"Oh, my father!" cried he, "Thou sleepest alone! Far from thy wife and child! Far from the country of thy birth, or thy adoption—betrayed, forgotten, stigmatized!"
While this bitter remembrance envenomed the before resigned state of hismind, his upward eye was struck with the appearance of an eagle, as if emerging from the ether; so high was its elevation, as it floated over him, on vigorous and steady wing. It moved towards the coast of Barbary. It seemed to hover over the heights of Tetuan:—it descended for a while; remained stationary in mid air; and then, soaring aloft like a dart of light, was lost in the heavens.
Louis saw no more. That bird was the crest of his family. Imagination and grief were busy in his heart. He burst into tears, and slowly descended the mountain.
A succession of various weather, at last brought the frigate, which contained Louis de Montemar, and his faithful Lorenzo, in sight of the British coast. He was returning to it, after an absence of little more than two years, "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief!" In the morning of his youth, he bore in his bosom the experience of age. But it was not with a bent spirit, nor a wearied courage.
"I am bruised," said he to himself; "but not broken. I have yet, bonds of duty to the world, and I will not shrink from my task."
But he felt this inward assurance spring and grow, exactly in proportion as he drew nearer to the coast wherehe had imbibed the first aliments of all that was greatly emulous in his mind; where his heart had first known the glows of dear domestic tenderness; where, in short, he first knew a home.
"Since I left it," cried he, "I have never found another!" and, as he stood on the deck of the vessel, he thought the glittering summits of the cliff's he descried at a distance, shone on him like the welcoming smiles of a mother.
He landed. Portsmouth did not detain him long; nor any town, nor any track he passed over; while the rapid vehicle in which he threw himself, conveyed him with all the eagerness of his wishes towards Northumberland.
It was the season of the year when the family of Lindisfarne were usually removed to Morewick-hall. Though the summer was far advanced, in the southern climate he had left; in the colder latitudes of England he found snow on the mountains, and ice in the vallies. Theleafless woods shook their glittering branches in the keen blast, and the heavy clouds, teeming with a hail-storm, burst, and darkened the road.
Louis would not think of the orange groves, and gales laden with balm and fragrance, he had so lately left behind; but he did not check the remembrance, because he regretted the change.
There were memories attached to it, which he wished not to cling too closely to his heart, when he should first press to his returning bosom, the venerable form of him, who had blessed him when he last crossed the top of that hill!—
As soon as the well-known pinnacles of Morewick-hall, appeared over the woods at the bottom of the valley, he called to the postilion to proceed slower. He was alone. For he could not approach that house, with any witness of his emotion. But the man had no sooner obeyed his directions, and was winding down the hill with a leisurely pace, than Louisfelt the agitation of his mind encreased by the slowness that permitted recollection to crowd his thoughts with images. He changed his commands, and the driver set off on the spur towards the gates of Morewick.
Many an apprehension was in his bosom. Many a wringing reflection. How had he left that place? How did he return? And what would be the pangs of meeting, after the wreck of so many hopes!—
He was taking counsel of his manhood, to sustain with firmness the questions which must summon the shadows, whosetorturing substancehe had endured without a receding nerve;—when his carriage entered the gates of Morewick Park. Lost in self-recollection, it was only by the jerk of the horses in stopping before the mansion, that Louis knew he was arrived. The carriage door was opened. In that land of hospitality, the house-door also stood at large. Hesprang from his vehicle into the hall. Servants were entering it from different avenues; but he passed through them all, and knew nothing of what he saw or did, till he found himself at the feet of his revered uncle.
He was clasped in the arms of his aunt; and Alice bathed his hand with her happy tears.
It was many minutes before a word was spoken. But every heart knew each other's language, and the folded hands of Mr. Athelstone, as he stood over his nephew, told to all who looked on him, that his grateful soul was then at the feet of his God.
The embrace with which Louis strained his aunt to his bosom, recalled her passing senses to recollection; and, throwing her arms round his neck, she wept there, almost to suffocation. While the Pastor, with eyes no less the witnesses of a joy that has not words, assisted his nephew to bear her to thesettee, Louis put the venerable hand to his lips. The last time he so pressed it, he was possessed of a father whom he loved and honoured!—That father was now no more; and the pride with which he then dwelt on his name, was extinguished for ever! He would not allow the swelling sluices of his heart to give way, or even to intimate what was labouring there, by pressing that hand to his bosom!
"Dearest Louis!" cried Alice, who was the first to speak;—for her mother sat on the sofa with her arms still on the neck of her nephew, and gazing with anguish on his face:—"Dearest Louis!" cried her daughter, in a voice as plaintive as her mother's looks; "Oh, how you are changed!"
"Not in heart, Alice!" said he, turning his eyes tenderly upon her.
"Ah! that voice, is still his own!" cried Mrs. Coningsby, throwing herself upon his bosom, and weeping afresh."Yes, Catherine;" said the Pastor, regarding the agitated groupe, with all the tenderness of his sainted spirit. "A veil has fallen over the lustre of that beauty you used to prize so much! but it is a veil only; the light of heaven is still behind it!"
It was not until this day of emotion was quite over; and that both Mrs. Coningsby and Alice had given their hands to the kneeling obeisance of Lorenzo, with rather the welcome of kindred than of superiors; and the calming solitude of night had schooled every heart to the necessity of, at least, assuming tranquillity, that the little circle at Morewick could fully feel the happiness of re-union.
Before Louis quitted his chamber next morning, the usual domestic groupe were assembled in the breakfast room. Mr. Athelstone, with pious gratitude, remarked to Mrs. Coningsby on the trying circumstances of his nephew's yet earlylife; and exulted in the integrity with which he had passed so fiery an ordeal.
"Yes," returned she, "many begin their contest when he has finished his. But he has not escaped the marks!" and she shuddered while she wiped the starting tear from her eye.
"Man's contest," rejoined the Pastor, "is not finished till he grounds his arms in the grave. That our nephew has so soon commenced his combat; that he has so bravely resisted what has overcome more veteran spirits; is a sign that much remains for him to do. The soldiers of our heavenly captain, are not taught in vain: they must struggle and conquer until the end; and then they will receive their rest and their reward!"
"Hitherto," replied Mrs. Coningsby, with almost audible sobs, "his discipline has been severe indeed! but altered as he is, never did I behold affliction so dignified. His eyes, in their brightest happiness, never looked so lovely as lastnight, in the wordless anguish of his soul."
"And yet, Catherine, you lament his bloom!"
"No, Mr. Athelstone, it is the cause of its loss, that fills me with regret."
"But I do;" cried Alice, "I lament the loss of all that was my former Louis! his light, ethereal step,—his look of radiance,—and his voice of such soul-entrancing gladness!—But now, his movements are slow; his cheek is wan and faded; and his voice is so full of pity, I could weep whenever he speaks."
"Give him time, my child," returned the Pastor; "the hand of recent sorrow is yet heavy on him. He must yield his tribute to Nature. Suffer him now, and Nature will reward us with an ample restoration of all his delighting powers."
Louis's entrance checked the reply of Alice. And now he was welcomed to the dear domestic breakfast table, with smiles, instead of the tears which onthe foregoing night, lingered in every eye until the hour of retirement.
During the meal Mr. Athelstone made the conversation cheerful, by turning it on general subjects, and particularly enlarging on Sir Anthony's improved manner of life. He had thrown aside all his old, reprehensible habits, and preferring the occasional society of his niece Cornelia, (who, in consequence of the gout flying about him, was now with him at Cheltenham,) his days passed in the equable current of domestic comfort and social respectability.
While the Pastor pursued this discourse, and Louis listened to him with evident pleasure, Alice contemplated her cousin's face and figure; and at last wondered within herself, how she could have thought him so greatly altered. If any change had taken place in his figure, it unquestionably was to its advantage. A certain martial dignity was added to its former pliant grace. It wasnow a form whereevery god had seemed to have set his sealto shape the perfect man;—before, it was that of a beautiful youth,—the dawn of this checquered, but resplendent day!
If this were the case, it must then be his black garments, which had at first struck her with some melancholy idea of a change in his person as well as face! she scanned that face with equal scrutiny. To her poetic fancy, his still matchless smile played under the soft moon-light of his now pensive eyes, like the shadowed, yet scintillating wave of her native stream.
At the moment this romantic image crossed her mind, she descried a spot of a deeper hue than the rest, and of the form and tint of a faded leaf, upon his cheek.
"Dear Louis!" said she, pressing affectionately to his side, and putting her finger on the place; "what mark isthat?—It was not there when you left us?"
All her cousin's wonted bloom suffused that pale cheek, and obliterated the mark, as she uttered the question. It was the remains of the wound he had received there, in defending the life of Don Ferdinand.
"Do not enquire of all things, sweet Alice!" returned he, as he pressed her hand to his lips.
But he said it with an accent and a look so fraught with tenderness, and a something implied besides, that Ferdinand immediately occurred to her mind, though she knew not why, and casting down her eyes with a blush; she again thought within herself:—
"How could I think that Louis was altered?"
Before the expiration of a week, he had communicated to the different members of the little circle, all that respectively most interested each. But it was only when alone with his revered uncle, that he laid open the undisguised history of all that had befallen him in his father's calamities and his own; the undisguised confession of his trials, his disappointments, and the present unnatural torpor of his soul.
The Pastor, with the gentleness of affection, and a knowledge that knew when to probe, to render the cure more radical, entered on all these discussions with wisdom and truth. He shewed Louis how mistaken had been his early conceptions of human nature; how idolatrous had been his estimation of beings, formed of the same dust and ashes as himself.
"I told you this from the first, my child!" said he; "and though your lips accorded, your spirit would not believe. But it is the error of most of us. We garnish finite man with the perfections of the infinite God. We fall down andworship the image we have made. We pray to it, we rest on it. But we soon find our trust is in a piece of clay. It has ears, and hears not; eyes, and sees not; and hands that cannot help!—Yes, Louis, all earthly idols are little more than blocks of wood; which might have been secure staves to hold us on our way; but when elevated to shrines, we find them things of naught. Now, my son, if we view all that are born of woman as erring creatures like ourselves; and accordingly love and assist, pardon and sustain them; we shall support, and be supported, through this travelling pilgrimage, till we at last lay down our heads in the grave, at peace with all mankind. But, on the reverse, when we look for perfection, and meet error, we are shocked; we resent and abhor; we do not forgive, we will not excuse; and they become our enemies from despair, whom the tender charities of a Christian spirit might have preserved as friends, and in time,persuaded to the hope of unerring purity!"
Louis acknowledged the truth of these observations. He had erred under them all, excepting that, of not knowing how to pardon; and there, his heart bore witness to itself, that he could forgive the hand that stabbed him.
"Yes, Sir;" replied he, "I know that in striving after excellence; to bear, and to forbear, is the duty of men on earth. Perfect virtue will be his happiness in Heaven."
"You sigh, very heavily, my dear Louis;" replied Mr. Athelstone, "while you acknowledge this!—But so right a judgement at so early an age, is cheaply purchased by thesweet uses of adversity!—you know I told you, in my first letter on the beginning of your misfortunes; that, may be you were only entered into a cloud, which would shed forth a gentle shower to refresh your virtues—and the event has proved it.""But not with gentle showers!" replied Louis with a smile of anguish.
"No, my child," answered the Pastor, tenderly regarding him; "but had you not required it, they would not have been so heavy."
"I believe it, Sir!" replied Louis rising from his chair, "I was proud, and I was ambitious. The world reigned in my heart, when you thought it possessed by a better principle. I was ignorant of my own state, till I was made to see my own likeness in a mirror—But we will not speak further on it!" cried he, interrupting himself,—"It is over,—quite over;—buried deep, deep—beneath the walls of Tetuan!"
Louis had touched a string that made every chord in his heart vibrate; and, he quitted the venerable presence, to recover composure in the recollections of solitude.
The letters from Morewick, which announced to Sir Anthony Athelstone, the return of his nephew, found the Baronet at Cheltenham, just recovering from a fit of the gout. He was seated in his great-arm chair, and Cornelia reading by his footstool, when the tidings were brought in. Under these circumstances, for either to set out on an immediate journey northward, was impossible; but the raptures of both were not less eloquent; and was expressed with boisterous joy, by the one; and the mild transport of perfect happiness, from the lips of the other.
Sir Anthony wrote to Morewick, that his physicians would allow him to set forward in a very short time; when sixhorses should bring him with all speed to the banks of the Coquet. But this permission was not granted so soon as he expected; and, when it was accorded, the haste he made in travelling was so hostile to his convalescent state, that, within a stage of his own place of Athelstone-manor, he was seized with a relapse. Cornelia got him to the house, but no farther; the gout had now made prisoners of both feet; and he was laid upon his couch, for, perhaps a month to come, when she wrote to her cousin to tell him of this prevention to their progress.
The anticipated answer to this information was not disappointed. Louis set out for Athelstone. His reception there, was like that of the lost sheep being found; or the prodigal son, returned from his hopeless wanderings. The fatted calf was killed; and all the costly apparel brought forth, by the tenantry to honour the re-appearance of their master's future heir.Sir Anthony fell on his neck; and the happy Cornelia, standing bright in her beauty, like the palladian goddess her form and character resembled, looked on him with a sister's love beaming through her tears.
Time flew in this dear domestic circle. Louis and Cornelia successively read, and conversed; and amused the good-humoured invalid, in every possible way. And what was less agreeable to the cousins, the neighbouring gentry were curious to renew their acquaintance with the young and always animating de Montemar; but who was now returned amongst them, a politician and a soldier. Some enjoyed his society, with the zest of highly intelligent minds. Others gathered from his observations, information and pleasure; while the rest (and some of the older sort,) listened, and questioned; and marvelled with an absurd wonder, at such extraordinaryknowledge in a man not yet four-and-twenty.
During his first visit to Athelstone, which was lengthened to more than a month, he received letters from Spain, from Martini and Ferdinand. The former told him, that he was still an unmolested occupier of the castle on the Guadalquivir. There was but one sentiment along its banks, with regard to him: lamentation for Ripperda, whom they still designated under the title of theGreat Duke, while they accused the present ministry of Spain, of having forced him into rebellion. His dying in the arms of the church was a sufficient propitiation, in their eyes, for his short defection. But that was not enough for their love; and masses were daily said throughout Andalusia for the repose of his soul.
Martini's duty of charity proceeded in a manner equally grateful to the son of Ripperda. General ****, in Gibraltar, and Ismail Cheriff in Barbary, continuedzealous coadjutors in the good work; and many slaves were ransomed, who had since arrived in Spain, full of thanksgiving to the hands which gave them freedom.
Ferdinand's letter was of a less agreeable complexion. An air of restraint pervaded its communications; which induced Louis to believe that his friend did not wish to let him see the whole hostility of the Spanish court against his father's fame, and his own claims on the country. He wrote of armaments by sea and land. This could no longer excite its former interest in the mind of his correspondent. He added there were great schisms in theSanctum Sanctorumof the Queen; but there was one head acknowledged infallible by all parties, and that was Duke Wharton. He rode the government, as Jupiter did his cloud; and in the same invisible manner shot his thunderbolts; every body knowing whence the shaft came, but nobody daring to mention the name that launched it. However, he was lately gone to Paris, to meet the Electress of Bavaria.
"I would, I might never read of him, or hear of him again!" exclaimed Louis, as he turned to the pages, which spoke of the Marquis Santa Cruz's journey into Italy, for the benefit of Marcella's health.
"She has never recovered her close attendance on the two wounded cavaliers at Ceuta," continued Ferdinand, "The life of so worthless a being as I am, may have been dearly purchased; but I will not say the same of my friend! However, Marcella will not own to this cause of her illness. She rather believes it to be a punishment laid on her, for her long resistance to the wishes of my father, for her entire seclusion from the world. This idea has fastened on her; and now all her petitions are to be fixed with our aunt, the abbess of the Ursalines."
Louis closed the letter at this passage. The form of Marcella was then before him. She whose bloom of health, he wastoo sensible had in part been sacrificed for him! He recalled her as she used to sit, evening after evening, by his apparently unobserving side, in that sad chamber of suffering at Ceuta. In those hours, the bright moon of that clear atmosphere, shining through the solitary window, fell direct on her face. It was pale from watching; but her eyes were often fixed on the orb; and the expression of her countenance, ever reminded him of Milton's lines:
"So dear to Heaven is saintly charity!That when a soul is found sincerely pureA thousand liveried angels lacquey her;Tell her of things, that no gross ear can hear;Till oft converse with heavenly habitants,Begin to cast a beam on th' outward shape,The unpolluted temple of the mind,And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence,Till all be made immortal!"
"So dear to Heaven is saintly charity!That when a soul is found sincerely pureA thousand liveried angels lacquey her;Tell her of things, that no gross ear can hear;Till oft converse with heavenly habitants,Begin to cast a beam on th' outward shape,The unpolluted temple of the mind,And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence,Till all be made immortal!"
When he used to repeat these lines to himself in her presence, and gazing upon that form, which already appeared half angel; he did not sigh when they closed with the remembrance of the vow,urged on her by her father. Why then did separation make a change? Why did her image haunt him? Why did his heart feel as if it had received another death stroke, when he read it was now her own repeated wish, to retire into the convent of the Ursalines?
His bosom's deepest grief whispered the solution to this mystery. While his father lived in exile, he was conscious to no feeling that did not point at him. That absorbing interest gone, the repressed sympathies of his heart streamed towards their attraction; and he found that he loved, and had most inexplicably dared to hope! But this letter of Ferdinand's extinguished the vain chimera. He was made sensible that the object of his tenderest thoughts, had never been more to him than aSister of Mercy; that her unconscious eyes had never looked a dearer language; that she was now passing from him, by her own wish for ever!
"Then be it so!" said he, striking hisbreast; "I deserve this new misery, for my most extravagant presumption."
A few weeks after the receipt of these letters, Sir Anthony Athelstone was so completely recovered, as to meditate the transfer of himself and family to Bamborough. Mr. Athelstone's little household had been some time removed to Lindisfarne; and the prospect of the whole party being reunited under the venerable roof, was impatiently anticipated by them all. But the Baronet being one in the domestic circle of the Pastorage, was to be yet further postponed. The King had died the beginning of the month; and Sir Anthony was suddenly summoned to town, by order of his successor George the Second, to receive His Majesty's commands respecting the civil management of his northern counties. Other great land-holders, north of the Humber, had received the same writ; and without demur, the Baronet set forward with his nearestneighbour, to obey the summons of their new King.
Louis and Cornelia had their uncle's permission to proceed immediately to Bamborough; and either invite the family of the Pastorage to be their guests till his return, or if they preferred it cross over and take up their temporary abode at Lindisfarne.
It was a fine morning in the month of June, when they set off from Athelstone manor. Lorenzo, who would never lose sight of his master, rode by the side of the carriage. The usual out-riders kept their stations before and behind.
The cousins being together alone for so many hours, various subjects passed in review before them; and none of deeper interest, than the mutual attachment of Ferdinand and Alice.
"I wish," continued Cornelia, "that my sister could have pitied, without loving him.""But is it not natural to love what we pity?"
"Not always," replied she; "we must admire, to love."
"And may we not admire what we pity?" inquired Louis, the secret of whose heart was prompting these questions.
"In some cases," returned Cornelia; "but surely not in Alice's, when she first knew Don Ferdinand. She saw by his manner, that he was a man whose conscience was ill at ease; and how she could fix her pure affections on one his father acknowledged to have been very blame-worthy, has ever been an inexplicable wonder to me."
"But his melancholy was contrition for his offences, Cornelia," replied her cousin; "and Alice, admiring the principle, on your own argument, loved him."
"It may be so!" replied she, with a smile. "But were I to chuse, it should be an unsullied tablet!"
Louis shook his head. "Then, mysweet cousin, you must go to heaven for it!"
Cornelia shook her head in return.
"You are an amiable sceptic, my Cornelia; and, Heaven grant that time may not be the teacher to you, that it has been to me!"
"Louis," answered she, with a tender seriousness; "will you not be offended if I make a candid reply to that invocation?"
"Nothing that you would say can offend me."
"Then," replied she, "had you not deserted your youthful standard of female perfection—" She paused, and feared to go on. Louis completed the sentence.
"You would say, I should not have been disappointed in the Countess Altheim!"—A heightened colour was on his cheek as he spoke.
"Forgive me!" cried his cousin; "I was indelicate and cruel in making the reference.""Not cruel," returned he; "for she is no more to me than the recollection of a hideous dream. My imagination, not my heart, was the victim of her delusions."
"Ah, Louis!" cried Cornelia, again forgetting herself in the earnestness of her remarks; "It was something like your infatuation for Duke Wharton. My uncle always called him a splendid mischief; and, happily, the outlawry against him has banished him this country for ever. But you have long been convinced of his worthlessness; and, I thank Heaven for your second escape from similar delusions!"
Louis did not answer, but gratefully put his cousin's hand to his lips. She resumed.
"Indeed, when you wrote of her to my uncle, and under your best impressions too you dwelt so much on her beauty and accomplishments only, and her preference for you, that we could no way make ourselves esteem her, or believeher capable of making you finally happy. Dare I venture to go on, Louis?"
"Yes; you are a gentle physician!" replied he, with a forced smile; "and man's vanity needs a probe!"
"Now, the Lady Marcella!" continued Cornelia. Louis prevented himself from starting. "You wrote little of her, and you have said less; but it was always of her virtues; and in such few words, we saw her fairer, than the proud beauty of Vienna." Again Cornelia paused, and looked on her cousin, whose face was now bent on his hand. She rather hesitatingly proceeded. "We wished and thought, that had it not been for the vow anticipated by Ferdinand, you might have found her nearer to your first ideas of female excellence, and repaid her goodness to you with your love."
Louis did not speak, but still kept his head in its reclining position. She saw the struggle of a suppressed sigh, which would have been a sufficient response;and, grieved at the pain she had unconsciously excited, she tenderly pressed his hand.
"Louis," said she, in a tremulous voice, "could I have conjectured this—But I begin to think I have a very inhuman heart!" and the tears sprung to her eyes as she spoke.
"Not so;" replied he, looking up with a serene, though sad, countenance; "it has all of human softness, without its weakness. And, that I may emulate you, my Cornelia, there are some subjects I would rather avoid."
Cornelia did not answer this, nor ask another question: it declared itself. And turning to the other side of the carriage, while she gently pressed his hand, affected to gaze out of the window; but it was to allow her tears to flow unnoticed down her cheeks. Though she had never known the passion whose struggles she pitied, she loved the sufferer, dear as a brother; and, at that moment, wouldhave surrendered her own blameless life, if, by that means, she could have purchased the happiness of Louis with the angelic Marcella.
During these conferences, the day gradually declined into red billowy clouds, till the whole heavens were overcast; and the pregnant vapour hung on every hill. A chill, unnatural to the season of the year, pervaded the air, while at times, a steam of sulphureous vapour descended from the sky, and rendered the atmosphere hot to suffocation. With the gathering clouds the evening soon deepened into night; and, in the midst of a succession of wide moors, this fearful canopy developed itself to the travellers, in all the horrors of a tempest. It was profoundly dark, though the hour could not be much beyond the time of twilight. But the violence of all the seasons, seemed accumulated in this tremendous storm. Thunder and lightning, sleet and rain, and furious hurricanes of wind, menaced the travellers in every blast. The postilions lost their way. Sometimes plunging into plashes of water; at other times, struggling in a morass; but, at every step encountering some new obstacle, and some new danger.
Several hours passed in this dreadful wandering over the dreary fells; and the yawning coal-pits which were scattered over their bosom, were not the least objects of fear to the bewildered drivers.
Louis became alarmed for the health, as well as the immediate personal safety of his cousin; for owing to the frequent narrow escapes of the carriage, from over-turning in the difficult and trackless road, he let the windows down, for fear of the glass injuring her, in case of an accident. He drew up the blinds in their stead; but, from their construction, little of the outward weather could beexcluded; and the whole weight of the storm drove in upon her, till she was wet through. He had covered her with his coat; but all could not shield her from the deluge and piercing blast of that furious night. She shivered, and shrunk close into the corner of the carriage, in spite of her resolution not to distress him, by shewing herself affected by what was hopeless of remedy till the morning light should shew them where they were.
In the midst of this compulsory resignation, the carriage made a violent rebound, and stuck fast in the mud behind, while the horses plunged and reared with such strength, as to threaten its instant over-turn in the morass.
Lorenzo dismounted, and throwing open the door, Louis leaped out, and taking Cornelia in his arms, who was almost fainting from exhaustion, he carried her out of the reach of the wheels and refractory horses. One of theservants approached him at the moment, and told him the accident was occasioned by the breast of one of the leaders striking against the angle of a stone-hovel. It was a miserable, uninhabited shed; but might give some shelter to Miss Coningsby, till they saw what could be done with the carriage.
Revived at hearing of any refuge from the fury of the elements, Cornelia exerted herself to obey the suggestions of the servant; and Louis, equally glad of so providential a shelter, supported her tottering steps through the muddy ground. The hovel appeared of considerable extent, from the length of wall they had to grope along, before they reached the entrance, for door it had none. Louis bent under the low rafter, and leading Cornelia in, found his way obstructed by heaps of dried turf. On one of these heaps, she proposed seating herself, till her cousin had enquired after the injury of the horse, and given hisjudgment on what was best to be done for the extrication of the carriage.
Louis knew her too well, to fear that solitude and darkness alone could create any alarm in her mind; and, having seen her harassed spirits a little revived by the comparative security of the place, he had just consented to quit her for a short time, when Lorenzo re-entered with a glimmering lamp he had rescued from the carriage. All the others had been extinguished in succession, by the storm; and this was following their fate, when the prompt Italian seized it from its hook, and brought it in to light a few turfs, and warm Cornelia.
She took it, and dismissing her cousin and Lorenzo to their exertions without, with her own unpractised hands, she gathered some of the moor-fuel into a distant corner from the rest, and soon spread a cheering light and glow through the dreary habitation. Lorenzo ran in with a flask of oil from one of the postillions' pockets, to replenish her lamp; and he answered her anxious enquiries, by saying, that the wounded horse was loosened from the harness, and his master was then examining the injury. After this information, he left her.
While the group without, were raising the carriage from the bog into which it appeared to sink the deeper after every attempt at extrication, Cornelia sat, anxiously attending to their alternate voices of hope, and the disappointing plunges of the vehicle into the treacherous soil. In the midst of this solicitude, she thought she heard sounds of another import; and listening, found they were repeated low and heavily, as from one in a dying extremity. She turned her head in the direction whence they came; and, as she held her breath to hear more distinctly, the moans became louder, and drew her eye to a narrow door-way in the side of the intermediate mud-wall, at some distance from where she sat.—Without once considering there might be danger to herself, in exposing herself alone to the human being, or beings, she might find there, she thought only of succouring the distress those sounds indicated; and taking up her lamp, made her way over the scattered turf, to the miserable half-shut door.
It let her into a part of the hovel, even more dismal than the one she had left; for here was the confusion and stench of old worm-eaten sheep-skins; broken tar-tubs; and other implements of the shepherd's life, lying about in rust and disorder. In the middle of the apartment, something dark was spread on the floor. From that wretched bed the moans proceeded. Probably the poor tenant of this lonely sheep-cote, lay perishing there, under the toil of his occupation; without the support of necessary nourishment, or the comfort of a companion to soothe him in the last moments of over-tasked nature!She stepped gently towards the object of her pity. As she drew near, she saw the bed was a heap of these dingy fleeces, half covered with a cloak, on which lay the suffering person.
Cornelia bent over it; and holding the lamp, so as to distinguish what was beneath, beheld, not the squallid shape of poverty and comfortless old age, but a man in the garb of a gentleman, and with one of the noblest forms that ever met her sight. His dress was disordered, and clotted with the slime of the morass; but his figure, whose contour she thought she had never seen equalled, needed no embellishment to shew its consummate elegance, though now motionless in the torpor of approaching death.
Cornelia's astonishment was not so great as to supersede the active exercise of the benevolence which brought her to his side. She bent down, and placing the lamp on the ground, with her trembling hands attempted to turnthe face of the dying person, from the stifling wool in which it was now sunk. When she had accomplished what she wished, her pitying admiration was not less attracted to that face, than it had been to the figure of the unhappy sufferer. It was as pale and motionless as marble; and as perfect in every line of manly lineament, as the finest statue that ever lay under the chizel of the sculptor. A majesty, almost more than human, was stampt in the brow, on which her eyes were rivetted.
A deep groan broke the fixture of his lips. It was that of pain; and she took up the lamp, to see if she could find its immediate cause. She then saw that where his waistcoat was open, the linen on his breast was stained and stiff with blood. His before tranquil features, which had appeared fixed in death, were agitated by an evident sense of acute suffering. She put her handupon that part of his linen, where the blood-stain was the widest, and in the act, she thought she felt a gaping wound. He shrunk under the touch, and convulsively opened his eyes. They were shut as suddenly, and in a low voice, he hardly articulated—
"Where am I?"
"In a wretched place," replied Cornelia, "but with those who only wait the morning light to bear you to one of comfort."
On the first sounds of her voice, the sufferer appeared to struggle to bear the light with his eyes; but it was beyond their power. He tried to speak:—
"If I live—" said he. But a sudden agony rushing through his frame, arrested the rest; and turning his face again upon the dark pillow, Cornelia thought that moment was his last.
She clasped her hands, in the wordless sympathy of human nature. She was then brought through the horrors of thestill raging tempest, at that dismal hour of night, to this lonely hovel, to close the eyes of a forlorn stranger!—To perform the last offices to the beloved son or husband of some tender mother or doating wife, who must "long look for him who never would return!"
"Louis, Louis!" cried she, in the piteous accents of one calling for an assistance they needed, but despaired of its bringing help. Louis heard the cry, and the tone struck him with an alarm that instantly brought him into the hovel. Lorenzo followed his master, and both rushed through the chamber in which she was not to be found, into the one whence the light gleamed. She pointed, without being able to speak, to the heap on the floor. Seeing her so overcome, instead of approaching it, Louis put his arm round her waist to support her. Lorenzo stepped towards the wretched bed, and the rays of the lamp restingupon the marks of blood, he started back, and exclaimed:—
"Santa Maria!—A murdered man!"
Cornelia gasped at this enunciation of his actual death; and Louis, while he held her faster to his heart, instinctively moved towards the terrific object. Her feet readily obeyed the humane impulse of his; and sliding down on her knee by the side of the motionless stranger, she ventured to put her hand on his, expecting to feel the chill of death.
"He is warm!" cried she, looking up in the face of her cousin. He had caught a glimpse of the figure as it lay, and she saw him pale and trembling, while putting away Lorenzo, who leaned over to assist in raising the dying man, he approached close to the bed. He bent to the head that was smothered up in the wool, and touching it with an emotion in his soul he had only felt once before, he turned that lifeless face upwards. Hedid not gaze on it a moment. His nerveless hands let go their hold, and it would have fallen back into its loathsome pillow, had not the watchful care of Cornelia caught it on her arm.
"My God! my God!" exclaimed he, as recoiling from the bed, he hid his face in his hands; "to what am I reserved?"
Cornelia did not move from her position, but her eyes were now fixed on her cousin. The emotions of his mind shook his frame to convulsion, though he gave no second utterance to his thoughts.
"Who was it then, whose deathful face now lay on her arm?" She had seen, by her cousin's countenance, on the first view of the sufferer, that he knew him; and she now contemplated the silent agonies of a more than common grief!—Her hand instinctively moved to the heart of the stranger."Lorenzo," said she, in a low voice; as if alike afraid to wake the dead, or to disturb the living; "feel! surely there is a pulse!"
Lorenzo obeyed her; but not so gently as her tender touch; and pressing likewise heavily on the body, as he leaned over to examine, the sufferer started in Cornelia's arms, and murmured a few inarticulate sounds. Louis heard them, as a voice from the dead; and springing forward, was again at his side.
"He is wounded, but he lives, Cornelia!" cried he, "we must search his wounds, and he may yet be saved!"
"Who is he?" asked Cornelia, in a tone that echoed the deep interest of his own.
"He is my friend," answered Louis. But he checked himself from saying more, for his heart smote him with the true response: "my bitterest enemy!"
Heavy groans succeeded the few halfuttered sounds from the lips of Wharton; for it was he that Louis recognized in this lone abode of ruffianly murder; and finding that as he and Lorenzo attempted to raise him, the symptoms of pain were always most acute when he appeared to press on the left shoulder; Louis concluded that on that spot was the principal injury. Though the sufferer was evidently sensible to bodily anguish, his other faculties were too confused to shew any perception of what was now passing around him.
On examining farther, which his anxious attendants did with the tenderest care, they found his shoulder dislocated, and a frightful wound in his breast, made by some jagged instrument. The blood was staunched over it by the cold of the night. Louis had no sooner removed the stiffened linen, and a broad blue ribbon, part of which had been stabbed into the wound, than the blood began to flow afresh. Cornelia shuddered as the purecrimson trickled over the hand of her cousin. He shuddered also, but it was from a different reflection. She gave him a cambrick handkerchief from her neck, to well up what she feared might be the last effort of life. The heart's surgery was then in the hands of Louis; and by the time he had bound up the wound, and composed the shoulder, so as to produce the least possible pain until he could reach proper assistance, a servant came in from without, to say the carriage was brought into a tolerable state for proceeding.
On Lorenzo going out to examine, he saw the information was correct; and returning, told his master the extreme violence of the storm having subsided, one of the out-riders had found his way back with tidings of a secure track. Another had been yet more successful, having brought a herdsman, whose cottage he had lit upon; and arousing him, by a promise of reward, had engaged him to guide thecarriage over the waste into the direct northern road.
On inquiry of this man, Louis found they were now in the midst of Wansbeck Moor, a terrible wilderness of bituminous slime, exhausted coal-pits, and pasture land, so marshy, that it was rather poison than aliment to the cattle which were so miserably provided, as to be turned on it to graze. But as it possessed a few causeways of firmer texture, which the wretched herdsmen had raised for their own convenience, such tracks were sometimes temptations to less practised travellers to use as cross roads; and often, as might be expected, led them astray, or into no very insignificant nightly perils. This had been the temptation and the issue to the postilions of de Montemar's travelling equipage.
When all was prepared in the coach, the wounded Duke was carried into it between Louis and Lorenzo. None knew who he was, but the bleeding heart ofhim who had once been his friend. At the unavoidable changes of position, his sufferings became so grievous, that every sound went to the soul of Cornelia; who now felt both for the invalid and her cousin, whose interest in his recovery, she saw, not in words, but in the pale cheek and searching eye with which he composed every thing that could yield him ease.
In her discourses with Louis concerning Germany and Spain, she had heard him speak of estimable persons in both countries; but who of them all, was now before her, she could form no conjecture; for though he spoke of several, with considerable regard, yet he had not given her to understand that he had conceived a friendship for any one of them, so exclusive as that which was now manifested in his silent but ceaseless attentions to the noble stranger. That he was noble in other respects, besides the stamp of nature, was apparent to her, from theribbon of some order which hung on his breast under his linen. There was a badge suspended to it, which Louis concealed the moment he had extricated the ribbon, by rolling them up, and putting them, without an observation, into his own bosom.
The travellers were now in the carriage, and the rain having ceased, the wind that remained did the service of dispersing the clouds, so that the moon sometimes appeared, and Louis had the hope of reaching Morewick soon after sun-rise. The dell in the Moor, from which they started, was not more than three hours journey to Warkworth; a little town, about two miles from the hall; and he gave orders, that in passing through it, a surgeon should be called up to follow the carriage to Morewick.
As they journeyed forward with the stranger's head in the lap of Cornelia, and Louis supporting his shoulder on his knees; her cousin told her, in a suppressed tone, that it was necessary for a time, the invalid should remain in ignorance that he was at Morewick-hall, and who were his present attendants. "Therefore," continued he, "your Christian charity must take charge of his comforts; and as you love my peace, neither ask his name, not let him hear that of Louis de Montemar!"
"Not ask his name!" repeated Cornelia, looking down upon the deathly face on her lap; "what has he done to be ashamed of it?"
Louis turned almost of the same ashy hue: "do men never seek concealment but from infamy?"
"I would not think so ill of any man you could love;" replied she, "and certainly not of this;" her eye again falling on the finely composed features before her; "for here the finger of heaven seems to have written true nobleness."
"Cornelia;" returned he, "when we obey the commands of Him who told ofthe Samaritan binding up the wounds of the stranger, and bade us do likewise; he did not say, inquire of his virtues first; but behold his misery, and relieve it!"
There was an air of reproof in this remark; a something of asperity, that Cornelia could not understand; and instead of its raising doubts in her mind relative to the character of the stranger, she cast down her eyes in silence, to conjecture what she had done to merit such unusual harshness from the unerring candour of her beloved cousin. The features her meditating gaze dwelt on, were to her an unimpeachable witness of good within. But what would she have felt, could she have been told at that moment, that the object of Louis's distracted thoughts, and her own then unqualified pity and admiration, was the delusive, treacherous, and out-lawed Duke Wharton!
On the travellers' arrival at Morewick, the orders of its present temporary master were strictly obeyed. Duke Wharton was laid in an airy, but remote chamber; and a surgeon, with every proper assistant, in attendance day and night. The Duke's shoulder was set, and his wound probed. The danger of the latter arose rather from the nature of the weapon by which it was inflicted, than from its depth or direction; but his life hung on the termination of a fever, which, though it did not at first amount to absolute delirium, was continually hovering on its verge.
For swine time he remained in a strange dreamy sort of inanity, which threatened his wound with mortification. But no watching nor hopelessness, could wearythe cares of Cornelia. And though she was not the only attendant on his comforts, in his most trance-like distractions, he had yet perception enough to appreciate the tenderness of her hand, when it placed his pillows; and the gentleness of her voice prevailed, when no other could induce him to obey the orders of his medical attendants.
Louis also hovered near; and the medicines passed through his hand to that of Cornelia, when the burning lip of Wharton turned from all other persuasions. As the fever gained ground, his delirium became absolute. Yet it was never violent, but rather uttered itself in low and half articulate murmurs. In its fits, he often muttered the names of de Montemar and Ripperda. When she first heard the latter, her eye instinctively turned upon her cousin, who sat behind the bed curtain; and such an expression of horror was then in his countenance, that it struck her with a nameless terrorof some past or coming evil. Louis soon after quitted the room, and he did not return any more that day.
The next morning brought him intelligence that surprised, and increased the present agitated state of his mind. There was pleasure in it; but the accompanying circumstances were of such mingled nature, he could hardly trust his heart to say, "I am glad!"
This surprise was a letter from the Marquis Santa Cruz, dated from Harwich. It requested Louis to join him there without loss of time, to be the conductor of the Marchioness and Lady Marcella to the hospitable shores of Lindisfarne. The Marquis had a particular mission to the Spanish Embassador in London; therefore, could not himself proceed so far northward as the Holy Island, before he had seen that minister. Besides, his daughter's fatigues, from a very boisterous voyage, made his stay at Harwich a little excusable; and there hewould remain until his friend should arrive, and relieve him of the care of the two dearest objects of his anxiety, his wife and her invalid child.
On Louis turning to the date of this letter, he found it had been written several days, and must have been unduly delayed in its progress. No time, therefore was to be lost in welcoming his best friends; and, above all, the friends of his father's memory, to the land which, he trusted, was now to be his undisturbed home. And, having dispatched a messenger to prepare his uncle at Lindisfarne for his speedy arrival with the illustrious Spaniards, before he communicated to Cornelia the necessity for his temporary absence, he begged an audience of the Duke's surgeon.
This gentleman answered his agitated inquiry with more truth than sympathy.
"Sir," said he, "if a material change does not take place in the course of eightand forty hours, he will not be alive the day after!"
"Then I must not hope to see him again, should I be absent three days."
"I fear not," replied the surgeon.
Louis left the room.
He passed along the silent galleries, for it was now a very late hour, to the chamber of his friend.
"Wharton!" cried he, as he stood alone by the side of the Duke's couch, and gazed, as he thought, for the last time on his face; "Is it thus we are to part?" He took the inanimate hand; and, wringing it between his, held it there for a long time in the agony of his mind.
"O blighted affection! Tenderness mourning that man is frail! Here stand, and feel that thine is the canker worm that eats into the heart!"
The unconscious violence with which Louis clasped the hand of him he onceloved and trusted, roused the dormant faculties of Wharton to some perception. His eye opened; but it turned vacantly and without recognition on the anguished face of his friend; and, heavily sighing, he fell back on the pillow.
"Here, vanity of man, and pride of intellect, behold thyself!" cried the inward soul of Louis, smiting his breast. "Here is all that woman ever admired, or that man envied! All that betrayed him to dishonour! All that bound me to deplore him, and to love him to the end! Wharton,—farewell!"
Louis could not utter a dearer appellative, than the low breathing of that ever-beloved name; and, with a death-chill at his heart, he pressed the unconscious hand to his lips, and rushed from the room.
Cornelia met him in the anti-chamber. She observed his extraordinary agitation; and, without a preface, which he had not sufficient self-command even to attempt,he informed her of his summons to the south-east coast, and of the probable event before his return.
"Cornelia," said he, "to what a scene may I leave you! But should the last extremity come,—should he then be sensible, and he chance to name me,—tell him under whose roof he dies,—and he will then know he may die in peace!"
"Louis," returned she, "you do indeed leave me to an awful task! I cannot regard one you appear to love so much, with a common compassion. Trust me, and tell me who he is?"
"I dare not.—Onhislife, short as it may be, I dare not," repeated her cousin. "Too soon it may be revealed, and then you will respect my reasons. And, for his knowledge of where he is; only in the case of his naming me, with the anguish that is now wringing my heart for him,—only, in that case, say, hislast friendwas Louis de Montemar!"
"Your emotions are terrible!" criedCornelia, clinging to her cousin's arm; "What do you leave me to suppose, by such inscrutable mystery? Oh, Louis, except when speaking of your father, I never saw you shaken thus!"
"On your bosom's peace, my sweet Cornelia!" replied he, "inquire no further. Should he be no more, preserve the sacred remains till I return. They at least, shall sleep with my ancestors.—There is no enmity in the grave."
The morning after that of Louis's departure for Harwich, the Duke awoke to a perfect perception of his state, his wounds, and his danger. He remembered every event which had brought him into that perilous condition. His secret missions from the Kings of Spain and of France, to examine into the aptness of the public mind in Scotland, and in the border counties of England, to receive a foreign army, headed by the exiled prince. To do this unsuspected, and to avoid the forfeiture of his head, shouldhe be found in England after his attainder, he disguised himself as a German merchant at Hamburgh, where he engaged two resolute men of the country to be his servants. They served the seeming trader with sufficient fidelity during his Scottish progress. He came southward; and now he had to recall what terminated his first day's journey. He recollected being thrown from his restive horse in the storm and darkness of Wansbeck Fells; also, that the accident dislocated his shoulder; and that his two servants, by his own orders, had taken him into the hovel, whose sudden discovery in the lightning, had frightened his horse.—In attempting to set the dislocated limb, which he had also directed them to do, their awkwardness occasioned him so much pain, that he fainted under the unsuccessful operation. When he recovered from his swoon, which he did with an extraordinary sickness at the heart; he put his hand to his side, where the peculiarsensation was, and found it weltering in his blood. It was not needful for him to find no voice return an answer to his immediate call upon his servants. The previous silence, uninterrupted by any thing but the raging storm without, confirmed his suspicion that the villains had given him his death wound; and were fled with the booty. He, however, thrust the linen of his shirt into the wound; and lay half dead with pain and exhaustion, till all was lost in insensibility. He knew nothing from that hour, until he now opened his eyes from a refreshing sleep. He saw himself on a comfortable bed, instead of the wretched litter on which he had believed himself left to perish! He was then in the hands of some benevolent person!—But how brought, or where resident, he could not guess.
At this moment of conjecture Cornelia heard him move, and gently put aside the curtain. Her eyes met the surprisedfixture of his.—But it was no longer with the glare of fever, with the wild flashes of delirium; the light of recovered reason was there, and the inquiring gaze of gratitude. If she had thought his face perfect in manly beauty, while it was insensible, or only moved by a distempered spirit; what were her impressions, when his intelligent mind was restored to all its powers, and it shone out in those eyes, and in that countenance?
Even her self-controuled spirit, trembled before the resistless influence; and with a failing voice, she answered his respectful demand of where he was.
"You are under the roof of a gentleman who is my kinsman, and who has left you under my care."
Wharton considered for a moment.—"his name, noble lady?"
"Your present critical state," replied she, "does not permit me to answer you that question."
An immediate apprehension that hewas a prisoner, shot through the mind of the Duke.
"I am then in the house of an enemy!" cried he, starting on his arm; "and your benevolence, Madam, would spare me the truth!"
"No," answered Cornelia, astonished at the suspicion; or, rather, gazing on him with renewed anxiety, for fear his delirium was returning. "He is your friend—your anxious friend. And, while he enjoined me not to mention his name in your hearing; he likewise refused me, and all in this house, the knowledge of yours."
"That is sufficient!" replied Wharton, "Madam, whoever your friend may be, this caution does indeed manifest him to be mine. I am without guess on the subject; nor will I seek to penetrate what he wishes to conceal. But you may answer me, how I came under this generous care!"
Cornelia briefly related, (though without betraying whence she came, or whither she was going;) the events of the Moor.
"Then I am still in Northumberland?" replied Wharton. He paused, and added; "there are some names I would inquire after in this county, but—" and he paused again. "It is better I should not. My last hours shall not injure any man."
There were sensations within him, that made him murmur to himself the concluding sentence. And Cornelia, seeing, by the sudden lividness which overspread his so lately re-animated countenance, that some unhappy change was recurring; rose from her chair, and summoned his medical assistants.
They were closed up for nearly an hour, with their patient. At the door of the anti-room, Cornelia met them; and, with a dawning hope in her heart, to which his recovery to reason had givenbirth, she hastily inquired their opinion of the invalid.
"That he may last till to-morrow morning, but not beyond it," replied the superior surgeon.
She heard no more; though his colleagues spoke also, giving their various reasons for this judgement. She stood benumbed; but shewed no other sign of the blow on her heart, while bowing their heads, the party left her. She then walked steadily to her own chamber; and there, throwing herself on her knees before heaven, petitioned for its mercy to heal so prized a friend of her beloved cousin.
"Thy hand alone!" cried she, "and on that alone, I now confide!"
She was soon after summoned to the side of the dying stranger, by one of the female attendants who waited in his anti-room. He requested the lady he had seen, to have the goodness to grant him the use of pen and ink, and to allowhim to see her once more. Cornelia took what he required, and hastened to his apartment.
He was propped up in the bed, by the attentive hands of Lorenzo; who remained, by his directions, after the entrance of Cornelia. The paleness of watching and anxiety was in her face. The flush of pain, mental and bodily, on Wharton's. She drew near him.
"Noble lady," said he, "your physicians are honest men. They have told me, my hours are numbered; and, that I have a short time in which to express my thanks to your humanity; and to make up my accounts with the world. Will you indulge me with the means?"
And he stretched his hands towards the writing materials. Cornelia relinquished them to his eager grasp; though, at the same time, she expressed her dread of the exertion increasing his danger.
"This done!" replied he, "an hourmore or less, in arriving at the goal, is of no consequence.—Delay me, sweet lady," continued he, observing her reluctance; "and you may deprive me of the victor's crown!"
Cornelia gave him the pen; and bowing gratefully, he began to write. She moved to withdraw, but looking up with a beseeching eye, he entreated her, as well as Lorenzo, to remain, to bear witness that the papers he was writing were penned by his own hand.
She retook her place, and soon found her presence necessary; for he was often faint under his task; and, after taking a restorative from her hand, in spite of all her persuasions to the contrary, recommenced it.
As he closed one packet, to begin another, she laid her hand upon his arm. "For the sake of all you revere in earth and heaven, desist!" cried she, "this perseverance is suicide."
"No," replied he, "there is but oneman in the world, who could act by me, as your kinsman has done! And this deed is my last act of duty to him and to myself."
Cornelia said no more; but submitted with an awful awaiting of the conclusion.
By the Duke's orders, Lorenzo sealed the first packet, and returned it into his hand. No one saw how he directed it. The second packet was then sealed, and superscribed, and both put into a cover. This was also sealed, and when directed by the Duke's hand, he put it into that of Cornelia. She glanced upon the superscription.
"To my benefactress. But not to be opened until I am dead."
She read it, and for the first time in his sight, her eyes gushed out with tears. The burning hand, which then gratefully pressed her's as he relinquished the packet, would be cold and motionless, when she should break that seal!Human nature, pity, admiration! all struck at once upon her heart, and she trembled, almost to sinking.
The Duke observed her emotion, and made a sign to Lorenzo to withdraw. Both his hands now clasped her's, as with his dying eyes he gazed on her.
"Lady," said he, "when you open that packet, you will know that he who you now honour with your pity, was a being to be condemned; but, he trusts, to be pardoned also! I am a man, and I erred; but I am a Christian, and have contrition. When you know me, remember me with one of those tears, and my conscious soul will disdain the world's persisted obloquy!"
Cornelia wept the more at these words; but she strove to speak; and to gently extricate her hand from a grasp, which already seemed the convulsive pressures of death.
"You will tell de Montemar," cried he in great emotion; and in that moment, ofwhat he thought mortal fainting, forgetting his caution:—"You will tell him——" he paused, and struggled for a few seconds—then gasping—relinquished the hand he held, and fell back upon his pillow.
Cornelia saw and heard no more; she fainted, and sunk upon the floor.
When she recovered, she found herself in another room, and supported by her uncle of Lindisfarne.
"Your fears are premature, my dear child;" cried the venerable man, as soon as she opened her eyes; "Lorenzo has just been in to tell me, your invalid guest is now recovering from the swoon in which you left him; and that the surgeons are in his chamber."
"Heaven has brought you my revered uncle!" cried she, "to sustain me. You will see him?"
"For that purpose," replied Mr. Athelstone, "I came."
Indeed, as soon as he received Louis'sfew lines, imparting his indispensable absence, and obligation to leave Cornelia to take charge of his invalid friend; the good Pastor judged, that whoever this nameless person might be, and for whatever reasons his reception at Morewick was to be generally concealed; yet it was his duty not to allow his niece to be with servants alone, in the distressing scene which the agitated letter of his nephew confessed might be anticipated during his absence. Notwithstanding all Louis's caution in his first communications respecting his foreign friend; and his subsequent reserve while continuing his apologies from the same cause, for his and Cornelia's detention at Morewick; Mr. Athelstone drew his own conclusions, that there was more unexplained, than the fantastic mystery of a foreigner wishing to travel incognito. He knew Louis's mind too well, to believe that he would adopt with such carefulness of concealment, so trifling a whim. He was convinced thatdanger to one party at least, hung over the discovery; and in his guesses, he was not very remote from the truth. The more his suspicions gained ground, from the style of his nephew's last letter, the more he saw the propriety of acting in defiance of Louis's positive request, that he would allow none of the Lindisfarne family to interrupt the charitable duties of Cornelia. The earnestness of this injunction; (for it was put, so as not to admit of a discussion;) confirmed Mr. Athelstone in an idea, that peril was attached to the entertainer of this mysterious personage; and resolving to protect his nephew and his niece in the possible dilemma into which humanity on one side, and romantic generosity on the other, might involve their safeties, he ordered a post chaise to await him on the opposite shore. Without imparting any thing of these reflections or motives to Mrs. Coningsby, he left his directions with her and Alice, to prepare everycomfort for the expected reception of the Marchioness and her daughter. Busy in the hospitable bustle of such arrangements, the happy mother and her favourite child, saw Mr. Athelstone depart to rejoin Cornelia, without a suspicion of the nature of his errand. He alighted in the hall at Morewick, at the very moment Lorenzo had found Miss Coningsby lying insensible in the room of the stranger, who at the instant seemed beyond all future pain. She was brought into the next chamber, and delivered into the arms of her uncle; while Lorenzo recalled the medical assistants to his master's friend: and the result he communicated, as soon as the Duke breathed, to the benevolent inquiries of the Pastor.