety."

"All will be well," replied Ethel gently; "no real evil will happen to
us, be assured."

"I wish," said Villiers, "your experience, instead of your ignorance,
suggested the assertion. I would rather die a thousand deaths than apply
to dear Horace, who is ill enough off himself; but every day here adds
to our difficulties. Our only hope is in our instant return to
England--and, by heavens!--you kiss me, Ethel, as if we lived in fairy
land, and that such were our food--have you no fears?"

"I am sorry to say, none," she answered in a soft voice; "I wish I could
contrive some, because I appear unsympathizing to you--but I cannot
fear;--you are in health and near me. Heaven and my dear father's spirit
will watch over us, and all will be well. This is the end and beginning
of my anxiety; so dismiss yours, love--for, believe me, in a day or two,
these forebodings of yours will be as a dream."

"It is very strange," replied Edward, "were you not so close to me, I
should fancy you a spirit instead of a woman; you seem to have no touch
of earthly solicitude. Well, I will do as you bid me, and hope for
to-morrow. And now let us get down from this place before the moon sets
and leaves us in darkness."

As if to confirm the auguries of Ethel, the following morning brought
the long-expected letters. One contained a remittance, another was from
Colonel Villiers, to say, that Edward's immediate presence was requisite
in England to make the final arrangements before his marriage. With a
glad heart Villiers turned his steps northward; while Ethel, if she
could have regretted aught while with him, would have sighed to leave
their lonely haunts in Rome. She well knew that whatever of sublime
nature might display, or man might congregate of beautiful in art
elsewhere, there was a calm majesty, a silent and awful repose in the
ruins of Rome, joined to the delights of a southern climate, and the
luxuriant vegetation of a sunny soil, more in unison with her single and
devoted heart, than any other spot in the universe could boast. They
would both have rejoiced to have seen Saville again; yet they were
unacknowledgedly glad not to pursue their plan of domesticating near him
at Naples. A remediless evil, which is for ever the source of fresh
disquietude, is one that tasks human fortitude and human patience, more
than those vaster misfortunes which elevate while they wound. The proud
aspiring spirit of man craves something to raise him from the dust, and
to adorn his insignificance; he seeks to strengthen his alliance with
the lofty and the eternal, and shrinks from low-born cares, as being the
fetters and bolts that link him to his baser origin. Saville, the slave
of a violent woman's caprice, struggling with passions, at once so fiery
and so feeble as to excite contempt, was a spectacle which they were
glad to shun. Their own souls were in perfect harmony, and discord was
peculiarly abhorrent to them.

They travelled by the beaten route of Mont Cenis, Lyons, and Calais, and
in less than a month arrived in England. As the presence of Villiers was
requisite in London, after staying a few days at an hotel in
Brook-street, they took a furnished house in the same street for a short
time. The London season had passed its zenith, but its decline was
scarcely perceptible. Ethel had no wish to enter into its gaieties, and
it had been Edward's plan to avoid them until they were richer. But here
they were, placed by fate in the very midst of them; and as, when their
affairs were settled, they intended again to return abroad, he could not
refuse himself the pleasure of seeing Ethel, in the first flower of her
loveliness, mingling with, and outshining, every other beauty of her
country. It would have been difficult indeed, placed within the verge of
the English aristocracy assembled in London, to avoid its engagements
and pleasures--for he "also was an Arcadian," and made one of the
self-enthroned "world." The next two months, therefore, while still
every settlement was delayed by his father, they spent in the
fashionable circles of London.

They did not indeed enter into its amusements with the zest and
resolution of tyros. To Villiers the scene was not new, and therefore
not exceedingly enticing; and Ethel's mind was not of the sort to be
borne along in the stream of folly. They avoided going to crowded
entertainments--they were always satisfied with one or two parties in
the evening. Nay, once or twice in the week they usually remained at
home, and not unseldom dined tête-à-tête. The serpent fang of
pleasure, and the paltry ambition of society, had no power over Ethel.
She often enjoyed herself, because she often met people of either sex,
whose fame, or wit, or manners, interested and pleased her. But as
little vanity as mortal woman ever had fell to her share. Very young,
and (to use the phrase of the day) very new, flattery and admiration
glanced harmlessly by her. Her personal vanity was satisfied when
Villiers was pleased, and, for the rest, she was glad to improve her
mind, and to wear away the timidity, which she felt that her lonely
education had induced, by mingling with the best society of her country.

She had also some curiosity, and as she promised herself but a brief
sojourn in this land of lions, she wished to see several things and
persons she might never come in contact with again. Various names which
had reached her in the Illinois, here grew from shadows into real human
beings--ministers of state, beauties, authors, and wits. She visited
once or twice the ventilator of St. Stephen's, and graced a red bench of
the House of Lords on the prorogation of Parliament. Villiers was very
much pleased with her throughout. His pride was gratified by the
approval she elicited from all. Men admired her, but distantly--as a
being they could not rudely nor impertinently approach. Women were not
afraid of her, because they saw, that though she made no display of
conjugal attachment, she loved her husband. Her extreme youth, the
perpetual sunshine of her countenance, and the gentle grace of her
manners, won more the liking than the praise of her associates. They
drew near her as to one too untaught to understand their mysteries, and
too innocent to judge them severely; an atmosphere of kindness and of
repose followed her wherever she went: this her husband felt more than
any other, and he prized his Ethel at the worth she so truly deserved.

One of the reasons which caused Mrs. Villiers to avoid large assemblies,
was that Lady Lodore was in town, and that in such places they sometimes
met. Ethel did not well know how to act. Youth is ever fearful of making
unwelcome demonstration, and false shame often acts more powerfully to
influence it, than the call of duty or the voice of affection. Villiers
had no desire to bring the mother and daughter together, and stood
neutral. Lady Lodore had once or twice recognized her by a bow and a
smile, but after such, she always vanished and was seen no more that
evening. Ethel often yearned to approach, to claim her tenderness and to
offer her filial affection. Villiers laughed at such flights. "The safe
thing to do," he said, "is to take the tone of Lady Lodore. She is held
back by no bashfulness--she does the thing she wishes, without
hesitation or difficulty. Did she desire her lovely grown-up daughter to
play a child's part towards her, she would soon contrive to bring it
about. Lady Lodore is a woman of the world--she was nursed in its
lessons, and piously adheres to its code; its ways are her's, and the
objects of ambition which it holds out, are those which she desires to
attain. She is talked of as admired and followed by the Earl of D----. You
may spoil all, if you put yourself forward."

Ethel was not quite satisfied. The voice of nature was awake within, and
she yearned to claim her mother's affection. Until now, she had regarded
her more as a stranger; but at this time, a filial instinct stirred her
heart, impelling her to some outward act--some demonstration of duty.
Whenever she saw Lady Lodore, which was rarely, and at a distance, she
gazed earnestly on her, and tried to read within her soul, whether Villiers
was right, and her mother happy. The shining, uniform outside of a woman
of fashion baffled her endeavours without convincing her. One evening at
the Opera, she discerned Lady Lodore in the tier below her. Ethel drew
back and shaded herself with the curtain of her box, so that she could
not be perceived, while she watched her mother intently. A succession of
visitors came into Lady Lodore's box, and she spoke to all with the
animation of a heart at ease. There was an almost voluptuous repose in
her manner and appearance, that contrasted with, while it adorned, the
easy flow of her conversation, and the springtide of wit, which, to
judge from the amusement of her auditors, flowed from her lips. Yet
Ethel fancied that her smile was often forced, so suddenly did it
displace an expression of listlessness and languor, which when she
turned from the people in her box to the stage, came across her
countenance like a shadow. It might be the gas, which shadows so
unbecomingly the fair audience at the King's Theatre; it might be the
consequences of raking, for Lady Lodore was out every night; but Ethel
thought that she saw a change; she was less brilliant, her person
thinner, and had lost some of its exquisite roundness. Still, as her
daughter gazed, she thought, She is not happy. Yet what could she do?
How pour sweetness into the bitter stream of life? As Villiers had said,
any advance of hers might spoil all. The sister of the nobleman he had
mentioned, was her companion at the opera. Lord D----himself came, though
late, to fetch her away. She had therefore her own prospects, her own
plans, which doubtless she desired to pursue undisturbed, however they
might fail to charm away the burthen of life.

Once, and only once, Ethel heard her mother's voice, and was spoken to
by her. She had gone to hear the speech from the throne, on the
prorogation of Parliament. She got there late, so that every bench was
filled. Room was made for her near the throne, immediately under the
gallery, (as the house was constructed until last year,) but she was
obliged to be separated from her party, and sat half annoyed at being
surrounded by strangers. A peer, whom she recognized as the Earl of D----,
came up, and entered into conversation with the lady sitting behind her.
Could it be her mother? She remembered, that as she sat down she had
glanced at some one whom she thought she knew, and she did not doubt that
this was Lady Lodore. A sudden thrill passed as an electric shock through
her frame, every joint in her body trembled, her knees knocked together,
and the colour forsook her cheeks. She tried to rally. Why should she
feel agitated, as if possessed by terror, on account of this near
contact with the dearest relation Heaven has bestowed on its creatures?
Why not turn; and if she did not speak, claim, with beseeching eyes, her
mother's love? Was it indeed her? The lady spoke, and her voice entered
and stirred Ethel's beating heart with strange emotion; every drop of
blood within her seemed to leap at the sound; but she sat still as a
statue, saying to herself, "When Lord D----leaves her I will turn and
speak." After some trivial conversation on topics of the day, the peers
were ordered to take their seats, and Lord D----departed;--then Ethel
tried to summon all her courage; but now the doors were thrown open, the
king entered, and every one stood up. At this moment,--as she, in the
confusion of being called upon, while abstracted, to do any act, however
slight, had for a moment half forgotten her mother,--her arm was
touched; and the same voice which had replied to Lord D----, said to her,
"Your ear-ring is unfastened, Ethel; it will fall out." Ethel could not
speak; she raised her hands, mechanically, to arrange the ornament; but
her trembling fingers refused to perform the office. "Permit me," said
the lady, drawing off her glove; and Ethel felt her mother's hand touch
her cheek: her very life stood suspended; it was a bitter pain, yet a
pleasure inconceivable; there was a suffocation in her throat, and the
tears filled her eyes; but even the simple words, "I thank you," died on
her lips--her voice could frame no sound. The world, and all within its
sphere, might have passed away at that moment, and she been unconscious
of any change. "Yes, she will love me!" was the idea that spoke audibly
within; and a feeling of confidence, a flow of sympathy and enthusiastic
affection, burst on her heart. As soon as she could recollect herself,
she turned: Lady Lodore was no longer there; she had glided from her
seat; and Ethel just caught a glimpse of her, as she contrived another
for herself, behind a column, which afterwards so hid her, that her
daughter could only see the waving of her plumes. On these she fixed her
eyes until all was over; and then Lady Lodore went out hurriedly, with
averted face, as if to escape her recognition. This put the seal on
Ethel's dream. She believed that her mother obviously signified her
desire that they should continue strangers to each other. It was hard,
but she must submit. She had no longer that prejudice against Lady
Lodore, that exaggerated notion of her demerits, which the long exile of
her father, and the abhorrence of Mrs. Fitzhenry, had before instilled.
Her mother was no longer a semi-gorgon, hid behind a deceptive mask--a
Medea, without a touch of human pity. She was a lovely, soft-voiced,
angelic-looking woman, whom she would have given worlds to be permitted
to love and wait upon. She found excuses for her errors; she lavished
admiration on all her attractions; she could do all but muster courage
to vanquish the obstacles that existed to their intercourse. She fondly
cherished her image, as an idol placed in the sanctuary of her heart,
which she could regard with silent reverence and worship, but whose
concealing veil she could not raise. Villiers smiled when she spoke in
this way to him. He saw, in her enthusiasm, the overflowing of an
affectionate heart, which longed to exhaust itself in loving. He kissed
her, and bade her think any thing, so that she did nothing. The time for
doing had indeed, for the present, passed away. Lady Lodore left town;
and when mother and daughter met again, it was not destined to be
beneath a palace roof, surrounded by the nobility of the land.




CHAPTER XIII


I choose to comfort myself by considering, that even
while I am lamenting my present uneasiness, it is
passing away.

HORACE WALPOLE.


An event occurred at this time, which considerably altered the plans of
Mr. and Mrs. Villiers. They had been invited to spend some time at
Maristow Castle, and were about to proceed thither with Lord Maristow
and his daughters, when the sudden death of Mr. Saville changed every
thing. He died of a malignant fever, leaving a young widow, and no
child, to inherit his place in society.

Through this unlooked-for event, Horatio became the immediate heir of
his father's title. He stept, from the slighted position of a younger
son into the rank of the eldest; and thus became another being in all
men's eyes--but chiefly in his father's.

Viscount Maristow had deeply regretted his son's foreign marriage, and
argued against his choice of remaining abroad. He was a statesman, and
conceived that Horatio's talents and eloquence would place him high
among the legislators of St. Stephen's. The soundness of his
understanding, and the flowing brilliancy of his language, were pledges
of his success. But Saville was not ambitious. His imagination rose high
above the empty honours of the world--to be useful was a better aim; but
he did not conceive that his was a mind calculated to lead others in its
train: its framework was too delicate, too finely strung, to sound in
accord with the many. He wanted the desire to triumph; and was content
to adore truth in the temple of his own mind, without defacing its
worship by truckling to the many falsehoods and errors which demand
subserviency in the world.

Lord Maristow had hitherto submitted to his disappointment, not without
murmurs, but without making any great effort at victory. He had written
many letters intreating his son to cast off the drowsy Neapolitan
sloth;--he had besought Villiers, previous to his departure the
preceding year, to bring his cousin back with him;--and this was all.

The death of his eldest son quickened him to exertion. He resolved to
trust no longer to written arguments, but to go himself to Italy, and by
force of paternal authority, or persuasions, to induce his son to come
back to his native country, and to fill with honour the post to which
fortune had advanced him. He did not doubt that Horatio would himself
feel the force of his new duties; but it would be clenching his purpose,
and paying an agreeable compliment to Clorinda, to make this journey,
and to bring them back with him when he returned. Whatever Mrs.
Saville's distaste to England might be, it must yield to the necessity
that now drew her thither. Lord Maristow could not imagine any
resistance so violent as to impede his wishes. The projected journey
charmed his daughters, saddened as they were by their recent loss. Lucy
was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing her beloved brother. She felt
sure that Clorinda would be brought to reason and thus, with their
hearts set upon one object, one idea, they bade adieu to Ethel and her
husband, as if their career was to be as sunny and as prosperous as they
doubted not that their own would be.

Lord Maristow alone guessed how things might stand. "Edward, my dear
boy," he said, "give me credit for great anxiety on your account. I wish
this marriage of yours had not taken place, then you might have roughed
it as other young men do, and have been the better for a little tart
experience. I do not like this shuffling on your father's part. I hear
for a certainty that this marriage of his will come to nothing--the
friends of the young lady are against it, and she is very young, and
only an heiress by courtesy--her father can give her as many tens of
thousands as he pleases, but he has sworn not to give her a shilling if
she marries without his consent; and he has forbidden Colonel Villiers
his house. He still continues at Cheltenham, and assures every one that
he is on safe ground; that the girl loves him, and that when once his,
the father must yield. It is too ridiculous to see him playing a
boy-lover's part at his time of life, trying to undermine a daughter's
sense of duty--he, who may soon be a grandfather! The poor little thing,
I am told, is quite fascinated by his dashing manners and station in
society. We shall see how it will end--I fear ill; her father might
pardon a runaway match with a lover of her own age; but he will never
forgive the coldblooded villany, excuse me, of a man of three times her
age; who for gain, and gain only, is seeking to steal her from him. Such
is the sum of what I am told by a friend of mine, just arrived from
Cheltenham. The whole thing is the farce of the day, and the stolen
interviews of the lovers, and the loud, vulgarly-spoken denunciations of
her father, vary the scene from a travestie of Romeo and Juliet to the
comedies of Plautus or Molière. I beg your pardon, Edward, for my
frankness, but I am angry. I have been used as a cat's-paw--I have been
treated unfairly--I was told that the marriage wanted but your
signature--my representations induced you to offer to Miss Fitzhenry,
and now you are a ruined man. I am hampered by my own family, and cannot
come forward to your assistance. My advice is, that you wait a little,
and see what turn matters take; once decided, however they conclude,
strong representations shall be made to your father, and he shall be
forced to render proper assistance; then if politics take a better turn,
I may do something for you--or you can live abroad till better times."

Villiers thanked Lord Maristow for his advice, and made no remarks
either on his details or promises. He saw his own fate stretched
drearily before him; but his pride made him strong to bear without any
outward signs of wincing. He would suffer all, conceal all, and be
pitied by none. The thought of Ethel alone made him weak. Were she
sheltered during the storm which he saw gathering so darkly, he would
have felt satisfied.

What was to be done? To go abroad, was to encounter beggary and famine.
To remain, exposed him to a thousand insults and dangers from which
there was no escape. Such were the whisperings of despair--but brighter
hopes often visited him. All could not be so evil as it seemed. Fortune,
so long his enemy, would yield at last one inch of ground--one inch to
stand upon, where he might wait in patience for better days. Had he
indeed done his utmost to avert the calamities he apprehended? Certainly
not. Thus spoke his sanguine spirit: more could and should be done. His
father might find means, he himself be enabled to arrange with his
lawyer some mode of raising a sum of money which would at least enable
him to go on the continent with his wife. He spent his thoughts in
wishes for the attainment of this desirable conclusion to his adversity,
till the very earnestness of his expectations seemed to promise their
realization. It could not be that the worst would come. Absurd!
Something must happen to assist them. Seeking for this unknown something
which, in spite of all his efforts, would take no visible or tangible
form, he spent weary days and sleepless nights, his brain spinning webs
of thought, not like those of the spider, useful to their weaver--a
tangled skein they were rather, where the clue was inextricably hid. He
did not speak of these things to Ethel, but he grew sad, and she was
anxious to go out of town, to have him all to herself, when she promised
herself to dispel his gloom; and, as she darkly guessed at the source of
his disquietude, by economy and a system of rigid privation, to show him
how willing and able she was to meet the adversity which he so much
dreaded.




CHAPTER XIV


The pure, the open, prosperous love,
That pledged on earth, and sealed above,
Grows in the world's approving eyes,
In friendship's smile and home's caress,
Collecting all the heart's sweet ties
Into one knot of happiness.

LALLA ROOKH.


Another month withered away in fruitless expectation. Villiers felt that
he was following an ignis fatuus, yet knew not how to give up his
pursuit. At length, he listened more docilely to Ethel's representations
of the expediency of quitting town. She wished to pay her long-promised
visit to her aunt, and Villiers at last consented to accompany her. They
gave up their house, dispersed a tolerably numerous establishment, and
left town for their sober and rural seclusion in Essex.

Taken from the immediate scene where care met him at every turn,
Edward's spirits rose; and the very tranquillity and remoteness of
Longfield became a relief and an enjoyment. It was bright October
weather. The fields were green, the hedges yet in verdant trim. The air
was so still that the dead leaves hung too lazy to fall, from the
topmost boughs of the earlier trees. The oak was still dressed in a dark
sober green--the fresh July shoot, having lost its summer hue, was
unapparent among the foliage; the varying tints of beach, ash, and elm,
diversified the woods. The morning and evening skies were resplendent
with crimson and gold, and the moonlight nights were sweeter than the
day.

Fatigued by the hurry of town, and one at least worn out with care, the
young pair took a new lease of love in idleness in this lonely spot. A
slight attack of rheumatism confined Aunt Bessy to her chimney-corner,
but in spite of her caution to Ethel not to incur the same penalty from
all the array of wet walks and damp shoes, it was her best pleasure each
morning to tie on her bonnet, take her husband's arm, and they wandered
away together, returning only to find their horses ready, and then they
departed for hours, coming back late and unwillingly after the sun was
down. Mrs. Elizabeth wondered where all the beautiful spots were, which
Ethel described so enthusiastically as to be found in the neighbourhood.
The good lady longed to go out herself to see if she could not reap
equal delight from viewing the grouping of trees, whose various autumnal
tints were painted in Ethel's speech with hues too bright for earth, or
to discover what there could be so extraordinarily picturesque in a
moss-grown cottage, near a brook, with a high bank clothed with wood
behind, which she believed must be one Dame Nixon's cottage, in the Vale
of Bewling, and which she knew she must have passed a thousand times,
and yet she had never noticed its beauty. Very often Ethel could give no
information of whither they had been, only they had lost themselves in
majestic woods, lingered in winding lanes, which led to resplendent
views, or even reached the margin of the barren sea, to behold the
enveloping atmosphere reflected in its fitful mirror--to watch the
progress of evanescent storms, or to see the moon light up her silvery
pathway on the dusky waste. Villiers took his gun with him in his walks,
but, though American bred, Ethel was so unfeignedly distressed by the
sight of death, that he never brought down a bird: he shot in its
direction now and then, to keep his pointer in practice, and to laugh at
his wife's glad triumph when he missed his feathery mark.

Ethel was especially delighted to renew her acquaintance with Longfield,
her father's boyhood home, under such sunny circumstances. She had loved
it before: with anguish in her heart, and heavy sadness weighing on her
steps, she had loved it for his sake. But now that it became the home,
the dedicated garden of love, it received additional beauty in her eyes
from its association with the memory of Lord Lodore. All things conjoined;
the season, calmed and brightened, as if for her especial enjoyment;
remembrance of the past, and the undivided possession of her Edward's
society, combined to steep her soul in happiness. Even he, whose more
active and masculine spirit might have fretted in solitude and sloth,
was subdued by care and uncertainty to look on the peace of the present
moment as the dearest gift of the gods. Both so young, and the minds of
both open as day to each other's eyes, no single blot obscured their
intercourse. They never tired of each other, and the teeming spirit of
youth filled the empty space of each hour as it came, with a new growth
of sentiments and ideas. The long evening had its pleasures, with its
close-drawn curtains and cheerful fire. Even whist with the white-haired
parson, and Mrs. Fitzhenry in her spectacles, imparted pleasure. Could
any thing duller have been devised, which would have been difficult, it
had not been so to them; and a stranger coming in and seeing their
animated looks, and hearing their cheerful tones and light-hearted
laugh, must have envied the very Elysium of delight, which aunt Bessy's
usually so sober drawing-room contained. Merely to see Ethel leaning on
her husband's arm, and looking up in his face as he drew her yet closer,
and, while his fingers were twined among her silken ringlets, kissed so
fondly her fair brow, must have demonstrated to a worldling the
irrefragable truth that happiness is born a twin, love being the parent.

The beauty of a pastoral picture has but short duration in this cloudy
land,--and happiness, the sun of our moral existence, is yet more fitful
in its visitations. Villiers and his young wife took their accustomed
ride through shady lanes and copses, and through parks, where, though
the magnificent features of nature were wanting, the eye was delighted
by a various prospect of wood and lawny upland. The soft though wild
west wind drove along vast masses of snowy clouds, which displayed in
their intervals the deep stainless azure of the boundless sky. The
shadows of the clouds now darkened the pathway of our riders, and now
they saw the sunlight advance from a distance, coming on with steps of
light and air, till it reached them, and they felt the warmth and
gladness of sunshine descend on them. The various coloured woods were
now painted brightly in the beams, and now half lost in shadow. There
was life and action everywhere--yet not the awakening activity of
spring, but rather a vague, uneasy restlessness, allied to languor, and
pregnant with melancholy.

Villiers was silent and sad. Ethel too well knew the cause wherefore he
was dispirited. He had received letters that morning which stung him
into a perception of the bitter realities which were gathering about
them. One was to say that no communication had been received from his
father, but that it was believed that he was somewhere in London--the
other was from his banker, to remind him that he had overdrawn his
credit--nearly the most disagreeable intelligence a man can hear when he
possesses no immediate means of replenishing his drained purse. Ethel
was grieved to see him pained, but she could not acutely feel these
pecuniary distresses. She tried to divert his thoughts by conversation,
and pointing out the changes which the advancing season made in the
aspect of the country.

"Yes," said Villiers, "it is a beautiful world; poets tell us this, and
religious men have drawn an argument for their creed from the wisdom and
loveliness displayed in the external universe, which speaks to every
heart and every understanding. The azure canopy fretted with golden
lights, or, as now, curtained by wondrous shapes, which, though they are
akin to earth, yet partake the glory of the sky--the green expanse,
variegated by streams, teeming with life, and prolific of food to
sustain that life, and that very food the chief cause of the beauty we
enjoy--with such magnificence has the Creator set forth our table--all
this, and the winds that fan us so balmily, and the flowers that enchant
our sight--do not all these make earth a type of heaven?"

Ethel turned her eyes on him to read in his face the expression of the
enthusiasm and enjoyment that seemed to dictate his words. But his
countenance was gloomy, and as he continued to speak, his expressions
took more the colour of his uneasy feelings. "How false and senseless
all this really is!" he pursued. "Find a people who truly make earth,
its woods and fells, and inclement sky, their unadorned dwelling-place,
who pluck the spontaneous fruits of the soil, or slay the animals as
they find them, attending neither to culture nor property, and we give
them the name of barbarians and savages--untaught, uncivilized,
miserable beings--and we, the wiser and more refined, hunt and
exterminate them:--we, who spend so many words, either as preachers or
philosophers, to vaunt that with which they are satisfied, we feel
ourselves the greater, the wiser, the nobler, the more barriers we place
between ourselves and nature, the more completely we cut ourselves off
from her generous but simple munificence."

"But is this necessary?" asked the forest-bred girl: "when I lived in the
wilds of the Illinois--the simplest abode, food and attire, were all I
knew of human refinements, and I was satisfied."

Villiers did not appear to heed her remark, but continued the train of
his own reflections. "The first desire of man is not for wealth nor
luxury, but for sympathy and applause. He desires to remove to the
furthest extremity of the world contempt and degradation; and according
to the ideas of the society in which he is bred, so are his desires
fashioned. We, the most civilized, high-bred, prosperous people in the
world, make no account of nature, unless we add the ideas of possession,
and of the labours of man. We rate each individual, (and we all desire
to be rated as individuals, distinct from and superior to the mass,) not
by himself, but by his house, his park, his income. This is a trite
observation, yet it appears new when it comes home: what is lower,
humbler, more despicable than a poor man? Give him learning, give him
goodness--see him with manners acquired in poverty, habits dyed in the
dusky hues of penury; and if we do not despise him, yet we do not admit
him to our tables or society. Refinement may only be the varnish of the
picture, yet it is necessary to make apparent to the vulgar eye even the
beauties of Raphael."

"To the vulgar eye!" repeated Ethel, emphatically.

"And I seem one of those, by the way I speak," said Edward, smiling.
"Yet, indeed, I do not despise any man for being poor, except myself. I
can feel pride in showing honour where honour is due, even though clad
in the uncouth and forbidding garb of plebeianism; but I cannot claim
this for myself--I cannot demand the justice of men, which they would
nickname pity. The Illinois would be preferable far."

"And the Illinois might be a paradise," said Ethel.

"We hope for a better--we hope for Italy. Do you remember Rome and the
Coliseum, my love?--Naples, the Chiaja, and San Carlo?--these were
better than the savannas of the west. Our hopes are good; it is the
present only which is so thorny, so worse than barren: like the souls of
Dante, we have a fiery pass to get through before we reach our place of
bliss; that we have it in prospect will gift us with fortitude.
Meanwhile I must string myself to my task. Ethel, dearest, I shall go to
town to-morrow."

"And I with you, surely?"

"Do not ask it; this is your first lesson in the lore you were so ready
to learn, of bearing all for me--"

"With you," interrupted his wife.

"With me--it shall soon be," replied Edward; "but to speak according to
the ways of this world, my presence in London is necessary for a few
days--for a very few days; a journey there and back for me is nothing,
but it would be a real and useless expense if you went. Indeed, Ethel,
you must submit to my going without you--I ask it of you, and you will
not refuse."

"A few days, you say," answered Ethel--"a very few days? It is hard. But
you will not be angry, if I should join you if your return is delayed?"

"You will not be so mad," said Villiers. "I go with a light heart,
because I leave you in security and comfort. I will return--I need not
protest--you know that I shall return the moment I can. I speak of a few
days; it cannot be a week: let me go then, with what satisfaction I may,
to the den of darkness and toil, and not be farther annoyed by the fear
that you will not support my absence with cheerfulness. As you love me,
wait for me with patience--remain with your aunt till I return."

"I will stay for a week, if it must be so," replied Ethel.

"Indeed, my love, it must--nor will I task you beyond--before a week is
gone by, you shall see me."

Ethel looked wistfully at him, but said no more. She thought it
hard--she did not think it right that he should go--that he should toil
and suffer without her; but she had no words for argument or contention,
so she yielded. The next morning--a cold but cheerful morning--at seven
o'clock, she drove over with him in Mrs. Fitzhenry's little pony chaise
to the town, four miles off, through which the stages passed. A first
parting is a kind of landmark in life--a starting post whence we begin
our career out of illusion and the land of dreams, into reality and
endurance. They arrived not a moment too soon: she had yet a thousand
things to say--one or two very particular things, which she had reserved
for the last moment; there was no time, and she was forced to
concentrate all her injunctions into one word, "Write!"

"Every day--and do you."

"It will be my only pleasure," replied his wife. "Take care of
yourself."

He was on the top of the stage and gone; and Ethel felt that a blank
loneliness had swallowed up the dearest joy of her life.

She drew her cloak round her--she gazed along the road--there were no
traces of him--she gave herself up to thought, and as he was the object
of all her thoughts, this was her best consolation. She reviewed the
happy days they had spent together--she dwelt on the memory of his
unalterable affection and endearing kindness, and then tears rushed into
her eyes. "Will any ill ever befall him?" she thought. "O no, none ever
can! he must be rewarded for his goodness and his love. How dear he
ought to be to me! Did he not take the poor friendless girl from
solitude and grief; and disdaining neither her poverty nor her orphan
state, give her himself, his care, his affection? O, my Edward! what
would Ethel have been without you? Her father was gone--her mother
repulsed her--she was alone in the wide world, till you generously made
her your own!"

With the true enthusiasm of passion, Ethel delighted to magnify the
benefits she had received, and to make those which she herself conferred
nothing, that gratitude and love might become yet stronger duties. In
her heart, though she reproached herself for what she termed
selfishness, she could not regret his poverty and difficulties, if thus
she should acquire an opportunity of being useful to him; but she felt
herself defrauded of her best privileges, of serving and consoling, by
their separation.

Thus,--now congratulating herself on her husband's attachment, now
repining at the fate that divided them,--agitated by various emotions
too sweet and bitter for words, she returned to Longfield. Aunt Bessy
was in her arm-chair, waiting for her to begin breakfast. Edward's seat
was empty--his cup was not placed--he was omitted in the domestic
arrangements;--tears rushed into her eyes; and in vain trying to calm
herself, she sobbed aloud. Aunt Bessy was astonished; and when all the
explanation she got was, "He is gone!" she congratulated herself, that
her single state had spared her the endurance of these conjugal
distresses.




CHAPTER XV


How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen,
What old December's bareness every where!

SHAKSPEARE.


Ethel cheered herself to amuse her aunt; and, as in her days of hopeless
love, she tried to shorten the hours by occupation. It was difficult;
for all her thoughts were employed in conjectures as to where Edward
was, what doing--in looking at her watch, and following in her mind all
his actions--or in meditating how hereafter she might remedy any
remissness on her part, (so tender was her conscience,) and best
contribute to his happiness. Such reveries beguiled many hours, and
enabled her to endure with some show of courage the pains of absence.
Each day she heard from him--each day she wrote, and this entire pouring
out of herself on paper formed the charm of her existence. She
endeavoured to persuade him how fortunate their lot might hereafter
be--how many of his fears were unfounded or misplaced.

"Remember, dearest love," she said, "that I have nothing of the fine
lady about me. I do not even feel the want of those luxuries so
necessary to most women. This I owe to my father. It was his first care,
while he brought me up in the most jealous retirement, to render me
independent of the services of others. Solitude is to me no evil, and
the delight of my life would be to wait upon you. I am not therefore an
object of pity, when fortunes deprives me of the appurtenances of
wealth, which rather annoy than serve me. My devotion and sacrifice, as
you are pleased to call the intense wish of my heart to contribute to
your happiness, are nothing. I sacrifice all, when I give up one hour of
your society--there is the sting--there the merit of my permitting you
to go without me. I can ill bear it. I am impatient and weak; do not
then, Edward dearest, task me too far--recall me to your side, if your
return is delayed--recall your fond girl to the place near your heart,
where she desires to remain for ever."

Villiers answered with few but expressive words of gratitude and
fidelity. His letters breathed disappointment and anxiety. "It is too
true," he said, "as I found it announced when I first came to town, my
father is married. He got the banns published in an obscure church in
London; he persuaded Miss Gregory to elope with him, and they are
married. Her father is furious, he returns every letter unopened; his
house and heart, he says, are still open to his daughter--but the--, I
will not repeat his words, who stole her from him, shall never benefit
by a shilling of his money--let her return, and all shall be
pardoned--let her remain with her husband, and starve, he cares not. My
father has spent much time and more money on this pursuit: in the hope
of securing many thousands, he raised hundreds at a prodigal and ruinous
interest, which must now be paid. He has not ten pounds in the world--so
he says. My belief is, that he is going abroad to secure to himself the
payment of the scanty remnant of his income. I have no hopes. I would
beg at the corner of a street, rather than apply to a man who never has
been a parent to me, and whose last act is that of a villain. Excuse me;
you will be angry that I speak thus of my father, but I know that he
speaks of the poor girl he has deluded, with a bitterness and insult,
which prove what his views were in marrying her. In this moment of
absolute beggary, my only resource is to raise money. I believe I shall
succeed; and the moment I have put things in train, with what heartfelt,
what unspeakable joy, shall I leave this miserable place for my own
Ethel's side, long to remain!"

Villiers's letters varied little, but yet they got more desponding; and
Ethel grew very impatient to see him again. She had counted the days of
her week--they were fulfilled, and her husband did not return. Every
thing depended, he said, on his presence; and he must remain yet for
another day or two. At first he implored her to be patient. He besought
her, as she loved him, to endure their separation yet for a few more
days. His letters were very short, but all in this style. They were
imperative with his wife--she obeyed; yet she did so, she told him,
against her will and against her sense of right. She ought to be at his
side to cheer him under his difficulties. She had married him because
she loved him, and because the first and only wish of her heart was to
conduce to his happiness. To travel together, to enjoy society and the
beauties of nature in each other's society, were indeed blessings, and
she valued them; but there was another dearer still, of which she felt
herself defrauded, and for which she yearned. "The aim of my life, and
its only real joy," she said, "is to make your existence happier than it
would have been without me. When I know and feel that such a moment or
hour has been passed by you with sensations of pleasure, and that
through me, I have fulfilled the purpose of my destiny. Deprived of the
opportunity to accomplish this, I am bereft of that for which I breathe.
You speak as if I were better off here than if I shared the
inconveniences of your lot--is not this strange language, my own Edward?
You talk of security and comfort; where can I be so secure as near you?
And for comfort! what heart-elevating joy it would be to exchange this
barren, meagre scene of absence, for the delight, the comfort of seeing
you, of waiting on you! I do not ask you to hasten your return, so as to
injure your prospects, but permit me to join you. Would not London
itself, dismal as you describe it, become sunny and glad, if Ethel were
with you?"

To these adjurations Villiers scarcely replied. Time crept on; three
weeks had already elapsed. Now and then a day intervened, and he did not
write, and his wife's anxiety grew to an intolerable pitch. She did not
for an instant suspect his faith, but she feared that he must be utterly
miserable, since he shrunk from communicating his feelings to her. His
last letter was brief; "I have just come from my solicitor," he said,
"and have but time to say, that I must go there again to-morrow, so I
shall not be with you. O the heavy hours in this dark prison! You will
reward me and make me forget them when I see you--but how shall I pass
the time till then!"

These words made Ethel conceive the idea of joining him in town. He
would not, he could not be angry? He could not bring his mind to ask her
to share his discomforts--but ought she not to volunteer--to insist upon
his permitting her to come? Permit! the same pride that prevented his
asking, would induce him to refuse her request; but should she do wrong,
if, without his express permission, she were to join him? A thrill, half
fear, half transport, made her heart's blood stand still at the thought.
The day after this last, she got no letter; the following day was
Monday, and there would be no post from town. Her resolution was taken,
and she told her aunt, that she should go up to London the following
day. Mrs. Elizabeth knew little of the actual circumstances of the young
pair. Villiers had made it an express condition, that she should not be
informed of their difficulties, for he was resolute not to take from her
little store, which, in the way she lived, was sufficient, yet barely
so, for her wants. She did not question her niece as to her journey; she
imagined that it was a thing arranged. But Ethel herself was full of
perplexity; she remembered what Villiers had said of expense; she knew
that he would be deeply hurt if she used a public conveyance, and yet to
go post would consume the little money she had left, and she did not
like to reach London pennyless. She began to talk to her aunt, and
faltered out something about want of money for posting--the good lady's
purse was instantly in her hand. Ethel had not the same horror as her
husband of pecuniary obligation--she was too inexperienced to know its
annoyances; and in the present instance, to receive a small sum from her
aunt, appeared to her an affair that did not merit hesitation. She took
twenty pounds for her journey, and felt her heart lighter. There yet
remained another question. Hitherto they had travelled in their own
carriage, with a valet and lady's maid. Villiers had taken his servant
to town with him. In a postscript to one of his letters, he said, "I was
able to recommend Laurie to a good place, so I have parted with him, and
I shall not take another servant at this moment." Laurie had been long
and faithfully attached to her husband, who had never lived without an
attendant, and who, from his careless habits, was peculiarly helpless.
Ethel felt that this dismissal was a measure of economy, and that she
ought to imitate it. Still as any measure to be taken always frightened
her, she had not courage to discharge her maid, but resolved to go up to
town without her. Aunt Bessy was shocked at her going alone, but Ethel
was firm; nothing could happen to her, and she should prove to Edward
her readiness to endure privation.

On Monday, at eleven in the forenoon, on the 28th of November, Ethel,
having put together but a few things,--for she expected a speedy
return,--stept into her travelling chariot, and began her journey to
town. She was all delight at the idea of seeing Edward. She reproached
herself for having so long delayed giving this proof of her earnest
affection. She listened with beaming smiles to all her aunt's
injunctions and cautions: and, the carriage once in motion, drawing her
shawl round her, as she sat in the corner, looking on the despoiled yet
clear prospect, her mind was filled with the most agreeable
reveries--her heart soothed by the dearest anticipations.

To pay the post-horses--to gift the postillion herself, were all events
for her: she felt proud. "Edward said, I must begin to learn the ways of
the world; and this is my first lesson in economy and care," she
thought, as she put into the post-boy's hand just double the sum he had
ever received before. "And how good, and attentive, and willing every
body is! I am sure women can very well travel alone. Every one is
respectful, and desirous to serve," was her next internal remark, as she
undrew her little silken purse, to give a waiter half-a-crown, who had
brought her a glass of water, and whose extreme alacrity struck her as
so very kind-hearted.

Her spirits flagged as the day advanced. In spite of herself, an uneasy
feeling diffused itself through her mind, when, the sun going down, a
misty, chilly twilight crept over the landscape. Had she done right? she
asked herself; would Edward indeed be glad to see her? She felt half
frightened at her temerity--alarmed at the length of her journey--timid
when she thought of the vast London she was about to enter, without any
certain bourn. She supposed that Villiers went each day to his club, and
she knew that he lodged in Duke street, St. James's; but she was
ignorant of the number of the house, and the street itself was unknown
to her; she did not remember ever to have been in it in her life.

Her carriage entered labyrinthine London by Blackwall, and threaded the
wilds of Lothbury. A dense and ever-thickening mist, palpable, yellow,
and impervious to the eye, enveloped the whole town. Ethel had heard of
a November fog; but she had never witnessed one, and the idea of it did
not occur to her memory: she was half-frightened, thinking that some
strange phænomena were going on, and fancying that her postillion was
hurrying forward in terror. At last, in Cheapside, they stopped jammed
up by carts and coaches; and then she contrived to make herself heard,
asking what was the matter? The word "eclipse" hung upon her lips.

"Only, ma'am, the street has got blocked up like in the fog: we shall
get on presently."

The word "fog" solved the mystery; and again her thoughts were with
Villiers. What a horrible place for him to live in! And he had been
enduring all this wretchedness, while she was breathing the pure
atmosphere of the country. Again they proceeded through the "murky air,"
and through an infinitude of mischances;--the noise--the hubbub--the
crowd, as she could distinguish it, as if veiled by dirty gauze, by the
lights in the shops--all agitated and vexed her. Through Fleet Street
and the Strand they went; and it seemed as if their progress would never
come to an end. The whole previous journey from Longfield was short in
comparison to this tedious procession: twenty times she longed to get
out and walk. At last they got free, and with a quicker pace drove up to
the door of the Union Club, in Charing Cross.

The post-boy called one of the waiters to the carriage door; and Ethel
asked--"Is Mr. Villiers here?"

"Mr. Villiers, ma'am, has left town."

Ethel was aghast. She had watched assiduously along the road; yet she
had felt certain that if he had meant to come, she would have seen him
on Sunday; and till this moment, she had not entertained a real doubt
but that she should find him. She asked, falteringly, "When did he go?"

"Last week, ma'am: last Thursday, I think it was."

Ethel breathed again: the man's information must be false. She was too
inexperienced to be aware that servants and common people have a
singular tact in selecting the most unpleasant intelligence, and being
very alert in communicating it. "Do you know," she inquired, "where Mr.
Villiers lodges?"

"Can't say, indeed, ma'am; but the porter knows;--here, Saunders!"

No Saunders answered. "The porter is not in the way; but if you can
wait, ma'am, he'll be back presently."

The waiter disappeared: the post-boy came up--he touched his hat.
"Wait," said Ethel;--"we must wait a little;" and he removed himself to
the horses' heads. Ethel sat in her lonely corner, shrouded by fog and
darkness, watching every face as it passed under the lamp near, fancying
that Edward might appear among them. The ugly faces that haunt, in quick
succession, the imagination of one oppressed by night-mare, might vie
with those that passed successively in review before Ethel. Most of them
hurried on, looking neither to the right nor left. Some entered the
house; some glanced at her carriage: one or two, perceiving a bonnet,
evidently questioned the waiter. He stood there for her own service,
Ethel thought; and she watched his every movement--his successive
disappearances and returns--the people he talked to. Once she signed to
him to come; but--"No, ma'am, the porter is not come back yet,"--was all
his answer. At last, after having stood, half whistling, for some five
minutes, (it appeared to Ethel half-an-hour,) without having received
any visible communication, he suddenly came up to the carriage door,
saying, "The porter could not stay to speak to you, ma'am, he was in
such a hurry. He says, Mr. Villiers lodges in Duke Street, St. James's:
he should know the house, but has forgotten the number."

"Then I must wait till he comes back again. I knew all that before. Will
he be long?"

"A long time, ma'am; two hours at least. He said that the woman of the
house is a widow woman--Mrs. Derham."

Thus, as if by torture, (but, as with the whipping boys of old, her's
was the torture, not the delinquent's,) Ethel extracted some information
from the stupid, conceited fellow. On she went to Duke Street, to
discover Mrs. Derham's residence. A few wrong doors were knocked at; and
a beer-boy, at last, was the Mercury that brought the impatient, longing
wife, to the threshold of her husband's residence. Happy beer-boy! She
gave him a sovereign: he had never been so rich in his life
before;--such chance-medleys do occur in this strange world!




CHAPTER XVI


O my reviving joy! thy quickening presence
Makes the sad night
Sit like a youthful spring upon my blood.
I cannot make thy welcome rich enough
With all the wealth of words.

MIDDLETON.


The boy knocked at the door. A servant-girl opened it. "Does Mr.
Villiers lodge here?" asked the postillion, from his horse.

"Yes," said the girl.

"Open the door quickly, and let me out!" cried Ethel, as her heart beat
fast and loud.

The door was opened--the steps let down--operations tedious beyond
measures, as she thought. She got out, and was in the hall, going up
stairs.

"Mr. Villiers is not at home," said the maid.

Through the low blinds of the parlour window, Mrs. Derham had been
watching what was going on. She heard what her servant said, and now
came out. "Mr. Villiers is not at home," she reiterated; "will you leave
any message?"

"No; I will wait for him. Show me into his room."

"I am afraid that it is locked," answered Mrs. Derham repulsively:
"perhaps you can call again. Who shall I say asked for him?"

"O no!" cried Ethel, "I must wait for him. Will you permit me to wait in
your parlour? I am Mrs. Villiers."

"I beg pardon," said the good woman; "Mrs. Villiers is in the country."

"And so I am," replied Ethel--"at least, so I was this morning. Don't
you see my travelling carriage?--look; you may be sure that I am Mrs.
Villiers."

She took out of her little bag one of Edward's letters, with the perusal
of which she had beguiled much of her way to town. Mrs. Derham looked at
the direction--"The Honourable Mrs. Villiers;"--her countenance
brightened. Mrs. Derham was a little, plump, well-preserved woman of
fifty-four or five. She was kind-hearted, and of course shared the
worship for rank which possesses every heart born within the four seas.
She was now all attention. Villiers's room was open; he was expected
very soon:--"He is so seldom out in an evening: it is very unlucky; but
he must be back directly," said Mrs. Derham, as she showed the way up
the narrow staircase. Ethel reached the landing, and entered a room of
tolerable dimensions, considerably encumbered with litter, which opened
into a smaller room, with a tent bed. A little bit of fire glimmered in
the grate. The whole place looked excessively forlorn and comfortless.

Mrs. Derham bustled about to bestow a little neatness on the room,
saying something of the "untidiness of gentlemen," and "so many lodgers
in the house." Ethel sat down she longed to be alone. There was the
post-boy to be paid, and to be ordered to take the carriage to a
coach-house; and then--Mrs. Derham asked her if she would not have
something to eat: she herself was at tea, and offered a cup, which Ethel
thankfully accepted, acknowledging that she had not eaten since the
morning. Mrs. Derham was shocked. The rank, beauty, and sweet manners of
Ethel had made a conquest, which her extreme youth redoubled. "So young
a lady," she said, "to go about alone: she did not know how to take care
of herself, she was sure. She must have some supper: a roast chicken
should be ready in an hour--by the time Mr. Villiers came in."

"But the tea," said Ethel, smiling; "you will let me have that now?"

Mrs. Derham hurried away on this hint, and the young wife was left
alone. She had been married a year; but there was still a freshness
about her feelings, which gave zest to every change in her wedded life.
"This is where he has been living without me," she thought; "Poor
Edward! it does not look as if he were very comfortable."

She rose from her seat, and began to arrange the books and papers. A
glove of her husband's lay on the table: she kissed it with a glad
feeling of welcome. When the servant came in, she had the fire
replenished--the hearth swept; and in a minute or two, the room had lost
much of its disconsolate appearance. Then, with a continuation of her
feminine love of order she arranged her own dress and hair; giving to
her attire, as much as possible, an at-home appearance. She had just
finished--just sat down, and begun to find the time long--when a quick,
imperative knock at the door, which she recognized at once, made her
heart beat, and her cheek grow pale. She heard a step--a voice--and Mrs.
Derham answer--"Yes, sir; the fire is in--every thing comfortable;"--and
Ethel opened the door, as she spoke, and in an instant was clasped in
her husband's arms.

It was not a moment whose joy could be expressed by words. He had been
miserable during her absence, and had thought of sending for her; but he
looked round his single room, remembered that he was in lodgings, and
gave up his purpose with a bitter murmur: and here she was, uncalled
for, but most welcome: she was here, in her youth, her loveliness, her
sweetness: these were charms; but others more transcendent now attended
on, and invested her;--the sacred tenderness of a wife had led her to
his side; and love, in its most genuine and beautiful shape, shed an
atmosphere of delight and worship about her. Not one circumstance could
alloy the unspeakable bliss of their meeting. Poverty, and its
humiliations, vanished from before the eyes of Villiers; he was
overflowingly rich in the possession of her affections--her presence.
Again and again he thanked her, in broken accents of expressive
transport.

"Nothing in the whole world could make me unhappy now!" he cried; and
Ethel, who had seen his face look elongated and gloomy at the moment he
had entered, felt indeed that Medea, with all her potent herbs, was less
of a magician than she, in the power of infusing the sparkling spirit of
life into one human frame. It was long before either were coherent in
their inquiries and replies. There was nothing, indeed, that either
wished to know. Life, and its purposes, were fulfilled, rounded,
complete, without a flaw. They loved, and were together--together, not
for a transitory moment, but for the whole duration of the eternity of
love, which never could be exhausted in their hearts.

After more than an hour spent in gradually becoming acquainted and
familiar with the transporting change, from separate loneliness to
mutual society and sympathy, the good-natured face of Mrs. Derham showed
itself, to announce that Ethel's supper was ready. These words brought
back to Edward's recollection his wife's journey, and consequent
fatigues: he grew more desirous than Mrs. Derham to feed his poor
famished bird, whose eyes, in spite of the joy that shone in them, began
to look languid, and whose cheek was pale. The little supper-table was
laid, and they sat down together.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has recorded the pleasure to be reaped


"When we meet with champagne and a chicken at last;"


and perhaps social life
contains no combination so full of enjoyment as a tête-à-tête supper.
_Here_ it was, with its highest zest. They feared no prying eyes--they
knew no ill: it was not a scanty hour of joy snatched from an age of
pain--a single spark illuminating a long blank night. It came after
separation, and possessed, therefore, the charm of novelty; but it was
the prelude to a long reunion--the seal set on their being once again
joined, to go through together each hour of the livelong day. Full of
unutterable thankfulness and gladness, as were the minds of each, there
was, besides,


"A sacred and home-felt delight,
A sober certainty of waking bliss,"


which is the crown and fulfilment of perfect human
happiness. "Imparadised" by each other's presence--no doubt--no fear of
division on the morrow-no dread of untoward event, suspicion, or blame,
clouded the balmy atmosphere which their hearts created around them. No.
Eden was required to enhance their happiness; there needed no


"Crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold;"--


no


"Happy, rural seat, with various view,"


decked with


"Flowers of all hue,"
"All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;"--


nor "cool recess," nor



"Vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove."


In their narrow
abode--their nook of a room, cut off from the world, redolent only of
smoke and fog--their two fond hearts could build up bowers of delight,
and store them with all of ecstasy which the soul of man can know,
without any assistance of eye, or ear, or scent. So rich, and prodigal,
and glorious, in its gifts, is faithful and true-hearted love,--when it
knows the sacrifices which it must make to merit them, and consents
willingly to forego vanity, selfishness, and the exactions of self-will,
in unlimited and unregretted exchange.

Mutual esteem and gratitude sanctified the unreserved sympathy which
made each so happy in the other. Did they love the less for not loving
"in sin and fear?" Far from it. The certainty of being the cause of good
to each other tended to foster the most delicate of all passions, more
than the rougher ministrations of terror, and a knowledge that each was
the occasion of injury to the other. A woman's heart is peculiarly
unfitted to sustain this conflict. Her sensibility gives keenness to her
imagination, and she magnifies every peril, and writhes beneath every
sacrifice which tends to humiliate her in her own eyes. The natural
pride of her sex struggles with her desire to confer happiness, and her
peace is wrecked.

Far different was the happy Ethel's situation--far otherwise were her
thoughts employed than in concealing the pangs of care and shame. The
sense of right adorned the devotion of love. She read approbation in
Edward's eyes, and drew near him in full consciousness of deserving it.
They sat at their supper, and long after, by the cheerful fire, talking
of a thousand things connected with the present and the future--the
long, long future which they were to spend together; and every now and
then their eyes sparkled with the gladness of renewed delight in seeing
each other. "Mine, my own, for ever!"--And was this exultation in
possession to be termed selfish? by no other reasoning surely, than that
used by a cold and meaningless philosophy, which gives this name to
generosity and truth, and all the nobler passions of the soul. They
congratulated themselves on this mutual property, partly because it had
been a free gift one to the other; partly because they looked forward to
the right it ensured to each, of conferring mutual benefits; and partly
through the instinctive love God has implanted for that which, being
ours, is become the better part of ourselves. They were united for
"better and worse," and there was a sacredness in the thought of the
"worse" they might share, which gave a mysterious and celestial charm to
the present "better."




CHAPTER XVII


Do you not think yourself truly happy?
You have the abstract of all sweetness by you,
The precious wealth youth labours to arrive at,
Nor is she less in honour than in beauty.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.


The following day was one of pouring, unintermitting rain. Villiers and
Ethel drew their chairs near their cheerful fire, and were happy. Edward
could not quite conquer his repugnance to seeing his wife in lodgings,
and in those also of so mean and narrow a description. But the spirit of
Ethel was more disencumbered of earthly particles: that had found its
rest in the very home of Love. The rosy light of the divinity invested
all things for her. Cleopatra on the Cydnus, in the bark which--


"Like a burnished throne
Burnt on the water,"


borne along


"By purple sails . . .
. . . So perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick with them;"


was not more
gorgeously attended than Ethel was to her own fancy, lapped and cradled
in all that love has of tender, voluptuous, and confiding.

Several days past before Villiers could withdraw her from this blissful
dream, to gaze upon the world as it was. He could not make her disgusted
with her fortunes nor her abode, but he awakened anxiety on his own
account. His father, as he had conjectured, was gone to Paris, leaving
merely a message for his son, that he would willingly join him in any
act for raising money, by mortgage or the absolute disposal of a part of
the estate. Edward had consulted with his solicitor, who was to look
over a vast variety of papers, to discover the most eligible mode of
making some kind of sale. Delay, in all its various shapes, waited on
these arrangements; and Villiers was very averse to leaving town till he
held some clue to the labyrinth of obstacles which presented themselves
at every turn. He talked of their taking a house in town; but Ethel
would not hear of such extravagance. In the first place, their actual
means were at a very low ebb, with little hope of a speedy supply. There
was another circumstance, the annoyance of which he understood far
better than Ethel could. He had raised money on annuities, the interest
of which he was totally unable to pay; this exposed him to a personal
risk of the most disagreeable kind, and he knew that his chief creditor
was on the point of resorting to harsh measures against him. These
things, dingy-visaged, dirty-handed realities as they were, made a
strange contrast with Ethel's feeling of serene and elevated bliss; but
she, with unshrinking heart, brought the same fortitude and love into
the crooked and sordid ways of modern London, which had adorned heroines
of old, as they wandered amidst trackless forests, and over barren
mountains.

Several days passed, and the weather became clear, though cold. The
young pair walked together in the parks at such morning hours as would
prevent their meeting any acquaintances, for Edward was desirous that it
should not be known that they were in town. Villiers also traced his
daily, weary, disappointing way to his solicitor, where he found things
look more blank and dismal each day. Then when evening came, and the
curtains were drawn, they might have been at the top of Mount Caucasus,
instead of in the centre of London, so completely were they cut off from
every thing except each other. They then felt absolutely happy: the
lingering disgusts of Edward were washed clean away by the bounteous,
everspringing love, that flowed, as waters from a fountain, from the
heart of Ethel, in one perpetual tide.

In those hours of unchecked talk, she learned many things she had not
known before--the love of Horatio Saville for Lady Lodore was revealed to
her; but the story was not truly told, for the prejudices as well as the
ignorance of Villiers rendered him blind to the sincerity of Cornelia's
affection and regret. Ethel wondered, and in spite of the charm with
which she delighted to invest the image of her mother, she could not
help agreeing with her husband that she must be irrevocably wedded to
the most despicable worldly feelings, so to have played with the heart
of a man such as Horatio: a man, whose simplest word bore the stamp of
truth and genius; one of those elected few whom nature elevats to her
own high list of nobility and greatness. How could she, a simple girl,
interest feelings which were not alive to Saville's merits? She could
only hope that in some dazzling marriage Lady Lodore would find a
compensation for the higher destiny which might have been hers, but
that, like the "base Indian," she had thrown


"A pearl away,
Richer than all his tribe."


There was a peaceful quiet in their secluded and obscure life, which
somewhat resembled the hours spent on board ship, when you long for, yet
fear, the conclusion of the voyage, and shrink involuntarily from
exchanging a state, whose chief blessing is an absence of every care,
for the variety of pains and pleasures which chequer life. Ethel
possessed her all--so near, so undivided, so entirely her own, that she
could not enter into Villiers's impatience, nor quite sympathize with
the disquietude he could not repress. After considerable delays, his
solicitor informed him that his father had so entirely disposed of all
his interest in the property, that his readiness to join in any act of
sale would be useless. The next thing to be done was for Edward to sell
a part of his expectations, and the lawyer promised to find a purchaser,
and begged to see him three days hence, when no doubt he should have
some proposal to communicate.

Whoever has known what such things are--whoever has waited on the demurs
and objections, and suffered the alternations of total failure and
suddenly renewed hopes, which are the Tantalus-food held to the lips of
those under the circumstances of Villiers, can follow in imagination his
various conferences with his solicitor, as day after day something new
was discovered, still to drag on, or to impede, the tortoise pace of his
negociations. It will be no matter of wonder to such, that a month
instead of three days wasted away, and found him precisely in the same
position, with hopes a little raised, though so frequently blasted, and
nothing done.

In recording the annoyances, or rather the adversity which the young
pair endured at this period, a risk is run, on the one hand, of being
censured for bringing the reader into contact with degrading and sordid
miseries; and on the other, of laying too much stress on circumstances
which will appear to those in a lower sphere of life, as scarcely
deserving the name of misfortune. It is very easy to embark on the wild
ocean of romance, and to steer a danger-fraught passage, amidst giant
perils,--the very words employed, excite the imagination, and give grace
to the narrative. But all beautiful and fairylike as was Ethel Villiers,
in tracing her fortunes, it is necessary to descend from such altitudes,
to employ terms of vulgar use, and to describe scenes of common-place
and debasing interest; so that, if she herself, in her youth and
feminine tenderness, does not shed light and holiness around her, we
shall grope darkling, and fail utterly in the scope which we proposed to
ourselves in selecting her history for the entertainment of the reader.




CHAPTER XVIII


I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

WORDSWORTH.


The end of December had come. New year's day found and left them still
in Duke Street. On the 4th of January Villiers received a letter from
his uncle, Lord Maristow, entrusting a commission to him, which obliged
him to go to the neighbourhood of Egham. Not having a horse, he went by
the stage. He set out so late in the day that there was no chance of his
returning the same night; and he promised to be back early on the
morrow. Ethel had letters to write to Italy and to her aunt; and with
these she tried to beguile the time. She felt lonely; the absence of
Villiers for so many hours engendered an anxiety, which she found some
difficulty in repressing. Accustomed to have him perpetually at her
side, and without any other companion or resource, she repined at her
solitude. There was his empty chair, and no hope that he would occupy
it; and she sat in her little room so near to thousands, and yet so cut
off from every one, with such a sense of desolation as Mungo Park might
have felt in central Africa, or a shipwrecked mariner on an uninhabited
island.

Her pen was taken up, but she did not write. She could not command her
thoughts to express any thing but the overflowing, devoted,
all-engrossing affection of her heart, her adoration for her husband;
that would not amuse Lucy,--she thought: and she had commenced another
sheet with "My dearest Aunt," when the maid-servant ushered a man into
her presence--a stranger, a working man. What could he want with her? He
seemed confused, and stammered out, "Mr. Villiers is not in?"

"He will be at home to-morrow, if you want him; or have you any message
that I can give?"

"You are Mrs. Villiers, ma'am?"

"Yes, my good man, I am Mrs. Villiers."

"If you please, ma'am, I am Saunders, one of the porters at the Union
Club."

"I remember: has any message come there? or does Mr. Villiers owe you
any money?" and her purse was in her hand.

"O no, ma'am. Mr. Villiers is a good gentleman; and he has been petiklar
generous to me--and that is why I come, because I am afraid," continued
the man, lowering his tone, "that he is in danger."

"Good heavens! Where? how?" cried Ethel, starting from her chair. "Tell
me at once."

"Yes, ma'am, I will; so you must know that this evening--"

"Yes, this evening. What has happened? he left me at six o'clock--what
is it?"

"Nothing, I hope, this evening, ma'am. I am only afraid for to-morrow
morning. And I will tell you all I know, as quick as ever I can."

The man then proceeded to relate, that some one had been inquiring about
Mr. Villiers at the Club House. One of the servants had told him that he
lived in Duke Street, St. James's, and that was all he knew; but
Saunders came up, and the man questioned him. He instantly recognized
the fellow, and knew what his business must be. And he tried to deceive
him, and declared that Mr. Villiers was gone out of town; but the fellow
said that he knew better than that; and that he had been seen that very
day in the Strand. He should look for him, no thanks to Saunders, in
Duke Street. "And so, ma'am, you see they'll be sure to be here early
to-morrow morning. So don't let Mr. Villiers stay here, on no account
whatsomever."

"Why?" asked Ethel, simply; "they can't hurt him."

"I am sure, ma'am," said Saunders, his face brightening, "I am very glad
to hear that--you know best. They will arrest him for sure, but--"

"Arrest him!"

"Yes, ma'am, for I've seen the tall one before. There were two of
them--bailiffs."

Ethel now began to tremble violently; these were strange, cabalistic
words to her, the more awful from their mystery. "What am I to do?" she
exclaimed; "Mr. Villiers will be here in the morning, he sleeps at
Egham, and will be here early; I must go to him directly."

"I am glad to hear he is so far," said Saunders; "and if I can be of any
use you have but to say it; shall I go to Egham? there are night coaches
that go through, and I might warn him."

Ethel thought--she feared to do any thing--she imagined that she should
be watched, that all her endeavours would be of no avail. She looked at
the man, honesty was written on his face; but there was no intelligence,
nothing to tell her that his advice was good. The possibility of such an
event as the present had never occurred to her. Villiers had been silent
with regard to his fears on this head. She was suddenly transported into
a strange sea, hemmed in by danger, without a pilot or knowledge of a
passage. Again she looked at the man's face: "What is best to be done!"
she exclaimed.

"I am sure, ma'am" he replied, as if she had asked him the question, "I
think what I said is best, if you will tell me where I can find Mr.
Villiers. I should think nothing of going, and he could send word by me
what he wished you to do."

"Yes, that would indeed be a comfort. I will write three lines, and you
shall take them." In a moment she had written. "Give this note into his
own hand, he will sleep there--I have written the direction of the
house--or at some inn, at Egham. Do not rest till you have given the
letter, and here is for your trouble." She held out two sovereigns.

"Depend on me, ma'am; and I will bring an answer to you by nine in the
morning. Mr. Villiers will pay me what he thinks fit--you may want your
money. Only, ma'am, don't be frightened when them men come to-morrow--if
the people here are good sort of folks, you had better give them a
hint--it may save you trouble."

"Thank you: you are a good man, and I will remember you, and reward you.
By nine to-morrow--you will be punctual?"

The man again assured her that he would use all diligence, and took his
leave.

Ethel felt totally overwhelmed by these tidings. The unknown is always
terrible, and the ideas of arrest, and prison, and bolts, and bars, and
straw, floated before her imagination. Was Villiers safe even where he
was? Would not the men make inquiries, learn where he had gone, and
follow him, even if it were to the end of the world? She had heard of
the activity employed to arrest criminals, and mingled every kind of
story in her head, till she grew desperate from terror. Not knowing what
else to do, she became eager for Mrs. Derham's advice, and hurried down
stairs to ask it.

She had not seen much of the good lady since her first arrival. Every
day, when Villiers went out, she came up, indeed, on the momentous
question of "orders for dinner;" and then she bestowed the benefit of
some five or ten minutes garrulity on her fair lodger. Ethel learnt that
she had seen better days, and that were justice done her, she ought to
be riding in her coach, instead of letting lodgings. She learnt that she
had a married daughter living at Kennington: poor enough, but struggling
on cheerfully with her mother's help. The best girl in the world she
was, and a jewel of a wife, and had two of the most beautiful children
that ever were beheld.

This was all that Ethel knew, except that once Mrs. Derham had brought
her one of her grandchildren to be seen and admired. In all that the
good woman said, there was so much kindness, such a cheerful endurance
of the ills of life, and she had shown such a readiness to oblige, that
the idea of applying to her for advice, relieved Ethel's mind of much of
its load of anxiety.

She was too much agitated to think of ringing for the servant, to ask to
see her; but hurried down stairs, and knocked at the parlour-door almost
before she was aware of what she was doing. "Come in," said a feminine
voice. Ethel entered, and started to see one she knew;--and yet again
she doubted;--was it indeed Fanny Derham whom she beheld?

The recognition afforded mutual pleasure: checked a little on Ethel's
part, by her anxieties; and on Fanny's, by a feeling that she had been
neglected by her friend. A few letters had passed between them, when
first Ethel had visited Longfield: since then their correspondence had
been discontinued till after her return to England, from Italy, when
Mrs. Villiers had wrote; but her letter was returned by the post-office,
no such person being to be found according to the address.

The embarrassment of the moment passed away. Ethel forgot, or rather did
not advert to, her friend's lowly destiny, in the joy of meeting her
again. After a minute or two, also, they had become familiar with the
change that time had operated in their youthful appearance, which was
not much, and most in Ethel. Her marriage, and conversance with the
world, had changed her into a woman, and endowed her with easy manners
and self-possession. Fanny was still a mere girl; tall, beyond the
middle height, yet her young, ingenuous countenance was unaltered, as
well as that singular mixture of mildness and independence, in her
manners, which had always characterized her. Her light blue eyes beamed
with intelligence, and her smile expressed the complacency and
condescension of a superior being. Her beauty was all intellectual:
open, sincere, passionless, yet benignant, you approached her without
fear of encountering any of the baser qualities of human beings,--their
hypocrisy, or selfishness. Those who have seen the paintings of the
calm-visaged, blue-eyed deities of the frescos of Pompeii, may form an
idea of the serene beauty of Fanny Derham.

When Mrs. Villiers entered, she was reading earnestly--a large
dictionary open before her. The book on which she was intent was in
Greek characters. "You have not forgotten your old pursuits," said
Ethel, smiling.

"Say rather I am more wedded to them than ever," she replied; "since,
more than ever, I need them to give light and glory to a dingy world.
But you, dear Ethel, if so I may call you,--you looked anxious as you
entered: you wish to speak to my mother;--she is gone to Kennington, and
will not return to-night. Can I be of any use?"

Her mother! how strange! and Mrs. Derham, while she had dilated with
pride on her elder daughter, had never mentioned this pearl of price,
which was her's also.

"Alas! I fear not!" replied Ethel; "it is experience I need--experience
in things you can know nothing about, nor your mother either, probably;
yet she may have heard of such things, and know how to advise me."

Mrs. Villiers then explained the sources of her disquietude. Fanny
listened with looks of the kindest sympathy. "Even in such things," she
said, "I have had experience. Adversity and I are become very close
friends since I last saw you: we are intimate, and I know much good of
her; so she is grateful, and repays me by prolonging her stay. Be
composed: no ill will happen, I trust, to Mr. Villiers;--at least you
need not be afraid of his being pursued. It the man you have sent be
active and faithful, all will be well. I will see these troublesome
people to-morrow, when they come, and prevent your being annoyed. If
Saunders returns early, and brings tidings of Mr. Villiers, you will
know what his wishes are. You can do nothing more to-night; and there is
every probability that all will be well."

"Do you really think so?" cried Mrs. Villiers. "O that I had gone with
him!--never will I again let him go any where without me."

Fanny entered into more minute explanations, and succeeded, to a great
degree, in calming her friend. She accompanied her back to her own room,
and sat with her long. She entered into the details of her own
history:--the illness and death of her father; the insulting treatment
her mother had met from his family; the kindness of a relation of her
own, who had assisted them, and enabled them to pursue their present
mode of life, which procured them a livelihood. Fanny spoke generally of
these circumstances, and in a spirit that seemed to disdain that such
things were; not because they were degrading in the eyes of others, but
because they interfered with the philosophic leisure, and enjoyment of
nature, which she so dearly prized. She thought nothing of privation, or
the world's impertinence; but much of being immured in the midst of
London, and being forced to consider the inglorious necessities of life.
Her desire to be useful to her mother induced her often to spend
precious time in "making the best of things," which she would readily
have dispensed with altogether, as the easiest, as well as the wisest,
way of freeing herself from their trammels. Her narration interested
Ethel, and served to calm her mind. She thought--"Can I not bear those
cares with equanimity for Edward's sake, which Fanny regards as so
trivial, merely because Plato and Epictetus bid her do so? Will not the
good God, who has implanted in her heart so cheerless a consolation,
bring comfort to mine, which has no sorrow but for another's sake?"

These reflections tranquillized her, when she laid her head on her
pillow at night. She resigned her being and destiny to a Power superior
to any earthly authority, with a conviction, that its most benign
influence would be extended over her.




END OF VOL. II.



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