Читать книгу Home Influence: A Tale for Mothers and Daughters - Aguilar Grace - Страница 7

Eleanor's unfounded dislike toward Arthur Hamilton did not decrease when he became her brother-in-law; she chose to believe that he had injured her by being the only one who had remained proof against all the fascinations she had thrown in his way. Even in her childhood, if any one chanced to notice Emmeline more than herself, it was considered a mortal offense, and the person who had so offended was scarcely spoken to again. Therefore that Emmeline should be married before herself, and to the man she intended to captivate, but not to love, or wed, was an offense visited upon her sister by the withdrawal of her speech for six months, and on Mr. Hamilton by an insulting haughtiness of demeanor toward him, at which he only smiled; and, to her extreme annoyance, she found that even as she had failed to fascinate, she equally failed to offend. He would speak to her, would treat her with courtesy, and the quiet familiarity of an older relative – and more, actually remonstrate with her conduct whenever he thought it wrong. It was the recollection of this time, yet more than actual present feeling, which had occasioned the mistaken impressions she had infused into both her children, of the extreme severity and harshness of their uncle, thoughtlessly indeed, for the present was always all to her, and if she did think that they might one day be under his charge, she little imagined the unhappiness and mischief which their supposition of his unbending sternness might engender.

To Emmeline, the change in her young life was so marvelous, so complete – care, anxiety, loneliness, that sinking of the whole frame and heart, from the absence of appreciation and social kindness, had so departed, leaving in their stead such an intensity of quiet domestic happiness, that it was long before her full heart could believe it reality, and rest secure. She had always longed for one to reverence, to cling to, and her husband gave her room for both. As his betrothed, even before their marriage, she had been introduced to very different society to that of the marchioness; she beheld him reverenced, loved, appealed to by the wisest and the best men, often older than himself. That this man should so love, cherish, and actually reverence her – no wonder that under the magic of such feelings her character matured, displaying such engaging and unsuspected qualities, that even her husband often looked at her with astonishment, playfully asking her if she could be the same calm, almost too quiet, and seemingly too cold Emmeline Manvers whom he had first seen. Her very talents, which had seemed worthless, compared to her sister's, were called forth by her husband. She found that her voice and her touch on either piano or harp, could give him exquisite pleasure, and this once discovered, she made such improvement as almost to surprise herself. She found the sketches taken from the various lovely spots in the vicinity of their noble seat, and in which Devonshire abounds, delighted him, and when Eleanor did visit Oakwood, she was astounded at the various beautiful drawings, which evinced the employment of that leisure which she had declared must be even to the quiet Emmeline a horrid bore.

To Lord Delmont the change in his daughter was much more astonishing than to her husband. He was very often at Oakwood (particularly when a little grandson was added to the happy party), for his home under Eleanor's extravagant and heedless management had lost all the comfort that Emmeline had bestowed. He had begun, too, to discover that his darling, his still favorite Eleanor, was not faultless. Emmeline's generous assistance and determination to spare her father all discomfort had concealed Eleanor's personal extravagance from him; but after her marriage, as Eleanor's fashionable amusements increased, so did the quantity and amount of her bills, which, as the young lady did not seem inclined to settle them, were sent to her father. Lord Delmont was painfully startled, and with his usual want of judgment spoke to Eleanor at the very moment that he felt most angry; unaccustomed to reproof from him, she retorted with equal passion, and a violent altercation ensued, which ended in Eleanor ordering the carriage and driving to Lady Lascelles, declaring she could not think of returning home, till her father had sufficiently recovered his senses for her to do so in safety.

The interference of Emmeline at length succeeded in restoring peace, but Lord Delmont's eyes had been rudely opened, and, as is unhappily too often the case with those weak characters where over-indulgence of childhood, has occasioned those annoyances of ungoverned youth, he became irritable and sometimes even harsh with Eleanor, which conduct threw her still more with Lady Lascelles. As to joining society with Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton, when they were in London, Eleanor would not hear of it. But to her sister's great joy, and some surprise, she accepted an invitation to Oakwood a short time after little Percy's birth; and, still more surprising, condescended to make herself agreeable. The London season had tired her, and she thought she might just as well be dull on the banks of the Dart in August and September as in some stupid watering-place. Mr. Hamilton, despite her dislike, which she cared not to avow, she found could be at least very entertaining; her father was more like his former self, her sister far more delightful and lovely than she ever thought she could be, and her nephew certainly a pretty little plague. Then Mr. Hamilton had a beautiful horse entirely for her use, and she rode exceedingly well, and was greatly admired. She was seized with an exploring mania, and dragged Emmeline to every old ruin and dark wood within ten miles of Oakwood. Altogether the impression she left behind her, after a two months' visit, was such as to ease Mrs. Hamilton's great anxiety, more especially as it appeared from certain private conversations, that her affections were for the first time really engaged, and Emmeline had always fondly hoped that when that should be the case, Eleanor would become a very different person. Alas! penetrative as she was, she had not yet learned her sister's character; simply because utter heartlessness in any woman she could not comprehend.

Her visit to her father in London, in the winter, removed all their rising hopes, and caused such increased and intense anxiety, as so to injure her already delicate health that her husband bore her back to Oakwood a full month before they had originally intended. Whether or not Eleanor loved Lord Fitzclair, it was impossible to determine; but that he devotedly, passionately loved her, was only too evident, not only to the world, but to herself; and this once confirmed, she left no method untried to torment, and so, as she declared, to try if his affections were worth having. He was half an Italian, and had inherited all the strong, fierce passions of that country, without one atom of self-control. Mr. Hamilton knew him well, far better than he knew himself, and conjured him to withdraw from the society of one who could never make him happy, and whose capricious conduct was so likely to render him desperate and miserable: he reasoned, entreated in vain. "She only wants to try the strength of my love," was his sole reply; "and were she to torment health and life away, it will never change – she will be mine yet."

And to the astonishment of Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton, two months afterward he proposed in form, and actually was accepted, with the sole condition that their engagement should be kept secret till it should please Eleanor to name the wedding day, which could not be at least for six or eight months.

This engagement might have eased anxiety, but the condition increased it, especially, as instead of coming to Oakwood, as Emmeline had asked and hoped, the latter part of the summer and autumn was to be spent in Cheltenham with a very gay party, in which Eleanor was still of course the star. Mrs. Hamilton entered the nursery one morning earlier than usual, for her infant had not been well the night before, and she had already experienced the care as well as the joy of a mother. Her babe was better, and as he lay smilingly and happily in her lap, and watched the eager movements of his brother, she was only sensible of pleasure. The nurse had arranged the chairs in a long line, that Master Percy might, with their help, walk the whole length of the large and airy room. The feat mightily pleased the little gentleman, who, having acquired the venerable age of fifteen months, liked better to feel his feet than crawl on the floor, or be carried about on any limbs but his own. Every two or three paces he stood nearly alone, and burst into a loud merry laugh, which was always echoed by a crow of joy from his little brother.

"Take care, Percy, love, don't fall and frighten mamma," said his young mother, who was watching him with such pleasure as to send for his father to share it. When her son, to prove how well he obeyed her commands to take care, stood for a second without any support, and then ran quite alone across the room, and with a yet louder laugh hid his rosy face in her lap. Mrs. Hamilton fondly kissed the little nestling head, and at that moment her husband entered the room. "Dearest Arthur," she eagerly exclaimed, "I was actually foolish enough to send for you. Herbert seems quite well; I was, it seems, needlessly alarmed, and Percy has this moment – " She stopped in sudden terror, for there was an expression on her husband's countenance of such unusual agitation, that though he tried to smile when he heard her words, she could not conquer her alarm, more than to say, in a caressing voice to her little boy —

"Will not Percy run to papa, and ask him why he looks so sad?"

The child looked up in her face, and then, as his father held out his arms to him, let go his mother's dress, and obeyed her. Mr. Hamilton caught him to his heart, held him for above a minute, kissed him fondly, and left the nursery without uttering a single word.

"Let me take Master Herbert, ma'am," said the head nurse respectfully, for she saw that her mistress's unexpressed alarm had nearly overpowered her; and in a few minutes Emmeline was with her husband, whose agitation was so excessive, that even his wife's presence, for the moment, had scarcely power to calm him.

The tale was soon told. Eleanor's conduct since her engagement had been such as to excite the displeasure, not of her father alone, but actually of the marchioness; who, though a weak and worldly woman, had yet some idea of propriety. As a near relation of Lord Delmont, Eleanor's engagement with Lord Fitzclair was of course told to her, and again and again she warned her that she was going too far, and might lose her lover before she was aware of it; but Eleanor only laughed at her, and at last won her over to the belief that it was certainly better to cure Fitzclair of his jealous tendency before marriage than afterward. Lord Delmont's reproofs she was wont to silence, by invariably making them the signal of mortifying and annoying Lord Fitzclair still more than usual. Yet still at times she relented, and so strengthened the love she had excited, so enhanced her own fascinations, that all the agony he had endured and was still, he knew, to endure, by an incomprehensible contradiction, riveted her power and hastened his own doom. Weak in all things but his love, he could not demand as his actual right the publication of their engagement. Eleanor vowed if he did till she permitted him, she would have nothing more to say to him. She knew, though she did not say it, that once made known, a chain would be thrown round her actions, which she did not choose to endure. And father, lover, and friend, all feeling she was wrong, and the first and last repeatedly telling her so, had yet neither of them the resolution to contend with her, and compel the proper course.

A month of their visit to Cheltenham so passed, when Eleanor's attention was arrested by a new actor on the scene. She had begun to tire of her present satellites, and a young military captain, whose furlough from India had just expired, and whose pale face, somewhat melancholy expression, and very elegant figure, presented a new subject for conquest impossible to be resisted; and it was unhappily, only too easily achieved. She made no secret of her admiration, speaking of him in such terms to her intended husband as to excite anew every jealous feeling. It was easy for Captain Fortescue to discover Fitzclair was his rival; but believing himself decidedly the object of Eleanor's preference, he increased his attentions, little imagining the storm he was exciting, the more fearful from its determined suppression. Lord Delmont interfered several times, not only by reproaches to Eleanor, but by determined coldness to her new suitor. Finding at length that her encouragement actually neared a criminal extent, and after a desperately stormy interview, he solemnly declared that if she did not dismiss Captain Fortescue at once, he would shame her in the face of the whole world, by proclaiming her engagement with the young marquis. Eleanor in equal anger, declared that if he threatened, so too could she; and if he tormented her any more she would prevent all publication of her engagement, by herself snapping it asunder, and pledging her faith to Captain Fortescue. This was too much even for Lord Delmont. Declaring if she did so, a father's heaviest malediction should fall on her head, he hastily left her; and Eleanor very composedly went to prepare for an excursion on horseback with Fortescue, Fitzclair and others.

When Lord Delmont's passions were once roused, even his ordinarily slender judgment entirely forsook him, and he did that which at another time, knowing Fitzclair as he did, he would have shrunk from. He sought him, while still exasperated, upbraided him for his weakness in permitting Eleanor's unprincipled conduct, and warned him that, if he did not adopt some strong measures to prevent it, he would certainly lose her entirely.

The young man heard him without reply; but his face grew livid, and he clenched his hand till the blood started from the nails, and in this mood of concentrated passion joined the riding party. The exercise itself is, to some temperaments, unusually exciting, and the determined coldness of Eleanor to himself, and the eagerly-received devotion of Fortescue, maddened him. He demanded an interview with her on their return home, struggled to speak calmly, expostulated, and, finally, reproached. Eleanor, already irritated; and, beyond all, that her lover, in general so obsequious and humble, should dare to call her to account for mere amusement, combined with the recollection of Captain Fortescue's flattering vows and willing homage, excited her to an extent of which she was herself unconscious, inasmuch as she firmly believed, whatever she might say then, a few soft words would speedily obliterate. She told him that really his jealous temperament was beyond all endurance; that he certainly must intend her to despise and abhor him; and that the contrast he presented to Captain Fortescue was such as to make her most heartily wish to put an end to their engagement, as she felt quite sure it must only end in misery for both; and, without waiting for a reply, she haughtily brushed by him, and disappeared.

Of the extent of Fitzclair's passion Eleanor had not the least idea, and this is saying a great deal, for she generally exaggerated her own power. She believed she had inflicted pain, but not as much as he deserved; and determined that she would torment him yet more at the ball that evening. But to her extreme mortification, he did not appear, and there was a vague dread on her spirits as she retired for the night, which prevented any thing like rest. His absence had excited surprise in all, especially Lady Lascelles, who knew that to leave Eleanor entirely to the attentions of young Fortescue was so unprecedented as to bode no good. But the wildest conjectures were far from reality. The very next morning all Cheltenham was thrown into the most painful excitement by the incomprehensible and most extraordinary fact of the suicide of Lord Fitzclair; by what occasioned, plunged into such mystery that nothing but sudden aberration of mind was imagined, a belief justified by the very peculiar temperament and manners of the young nobleman during his sojourn with them. His will, a valuable present, with a few lines of regard to his faithful attendant, and a letter addressed to Arthur Hamilton, Esq., were the sole evidences that the awful deed had not been committed without some preparation; but as that was often the case with madness itself, it excited no remark.

The state of Eleanor's mind when these awful tidings were communicated to her, which they were by her father, in his agitation and anger, without the least preparation, we leave our readers to imagine. Hardened, heartless, willful as she was, she was still a woman, and a very young one, and till Captain Fortescue appeared, had loved, as far as it was in her nature, Lord Fitzclair. To believe that she had nothing to do with his miserable end was an attempt so vain and hollow, that even she shrunk from the hopeless struggle to realize it; remorse in all its torturing, unmitigated anguish took possession of her, but instead of leading her to penitence, and thence the hope of peace, it urged her to a course of action from which she imagined there was no withdrawing; and which must in time, by removing her from all painful associations, lessen her present misery.

For three days and nights she never quitted her own apartment, and then joined her usual circles without the smallest evidence of the internal agony which was still hers. It was very easy to displace paleness by artificial roses, and her gay smiles and joyous sallies were tempered only by a judiciously-expressed horror when the late event was discussed before her, supposed natural to one who had known him so intimately; but the hours of loneliness which followed this conduct in society were terrible indeed. By a strange contrariety of feeling, her better nature longed for Emmeline, and her artificial, which had, alas! only too forcibly become her natural self, felt as if she would leave the kingdom rather than encounter the mild, sorrowful glance of those penetrating eyes.

Lord Delmont was himself in a most pitiable condition; even minor evils had always been great to him, and the effect of this, the wish to take Eleanor away from Captain Fortescue's increased and annoying attentions, and yet the dread that doing so would connect her with Fitzclair's death, so distracted him as to render him really ill – information which instantly brought Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton to Cheltenham.

Some young wives and mothers might have felt it hard that their domestic enjoyment should so continually have been disturbed and annoyed from the faults of others; but Emmeline had been accustomed to trace every thing that created personal suffering to the highest source, and feel that it was good for her, or it would not be; a conviction that enabled her to bear with and still to love the erring one that was the visible cause of pain.

Eleanor was at a gay ball the night of her arrival, and Mrs. Hamilton requested she might not be informed of it till the following day. About half an hour before her usual hour of rising after such scenes, she entered her sister's room. All around her lay the ornaments of the previous evening, looking so strange, gaudy, and faded in the darkened room, and judged by the calmer feelings of the morning. A sensation of intense depression crept over Emmeline as she gazed, increasing as she looked on the face of the sleeper, which, divested of its unnatural bloom, looked so fearfully wan and haggard. Her beautiful hair lay in tangled masses on her damp brow, and as Emmeline gently tried to remove it, Eleanor started and awoke.

"Is it already time to get up?" she said languidly, and only half unclosing her eyes; "I feel as if I had not slept at all. Am I dreaming?" she added, starting up, "or have I slept in one place, and awoke in another? Am I at Oakwood?"

"No, dearest Eleanor; will you not welcome me to Malvern House?"

The voice, the look, seemed to thrill through her; her temples were throbbing, her heart weighed down, as it always was when she first awoke, with an undefinable sense of guilt and pain; she tried to be cold, proud, reserved, but it would not do, and she suddenly flung her arms round her sister's neck, and burst into agonized tears.

It was a most unexpected greeting, and Mrs. Hamilton argued hopefully from it. Alas! the unwonted softening only lasted one brief half hour. She left her at Eleanor's entreaty while dressing, and when she returned, though the reckless girl told her with a half smile that she was ready for her lecture, for she could only have come from Oakwood to give her one; and that however severe her words might be, she could not alter her tone, that must be kind, in spite of herself. Yet Emmeline could not succeed in convincing her how wrongly, how cruelly she had acted. Eleanor would persist that she was not in the least to blame, and that poor Fitzclair's fearful end was only owing to his own violent passions; in fact, that he must have been out of his mind, and that, though it was certainly very dreadful, she had perhaps escaped a very terrible doom; but speak as she might, Emmeline was not deceived as to the agony she was actually enduring. Finding, however, that all her gentle efforts were useless, that even the perusal of Fitzclair's brief lines to her husband – which Eleanor insisted on seeing, and in which he deplored his madness in not having followed his advice, and flown from her presence, and bade him take his forgiveness to her, and say, that the means he had adopted would, he trusted, dissolve their engagement to her satisfaction – had no effect, save in causing her to turn so deadly pale, that her sister was convinced nothing but an almost supernatural effort of pride preserved her from fainting. She desisted; hoping against hope that Eleanor would yet repent and become a different being. She knew harshness would only harden, and so she tried to prevail on her father to treat her as usual, but this Lord Delmont could not do. It is strange how often we find those parents who have been over-indulgent to childhood, unusually harsh to the faults of youth. Weak characters, also, when driven to anger, are always more violent than firmer ones; and, certainly, Eleanor's continued haughtiness and coldness, as if she were the injured one, did not tend to calm him.

And his angry feelings were unfortunately but too soon aggravated by a proposal in form from Captain Fortescue for the hand of Eleanor. Without a moment's delay he dispatched a decided and almost insulting refusal to the young soldier, and then sought his daughter, and vented on her the anger and vexation which overpowered him, upbraiding her not only with the death of Fitzclair, but for having dared so to encourage young Fortescue as to give him courage for his audacious proposal. To his astonishment, he was heard without any attempt at reply; but he would have been startled, could he have seen the pallid cheek, compressed lip, and clenched hand with which, when he had left her, Eleanor muttered —

"Father, if it be sin to leave you, be it on your own head. I would have wedded with your consent, had you permitted it; but now my destiny is fixed. There is no peace in England: at least let me be spared the agony of breaking another loving heart."

Nearly three weeks rolled on, and Eleanor's extraordinary submission, and even in some degree withdrawal from society (for which Mrs. Hamilton's arrival was a good excuse), caused her father's irritation against her almost entirely to subside. That she passed several hours each day apart from her sister, excited no surprise. Emmeline was thankful even for her change of deportment, but nothing confidential ever again passed between them. That reports were floating about, connecting the names of Miss Manvers and the late Lord Fitzclair, seemed little heeded by Eleanor, though they caused natural vexation to her family. About this time an invitation arrived for Eleanor from a lady of rank, slightly known to her father, and living ten miles from Cheltenham in a beautiful villa, at which she expected a select party of fashionables to ruralize for a week or two. There was nothing in the note to excite the dread that weighed on Mrs. Hamilton's spirits, as Eleanor carelessly threw it to her for her perusal, but she would not express it, as Lord Delmont seemed inclined that Eleanor should accept it, knowing that the lady was much too exclusive for Captain Fortescue to join her guests, and believing that Eleanor's apparent indifference to the visit originated from that cause. Telling her he was so gratified by her having devoted so many evenings to her sister, he added, she had his full consent to go if she liked, as he could better spare her than when Emmeline returned to Oakwood. She quietly thanked him, but evinced no particular pleasure.

The day before her intended departure, the sisters were sitting together, and little Percy, who now ran firmly without any falls, was playing about the room. He had already displayed a high spirit and passionate temper, with their general accompaniment, self-will, even in trifles, that Mrs. Hamilton felt would render her task a trying one; but she was as firm as she was gentle, and faced the pain of contradicting her darling bravely: —

"Do not touch that, Percy, love," she said, as her little boy stretched out his hand toward a beautiful but fragile toy, that stood with other nick-nacks on a low table. The child looked laughingly and archly toward her, and withdrew his hand, but did not move from the table.

"Come here, Percy, you have not played with these pretty things for a long time;" and she took from her work-box some gayly colored ivory balls, which had been his favorite playthings, but just at present they had lost their charm, and the young gentleman did not move.

Mrs. Hamilton knelt down by him, and said quietly:

"My Percy will not disobey mamma, will he?"

"Me want that;" he replied, in the pretty coaxing tone of infancy; and he twined his little round arms caressingly round her neck.

Mrs. Hamilton felt very much tempted to indulge him, but she resisted it.

"But that is not a fit plaything for you, love; besides, it is not mine, and we must not touch what is not ours. Come and see if we can not find something just as pretty, that you may have."

And after some minutes' merry play in her lap his mother hoped he had forgotten it; but the little gentleman was not, he thought, to be so governed. The forbidden plaything was quietly grasped, and he seated himself on the ground, in silent but triumphant glee.

Surprised at his sudden silence, Mrs. Hamilton looked toward him. It was his first act of decided disobedience, and she knew she must not waver. Young as he was, he had already learned to know when she was displeased, and when she desired him very gravely to give her the toy, he passionately threw it down, and burst into a violent fit of crying. His nurse took him struggling from the room, and Mrs. Hamilton quietly resumed her work; but there was such an expression of pain in her countenance, that Eleanor exclaimed,

"Emmeline! I have been watching you for the last half hour, and I can not comprehend you. Do explain yourself."

"I will if I can;" and Mrs. Hamilton looked up, and smiled.

"Why would you not let that poor little Percy have that toy?"

"Because it would have been encouraging his touching or taking every thing he sees, whether proper for him or not."

"But he could not understand that."

"Not now, perhaps; but I wish him to know that when I speak, he must obey me. It is, I think, a mistaken doctrine, that we ought to give children a reason for all we desire them to do. Obedience can then never be prompt, as it ought to be. And, in fact, if we wait until they are old enough to understand the reasons for a command, the task will be much more difficult, from the ascendency which willfulness may already have obtained."

"But then why were you so cruel as to send the poor child up-stairs? Was it not enough to take the toy from him?"

"Not quite; for him to remember that he must not touch it again."

"And do you really think he will not?"

"I can only hope so, Eleanor; but I must not be disheartened if he do. He is an infant still, and I can not expect him to learn such a difficult lesson as obedience in one, two, or six lessons."

"And will he love you as much as if you had given it to him?"

"Not at the moment, perhaps, but when he is older he will love me more. And it is that hope which reconciles me to the pain which refusing to indulge him costs me now."

"And voluntarily you will bear the pain which had almost brought tears into the eyes of the severe and stoical Mrs. Hamilton!" exclaimed Eleanor.

"It was a foolish weakness, my dear Eleanor, for which my husband would have chidden me; but there must be pain to a mother if called upon to exert authority, when inclination so strongly points to indulgence."

"Well, if ever I have any thing to do with children, I certainly shall not be half as particular as you are, Emmeline. I really can not imagine what harm gratifying myself and Percy could possibly have done."

"If ever you have children, my dear Eleanor, may you have strength of mind and self-control sufficient to forget self, and refuse the gratification of the present moment for the welfare of future years!"

Mrs. Hamilton spoke impressively, and something, either in her words or tone, caused the blood to rush into Eleanor's cheeks, and she hastily walked to the window; then, as abruptly returning, she kissed her sister, a very rare token of affection, and declaring she was much too good for her to understand, quitted the room.

The following day, dressed for her visit, and only waiting for the carriage, Eleanor, accompanied by Mrs. Hamilton and her little boys, entered the same apartment. Though not in general fond of nursing, Eleanor had taken Herbert in her arms, and was playing with him with unusual fondness; Percy, who had not seen the tempting plaything since his banishment the preceding day, the moment his eye caught it, to the astonishment of Eleanor, ran up to his mother, and lisping, "Me no touch that – Percy good boy now," held up his little face lovingly to hers, and with a very pardonable feeling of delight, Mrs. Hamilton lifted him up and covered him with kisses. The feelings which thrilled through Eleanor at that moment she might indeed have found it difficult to explain, but she was so conscious of a change of countenance as to hide her face on Herbert's head. It might have been obedience and disobedience brought so suddenly and strangely in contrast – and who were the actors? an infant and herself. For a minute she recovered, stricken with sudden and agonized remorse; but it was too late, she had gone too far, and the announcement of the carriage was a relief from that bitter moment of painful indecision. Placing her baby nephew in his nurse's arms, she said, caressingly, "Will not Percy give Lina some of those kisses as well as mamma?" The child threw one little arm round her neck, and the other round that of his mother, and then burst into a merry laugh at thus seeing himself as it were a link between them. Never had it seemed to Eleanor that she had loved and admired her sister as she did at that moment; all the neglect, unkindness, she had shown her, all the sarcasm and satire, of which, either before or behind her, she had so often made her the victim, combined with an intense, but how painfully vain longing to have resembled her in the remotest degree, rather than be the character which had never before appeared so degraded, so hateful – almost overpowered her – a convulsive sob escaped her as she clasped Emmeline in a close embrace, and almost choked her hurried good-by! Lord Delmont and Mr. Hamilton were in the hall, and the former was surprised and delighted at the warmth with which his usually reckless child returned his kiss and farewell; the carriage drove off leaving unusual hope and cheerfulness behind it. Alas! in one short fortnight every rising hope was blighted, Emmeline's momentary dread fulfilled, and Lord Delmont experiencing, in all its agony,

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is,

To have a thankless child"