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 ofencouraging, 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.

[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.