AMABEL; . ,- A FAMILY HISTORY BY ELIZABETH WORMELEY. Wait, aud Love himself will bring The drooping flower of knowledge changed to fruit Of wisdom. Wait : my faith is large in Time And that which shapes it to some perfect end. TENNYSON. NEW YORK: GEORGE P. PUTNAM & Co., 10 PARK PLACE. 1853. ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by G. P. PUTNAM &. C o. In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. R. CRAIGHEAD, Printer and Sterotyi>er 63 Vesey Street MY TRIED AND TRUE FRIEND, !)is JJolumt 18 AFFECTIONATELY OFFERED. AND, IF IT POINTS THE MORAL THAT LOVE, THE PRINCIPLE, ' INFUSED INTO OUR DUTIES WORKS ITS OWN REWARD, TO NO ONE COULD IT BE MORE APPROPRIATELY O i JL-. THROUGH suffering and sorrow thou hast past, To show us what a woman true may be. They have not taken sympathy from thee. Nor made thee any other than thou wast ; But like some tree which, in a sudden blast, Sheddeth those blossoms that weru weakly grown, Upon the air, but keepeth every one Whose strength gives warrant of good fruit at last, So thou hast shed some blooms of gaiety, But never one of steadfast cheerfulness ; Nor hath thy knowledge of adversity Robbed thee of any faith in happiness, But rather cleared thine inner eyes to see How many simple ways there are to blrss JAMES RUSSEI. LOWELL. gtttrnfrnrtifltt . ' Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time. Footprinta^M perhaps another, Sailing ^^Kfe's solemn main, Some forlo^Knd shipwrecked broth^i^ Seeing, shall take heart again. H. W. LONGFELLOW. " I DWELL amongst mine own people." Th^ woman who can echo these Words of the Shunamite, is blessed beyond all others of her sex in her position in society. " Amongst mine own people :" a sound of peace is in the very words. How much they seem to promise of useflflness, of happi- ness, of that kind sympathy and watchful consideration which are the birthright of our sex. and for the loss of which no public triumphs can bring u consolation^^ Enjoyment is not happiness. Happiness has its seat in the affec- tions. It is reserved, modest, and retiring; it never courts publicity. The triumphs of beauty, wit, or even virtue have their value, but they cannot restore tranquillity when lost ; they leave the heart as lonely as they found it ; they cannot take the place of considerate friends. " I dwell amongst mine own people." N only the living, but the dead surround me. I raise my eyes, and fix them on the portraits of the lost and loved. At yonder mansion, half hidden by tall cedar trees, cftell my grandfather and grandmother. Since the appointment of iny father to the South American station, I have lived there too ; but the house is no longer what it used to be, a very fairy-land of merriment and happiness, since the boys were " cut adrift," as grandpapa expresses it, and my sweet sister Ella was married on the same day and hour as our cousin Mab. Vlll INTRODUCTION. In a few months there is to be another wedding. Edward will have come home from the coast of South America ; Mab and Ella with their young and happy husbands, will return, though only for a season, to the dear old Hall ; relations of all degrees of consan- guinity will be gathered together by invitation ; grandmamma will hold high council with her housekeeper ; and grandpapa will give away another blushing bride^ But although the happy pair may seek for a short period some undisturbed retreat, the bride will continue to " dwell amongst her own people:" Edward has purchased this dear cottage, and has promised to instal his " wee bit wifie " where she loves best to dwell ; and althougii some few articles of modern furniture are already in preparation, he has promised to disturb n<^uoe of yHB dear pictures, to banish no one of those stiff-backed, unco- time-hallowed arm chairs. My dear kind Edward ! . . . Shame on thee, truant gggMmiill ! I was talking of my ancestors. Is it possible, MR myself, when I gaze upon their pictures, that < Such as these haj e lived and died, without leaving a single trace of their being upon the tablets of time? They were not heroes, not authors, not founders of noble houses, not renowned for their discoveries in science or in art They were plain, every-dav, matter-of-fact uieu^ind women. But are the pages of the Annual Register to U- alone our passport to immortality? I have often been led to reflect, as I sit surrounded by the portraits that adorn this little drawing-roOTJithat there is a veil hung up between the Present and the Past^ whose folds are as impenetrable as that be- fore the Future. In the life of every one of us there is an inner sanc- tuary a Holy of Holies which the stranger may not enter, and where the footfalls of friendship are never heard. It is this veil that I now seek to draw aside from the history of my ancestors. We seldom lift it froinjlhe inner life of living friend or neighbor ; but the dead! the lessons of their experience, so far as we can gather them, are our own inheritance ; and sometimes it does us good to look at life under circumstances in which its " deep things " are revealed to us ; and on the chart of the experience of others, we discern the breakers, the sunk rocks, and shifting sandbanks that endanger our own course, with the Pharos of Hope kindled for us beyond. In one respect I am ill-fitted for the task before me : my life has been full of the sunshine of happiness. Those whose history I am INTRODUCTION. IX to chronicle drauk to the very dregs the cup of suffering ; but my path has been so fringed by the shadow of their sorrows, that I have imbibed a portion of their spirit, and have grown capable of appre- ciating their struggles with adversity. Besides this, from my earliest childhood I have been familiar with the outline of this history : every spot in our sweet valley is associated with its scenes ; the old servants of the family have stimulated my curiosity, and when once interested in any vague tradition, I have only to coax grandpapa a revealer of secrets a Zaphnath-Paneah and I can learn all upon the subject that he knows. But I have a still more valuable source of information for some parts of my narrative : a manuscript that I inherit, in my father's hand. Ifjpy readers will have patience with me, I will tell them how it was that my father came to record his own autobiography in connexion with these scenes. My parents spent their early married life at^fed, my father having received a good naval appointment at one of the ports of the Medi- terranean. I was a puny, sickly, little thing, when we returned to England. My mother's health was thought precarious ; and while the doctors wished to keep her in London for advice, they strongly recommended my removal to the country. In the afternoon of the second day's journey, my father raised my weary head from his supporting shoulder, and pointed out to me the gable end of my future English home. We swept up the park avenue, we passed the four grand cedars; the autumn sun was gilding gloriously the Suffolk hills beyond. The old gardeners rolling the smooth carriage way and sweeping up the leaves, stood aside, and raised their hats from their white heads as we flew by ; we turned suddenly into a flower garden, and drew up before the rose-entwined high porch of the hall door. The family pajty had flown forth to welcome us. They were all in walking dresses ; all animated, happy, and as healthful as they were gay. I clung closer to my father's breast, with a feeling of helplessness and isolation. He clasped me in his arms and sprang out of the carriage. " God bless you, Theodosius,'' cried my grandfather, who stood, cane in hand, the centre of a merry group of children in the door- way. With two bounds my father sprang up the front steps, and laid me gently in my grandmother's arms. Five children, besides myself, were in the nursery. Two were 1* X INTRODUCTION. the children of the house ; the parents of two others were at Singa- pore, in India ; the fifth was the daughter of aunt Annie, the wife of a lieutenant-colonel of artillery. I hardly know why I dwell upon my first introduction to this family group, unless it be because it gives me pleasure to remember how, when they had forced me by prayers, exhortations, and caresses, to go down in my white frock, after dinner, to dessert, I was attracted by a handsome boy, about sixteen, dressed in midshipman's uniform, who took me on his knee as soon as I came in, and filled a plate with fruit for me. " Have you been introduced all round, my child ?" inquired my grandmother. " Yes, she has," answered a sturdy little urchin, " and, she won't understand how I'm an uncle to her." " Hold your tongue, Leo. Don't worry the poor child," said the midshipman, " for Garter King himself, would be puzzled in this house to make out our consanguinity. We are all cousins. I am your cousin Ned. Mind, never call me your great uncle !" It was in the arms of this great uncle or cousin, that I was carried across the Park that night, for as the great house was full of guests I was to sleep with my father, at our new home the Cottage. My father went with us, we were attended by old Maurice with a light, and I had been wrapped in shawls by the soft hands of my grandmother. My father, on coming out into the night, shook hands with the old butler. " Well, Maurice, my man," said he, " so at last you have brought your ship into port." " Aye, aye, sir, so I have," replied the old sailor. " I have made fast alongside yonder craft " (shaking his lantern towards the house that we were leaving). "It is as good a berth as a sailor ought to ask till he makes sail for his last v'y'ge ! And Captain, I thought so on the night I saw her first, that craft there sails with the figure-head of an angel !" When Ned and Maurice left us at our cottage, I was consigned into the hands of a new maid and put to bed. But when alone in the dark room, under a heavy canopy of damask, a horror of loneliness fell upon mo. In hysterical terror, I started out of bed, and guided by the light that streamed beneath a door, made my way into the sitting-room. My father, who was there alone, took me in his arms, folded his coat round me, laid my head against his breast, and, sitting down before the hearth, drew my attention to a picture. It was the simple head of a woman, beautiful, young, but with the marks of INTRODUCTION. XI early sorrow in the face. An expression of woe, which fascinated rather than repelled ; which made you feel that nothing that grieved you could be too trivial for her to sympathize with, and no sorrow so terrible but that she might venture with the right of sad expe- rience to bring it balm. A sort of holy peace stole into my heart, as I gazed on the calm eyes of the picture. " Who is it ? who is it, dear papa ?" I cried. He answered, smiling, with a kiss, " Old Maurice told us, dearest, who it was. It is our guardian angel." Two years ago, after my mother's death, when our dear father, broken by his grief, had applied for and obtained a ship on the South American Station, we again returned together across the Park, from a family dinner at the Hall. Maurice, the old butler, escorted us with his lantern, and at my side was cousin Ned. Let not the reader think he was really my great uncle, for our marriage was arranged. When Ned and Maurice had departed, my father sat down before the hearth, and, having drawn a low stool near, I placed myself at his feet. "Father, have you no last instructions for your daughter?" He was gazing earnestly at the picture. " You will fulfil your dear mother's last wishes, and my hopes, if you are just like her." " Father, you always say like her and now now I know that she is perfect, but was she so at my age ? 1 have heard " . . . , "What?" " Strange things." My father rose up ; opened a desk and took out some papers. " Your mother wished you to know this," said he, "I would that every person old and young in England, knew this history, my child, and learned its lesson. You need it lees than many, but there are those who cannot see their way through life, and it might leach : that Love I do not mean Love the Passion, but Love the Principle infused into our duties, works its own reward. There may be often the passion of love without this lovingness, but alone it never lasts long. People wonder sometimes they are not made happy by their duties ; it is because they are performed from some other motive than love. And there is another mistake that people make, my child. They ascribe different origins to this love ; but it is self-begetting. Nothing produces it in others' hearts but its manifestation in our Xll INTRODUCTION. own. We can neither lay claim to it, command it, nor compel it. It exists as between man and man independently of relationship. Only the Christian has, with respect to it, a peculiar privilege. He has the advantage of the initiative. With him it springs from God's love, and love to God in him ; and it is his privilege to call it forth in the hearts of others." The papers were in three parts. The first was a manuscript, labelled by my father " Doctor GlascocK's Narrative." Doctor G las- cock had been Inspector of our hospitals in Malta, and, in answer to some inquiries made in 1819. by my father, wrote down his reminis- cences of Amabel during her early life, and in the years 1809-10. The second manuscript was a long letter addressed by Amabel, herself, to Captain Warner. The third was a narrative of my father's own acquaintance with that lady, commenced that very night when he first brought me to my English home. The story fascinated me. I could not forget my father's wish " that every person in England knew this tale and learned its lesson." Impelled by the interest I took in what I read, I passed many hours in rewriting the history ; making extracts here and there from my authorities ; but the language and arrangement are my own. A fourth part I have supplied from my remembrance, and as I have already said from other sources. It is little the concern of any reader why, after rewriting the story solely to amuse myself, I have eventually been induced to publish it. It is given to the world with the full consent of my own family. My grandfather even ventured to suggest, some few days since, a sen- tence from the Catechism as its appropriate motto " And do my duty in that state of life to which it may please God to call me." " Very true, but not exactly appropriate," was my answer. " The moral of my tale is love. And my father would have told us that the cold round of duty, without love to season it, is very unsatisfactory to all parties, dear grandpapa." PRAWN MAINLY FROJI DR. GLASCOCK'S WRITTEN NARRATIVE. Strong is the life that nestles there, But into motion and delight It may not hurst, till soft as air It feels Love's brooding timely might. Lyra Innocentium. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. PART I. CHAPTER I. '-*' English air ; For there is nothing here Which from the outward to the inward brought, Moulded thy baby thought. TENNYSON. " IT appears to me," says my father in one portion of his narra- tive, " that in our ordinary estimate of individual character, we seldom give sufficient weight to the influences that have formed it. " A family is established : the opinions and character of the parents determine the nature of its associates, and give it its general tone. As one by one the children increase in years and understanding, each infuses somewhat of his peculiar tastes and disposition into the social circle. It has its gaieties for they are young ; its interests for they are many ; its sorrows for they come to all ; its relative duties ; its expe- riences ; its anniversaries ; its sympathies ; its fears. The youthful mind is formed under these influences ; it is not exposed to receive its impressions rudely from the world with- out, but learns at first to look on all things in a sort of family light. By degrees the permanent family character has been formed ; aad it sends forth its members each with the family impress, to take up their positions in the world. " But who is there, that looking round amongst his acquaint- ance makes sufficient allowance for the nature of the family influence whiph has acted on each mind ? Who is there, for example, who when passing judgment upon the faults or weak- nesses of a young and inexperienced woman, beautiful per- haps, and exposed to every snare of vanity ; enthusiastic, and therefore open to every temptation of an ill-regulated fancy will suffer the words of condemnation to die unuttered on his 16 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. lips, and plead for this young girl before the many that accuse her, that she never knew the counsels of a mother 1 " A mother's love ! It is the aegis of her children. Who can estimate its influence in a family of love ?" This is not in truth the moral of my story, but these reflec- tions seem to have been called forth from my father by an allusion to the early years of its heroine, Amabel de Karnac. Ygs ; heroine I called her, for like my father, I have little sympathy with those who think that heroism went out of date together with chain armor. She was born at the close of the eighteenth century, at the last place in the world one would have fixed on for the produc- tion of a heroine, a low, close, miserable lodging near the gates of Deptford Dockyard. Her father, Louis Marie Amablo de Karnac, was a Viscount and an emigre, The opening of the Revolution found him in Paris, one of those mere men of day those star-spangled court danglers who, caring for nothing but their privileges as members of an aristocracy, passed into foreign countries on the first signal of popular insurrection, intending, when all was settled, to return triumphant from their voluntary exile, to reap the plea- sant fruits that other hands had sown, and to exult over the discomfiture of rebellion and of anarchy, which men of another stamp had encountered and put down. This was the more disgraceful in the Viscount because he came from Brittany ; a province which, up to the time of the Revolution, was full of country gentlemen living on their estates surrounded by their peasantry ; unconnected with gene- ral politics, or with the intrigues of the court, to which, indeed, they were traditionally hostile since the annexation of the Province, three hundred years before, to the French crown. The Viscount had the acquaintance of certain men of influ- ence in England, who, as the French emigration increased, and claims upon their patronage grew numerous, provided for him, by procuring him the situation of teacher of French at Black- heath in a young ladies' school ; probably considering that if a Marquis could keep a cook's shop in Oxford street in the days of his misfortunes, a Viscount might be well content to AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. it drag the youthful intellect through Telimaque, and the four regular conjugations of French verbs. But the situation, though not dishonorable, was not a lucra- tive one, and the Viscount was willing to exchange advantages. He took an early opportunity of making love to one of his pupils, reported to possess a small amount of private fortune. English beauty is always attractive to a foreigner, and the heiress had enough of it to enhance the value of hec gold. They eloped at the close of a school ball, and before the alarmed preceptress could convey intelligence of the event to Miss Lane's family, she had united her fortunes to those of the Viscount, and no remedy remained for the evil done. The event, so far from improving the young Viscount's posi- tion, deprived him of the bare subsistence he had hitherto en- joyed. It turned out that Miss Lane's little fortune, till she was twenty-one, was not in her own power. Her father, willing that she should reap for a time the fruits of her own folly, refused to contribute to her support, or to extend to her his forgiveness ; the Viscount lost the countenance of his English patrons, who were not ill pleased to have an excuse for getting rid of him ; no careful mother would receive him as French teacher in her family ; while to complete their misfortunes his only sister Louise, who had been receiving her education in a convent in Brittany, barely escaping with life and reason from the destruction of her asylum, was, by the fidelity of one of her father's old retainers, brought over into England, to add to the number of those who must be fed from money raised at an enormous interest upon Madame de Karnac's future fortune. In the midst of all this poverty and anxiety, Amabel de Karnac came into the world. The very necessaries of her situ- ation were procured for the young mother by the exertions of Louise, who, oppressed by the idea that she entailed a burden on the family, worked early and late to meet her share of the expenses, procuring a coarse and precarious employment from a marine store, nearly opposite to their windows in Deptford. As she went backwards and forwards to this establishment, for the purpose of returning work or of obtaining it, she was 18 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. quite unconscious that a lover's eyes were on her, till one eve- ning, a few days after the birth of her brother's baby, the master of the marine store having invited her into his back parlor, seized the opportunity of declaring his passion, and of setting before her a full account of his late pecuniary suc- cesses as a government contractor. Poor, pale Louise ! As soon as she understood him, she broke away from the rash store-keeper, and covering her face with her little neat black apron, darted through the shop to the astonishment of customers, and never stopped till, in the little closet that she called her chamber, she fell upon her knees beside her bed, weeping passionately and long. Her admirer was not discouraged by this conduct. He gave her what he supposed a sufficient time to recover herself, and to explain all that had passed between them to her brother, and then, eager and impatient, he took up his hat and went across the street to honor the young Viscount with a call. * The astonishment of de Karnac at his proposal was equal to the measure of his family pride ; but, by degrees, he saw the thing more reasonably. He reflected on his own position, and remembered that the marriage of a female in a foreign land with a rich negotiant Anglais would scarcely mar the glories of his family tree. I never heard any one talk of the character of the Viscount, but he must have been an eminently selfish man, although he looks so speciously handsome in the miniature likeness now hanging on the wall beside me, for, before the store-keeper departed from his presence, he had arranged that if the shop were given up, and a handsome marriage settlement made upon his sister, he would use his influence to bring her over to their views. Louise had passed all her life in the seclusion of her convent, or in the almost equal retirement of her father's lauds in Brit- tany ; her little fluttering heart was yet entirely free, and she had always looked upon a mariage de convenance as her natu- ral destiny. Like all French girls, however, she had trusted to the affection of her friends to make a choice likely to be agree- able to her ; yet, when her brother spoke to her on the subject AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 19 when he laid before her reasons bearing less upon her happi- ness than on his own, he found her resigned and yielding, and in less than a fortnight after the proposal, Louise de Karnac, the descendant of a long line of Breton ancestors, became the wife of the store-keeper Sibbes. The next event that happened in the Karnac family was scarcely more of a tragedy than such a wedding. Poor, pale Louise, who every day grew paler, passed much of her time in her late home, her brother's lodgings, where, pressing to her heart his little baby, she at least felt that her feelings and her prejudices were not rudely ruffled by the bluff, vulgar bonhomie of Mr. Sibbes. She was thus employed one evening, when a sailor was sud- denly shown in, who with such preparation as a kind, rough nature could suggest, informed the ladies that the Viscount de Karnac had taken a boat at the Tower Stairs to row down to Deptford ; that a collier coming up the river had run down the little wherry ; that it had turned over upon the unfortunate Viscount, and that before he could be got out of the water he was drowned. Though Madame do Karnac had ceased to love her husband, though she reproached him daily with having deceived her into an unhappy marriage, and although at the very moment when the sad news reached her, she was engaged in pouring a long tale of his delinquencies into his sister's ear, she was not the less vehement in her grief, not the less helpless as she shrieked forth her lamentation. Louise had her immediately removed to her own cottage, and Mr. Sibbes took on himself all the arrangements for the inquest and the funeral. He easily per- suaded Madame de Karnac, after the first paroxysm of her des- pair was over, to write to her own family, and in a few hours her father arrived to take charge of her. He made no offer to attend the obsequies of the Viscount, or to share the funeral expenses. He only inquired after his liabilities ; was shocked and indignant at the inroads made in the young wife's fortune ; and as soon as possible departed, taking with him the widow and her little girl. Louise, as she watched the departure of the carriage, burst 20 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. into a passion of weeping. She felt that the last tie that con- nected her present existence with the past had just been severed, and that henceforward she was to be nothing more than the wife of Mr. Sibbes. The next intelligence she received of Madame de Karnac was through the medium of a newspaper, which reported her approaching marriage with a gallant naval officer. Louise glanced at her own black dress, and again wept long and bitterly. At length a thought occurred to her ; Mr. Sibbes had always sought to gratify her wishes ; what if she should entreat him to adopt her brother's orphan as their own ! It was with an impatience she had never felt before to see her husband, that she awaited his return. She had full confidence in the power she had never yet cared to exert over him, and she broached the subject eagerly before he had stepped across the threshold of his door. Her enthusiasm had lost sight of opposition to her wishes, and she was both surprised and angry to discover that her pro- position was met by Mr. Sibbes with coldness. He did not approve of meddling with other people's children ; he told her the Viscount had been much expense to him already ; and Madame de Karnac he especially abhorred. " Say what remains when hope is fled ? She answered endless weeping." And the character of Louise must have resembled that of the mother of the Boy of Egremont, for though excited into energy by the approach of care or danger, since all hope of ameliorat- ing her condition had forsaken her, she had become gradually almost weak in mind. Mr. Sibbes was not a man of strong sensibilities ; he could not understand her sufferings, but he was made uncomfortable by tears. He arose early in the morning, went down by coach to the country-seat of Mr. Lane, saw the young widow in gay half-mourning listening to the pleasant nothings of Captain Talbot, her intended ; and after some negotiation struck a bar- gain with little Amabel's grandfather. The terms of which . first, that the Sibbeses should have the entire chargo and AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORV. 21 care of the child. Secondly, that in consideration of the honor thence devolving upon him, Mr. Sibbes should furnish little Amabel with a handsome marriage portion, or settle an equiva- lent upon her should he die. A third proviso was added by the grandmother ; that she should not be brought up in the Roman Catholic religion. She was a model of childish beauty ; but had she been deformed and ugly Mr. Sibbes would not have cared. He had obtained her solely to gratify his sad and sickly wife, and he was more than repaid for his diplomacy and trouble, when as the post-chaise stopped before his house Louise came forth to meet them. " Here is your niece, my dear wife," he said, kindly. Louise extended her arms, but it was to throw them around him ; her first kiss was for her husband, and her second for the child. It would have been a pleasant thing to state that this act of considerate kindness brought health back to her cheek and happiness to their home. But it was not so. Louise's mental and moral powers had been irremediably weakened, nd she sank, by slow yet steady stages, into childish imbecility. It was a happy imbecility, however ; the child became her playmate, alternately assuming the ascendency from her superior energy of character, or looking up to the enlarged physical powers of her aunt, with respect and admiration. Often as Mr. Sibbes must in after years have regretted his unwise ambition in his marriage, he never repented his adoption of the child. Though the mother of Amabel had protested, that unless allowed to see her often, she could not part with " her angel her sweet love," it chanced, that in the excitement and bustle which succeeded her gay wedding with Capt. Talbot, she found little leisure or inclination for renewing her intercourse with Mr. and Mrs. Sibbes ; and an occasi9nal note or message of inquiry, left by her gaudy footman at the little house in Dept- ford, alone proved to her late husband's relations that she had not yet forgotten his child. When, however, she was established in a country house, 22 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. after her third London season, and had begun to think of demanding a visit from her little daughter, she received notice of the intended removal of the family to Malta. Mr. Sibbes had made large speculations as a Levant merchant ; his wife's health required a milder air ; and, with lurking irony, the ex-dealer in marine stores ventured to hope, that Lady Karnac (she chose to be called thus, though the wife of Captain Talbot) would not object to so wide a separation from her little girl. This letter lay unanswered till Mr. Sibbes and his party had left England : and from that time, Amabel's communica- tions with her mother were very " few and far between." Like a garden flower, sown by chance in the corner of a field, which, beautiful in wild luxuriance, excites regret that it has not been cultivated and trained ; so, Bella Karnac (as it was usual to call her) continued to grow up in Malta, a very different person from the proper model of lady-like deportment which every careful mother sets before her child. There is this important difference between our moral and intellectual faculties. "The former," says a great Review, (which, my father u^l to observe, sounds like a " lead line," the spirit of our times), " cannot be accustomed to discipline too early, that they may receive their bent in time ; but there is danger of weakening or disturbing the intellectual powers, if we interfere too soon with their free growth." Bella's moral training came from the circumstances of her position. Hers was no artificial nursery and school-room existence, requiring artificial checks, excitements, and emulations ; she was at once thrown upon all the realities, and assumed some of the respon- sibilities, of actual life. Her faults brought their own punish- ment ; the angles of her disposition were forced to accommo- date themselves to circumstances. All this, which would have led to artifice and cunning had she been struggling for freedom in an artificial state of society, made her fearless, light-hearted, and trustful, in her actual position. Her aunt was weak in health, as we have seen, and still more weak in mind ; whilst Mr. Sibbes, who was engaged in business and often absent on long voyages, paid no more atten- tion to the' moral and intellectual training of his niece than to AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 23 the moral and intellectual training of her puppy. Save in mutual offices of kindness she was perfectly independent of every one around her, and her heart was too loving not to strengthen hourly this grateful tie. That she was wilful and independent was the worst that could be said of her ; and wil- fulness and independence, properly directed, form, under other names, with other combinations, the elements of much that is noble, wise, and beautiful in character. CHAPTER H. Three years she grew in sun and shower Then nature said " A lovelier flower On earth was never sown, This maiden for my own I take She shall be mine, and I will make A lady of my own." WORDSWORTH THE windows of the house, or rather flat, which Mr. Sibbes occupied in Valetta, looked out upon the grass-plat behind the castle of St. Elmo, at that time the place where French prison- ers were confined. Here Bella daily played before the grate through which they were permitted to hold intercourse with the townspeople, who came at certain hours to buy the little works they carved in wood and bone. Here veterans leaning on the sill of their barred window would tell her endless stories of la, belle France of their battles and campaigns. As they warmed in their recital they constantly forgot that a mere child was their listener, and would tell her all that lay upon their hearts, tales of their families, their early loves, their homes, their generals, their camps and comrades, wrongs and hatreds, hopes, and griefe, and fears. They looked upon little Amabel as a French child and a prisoner. Even the most republican amongst them pardoned her father's nobility and emigration, in delight at the national sympathies she evinced towards the land that they had taught her to reverence and to love. When Amabel was seven years of age there was landed on 24 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. the island a young French midshipman, taken prisoner by the boats of a British man of war on the neighboring coast of Cala- bria. The authorities, taking pity on the little fellow's youth, allowed him to go at large about the city. He took at first no pleasure in his liberty, but kept in sight of his fellow-prisoners in the Castle, walking silently and listlessly backwards and for- wards, along the edge of the fortifications, endeavoring to exchange the impulses of childhood for a stern and solemn sense of his position. But Bella on the third day succeeded in attracting his attention ; on the fourth she ventured to offer him confetti ; on the fifth, they were seated in an angle of the wall of the old fortress, busily engaged in playing wora, and very soon they were away together on the wharves, where Bella made her young companion known to her friends the fishermen. All little girls who play with little boys, resigning the con- ventional privileges of their sex, are content to follow admiringly, and sometimes on bare sufferance, the lead of the bolder party. The superiority of Felix in strength and age and practical attainment was the ground of little Amabel's excessive admiration. Later in life we want some one to sym- pathize with us, in childhood we are content with being per- mitted to sympathize. Bella brought her young companion home to Aunt Louise, who melted into tears the first time she heard the accent with which he spoke. He was a compatriot of hers a Bas-Breton. His father was a wealthy shipowner at Roscoff, who had made large purchases of landed property during the Revolution. Amongst his acquisitions was a part of the estate of the old family of De Karnac; and Felix, not Amabel, had been brought up in the old Chateau. After a brief happiness of two months came tidings of the Peace of Amiens. The French prisoners in Valetta were ordered to be embarked for their own home. Amabel followed her playmate to the water's edge, following and weeping like Phaltiel the son of Laish in the train of his wife Michal when reclaimed by David. She crept up to his side as he stood waiting for the boat on the verge of the Marina, lifting her tearful face for that last kiss which he, an officer surrounded by AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 25 his men, was half ashamed to give. She saw the boat push off and near the vessel which was to carry back the prisoners to their own gay land, and as her white sails lessened in the dis- tance poor little Bella's tears fell fast. Nor was it till six or eight months afterwards, that her grief for the loss of Felix Guiscard was dispersed by the acquisition of another friend. This friend was Doctor Glascock; from his pen came almost all the details I can give of this portion of our story. He arrived in Malta as Inspector of the Hospitals, imme- diately after the rupture of the Peace of Amiens. At the com- mencement of the Revolution he had caught the epidemic fever of the mind ; the gospel according to Jean Jacques was his religion ; and he dreamed under its influence, the approaching overthrow of superstition and of tyranny, and Utopian felicity for all the human race. Surge after surge, the rolling waves of public opinion con- tinued to advance, and bore him onward, until the sceptre of Napoleon was stretched over its waters : the tide turned and left him deserted on the shore. He despaired thenceforth of liberty, and turned the bitterness of his bold irony against human nature, which he thought had disappointed him. He became a misanthrope because all men were not philanthro- pists. He hated his fellow-creatures because they wanted love! At this stage of his mental history his friends procured him his appointment, and Government, which in those days had its eyes on individuals, was nothing loath to exile one who frater- nized with Cartwright to a place so loyal as the little isle of Malta, where the British population, naval and military, looked upon a man who read the Edinburgh Review as scarcely capable of loyal service to his Majesty ; and the Declaration of Rights, which the Doctor hung framed and glazed over his fire-place, as a code of opinions only adapted to a community of bandits, subversive alike of civilization, religion, loyalty, and honor. On the grassy ground behind the Castle, Dr. Glascock noticed Bella Karnac the first time that he went into the Prison Hospital. She had climbed up the rough wall, inserting her tiny fingers and her feet in the interstices of the mortar, till 2 26 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. she could hang in safety by the iron bars of a window, sup- ported by the arms of a rough French soldier. When Dr. Glas- cock came in sight he let her down, putting into her hand at the same time some little article of his own manufacture. She ran up to the Doctor, in whom she hoped the trifle of her friend would find a purchaser, but as she caught the expression of his face, the little air of confidence she had assumed vanished, and she turned timidly away. " Humph," said the Doctor, " catching fleas and fevers ; pestering the public with that trumpery ! Modern charity puts a new sense on the old adage. Sending its agents abroad to pick its neighbor's pocket, it enjoys its happy idleness com- fortably at home." But in the course of his professional visits he made many inquiries about the child amongst the English ladies of the gar- rison. In answer he heard discussed the probable wealth of the old merchant who was her uncle and protector, his obscure origin, his rise in life, the health and circumstances of his wife, and the future prospects of the little girl. " My good ladies," said the Doctor in his turn, " there is no melancholy fact on earth but has its uses. Miserable children who grow up as you describe, without the artificial restraints you impose in education, serve to gauge the advantages your daughters must enjoy." One lady told him that as the child spoke French, she had been anxious to secure her as a companion to her daughters, and would have been willing to have her with them in the school-room, but her tastes were so low, and she had so large an acquaintance, which she could not be made to relinquish, amongst the prisoners of St. Elmo, and the fishermen and fruitwomen of Valetta, that to reclaim her was impossible. All this jumped with the Doctor's humor, and he made advances the next morning to little Amabel, on the grass plot of the Castle. She followed him about after a short time, and served him as interpreter. She accompanied him in all his walks and to the houses of his patients, waiting for him at the doors. Children find out where their company is welcome, and a loving heart can always accommodate itself to character. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 27 Little Bella rarely ventured to converse with her stern doctor. He was too much absorbed in his political disappointments to enter into the spirit of her prattle, but she caught readily a sympathy with his thoughts, she felt he liked to have her silent near him, and that sometimes her naive exclamations could disperse from his face a gathering cloud of gloom. Wherever they went, and leave her where he might, she had friendly relations with the native population a word, a joke, a game of play, a smile. All over the island she was known and welcomed. She knew a blessed truth, which he did not : that in every human heart there is sympathy and kindness, and trusted in these qualities which experience had taught her must be there. And so her life went on ; three years passed in attendance on her aunt and in the constant companionship of the Doctor. She well understood that which many persons capable of self- sacrifice never discover that by seeking variety and amuse- ment in hours of leisure, she became of double value to her invalide as a medium of communication with the outward world. In 1806, however, this existence was broken up. Mrs. Sibbes was recommended a sea voyage, and Mr. Sibbes having several merchant vessels in port on their way from the Levant to England, his family was embarked on board of one of them to go with a convoy to Gibraltar. Amabel was absent but six months, yet when she returned to Valetta her old friend could scarcely recognise her. She left him a mere child, she came back to him a woman. The voyage had revealed to her another life. They coasted along the shores of Africa, watching the palm-clad mountain ridges blending with the sky. A gentleman on board the vessel pointed out to the inquiring Amabel, the site of the sub- merged city Dido's Carthage the Carthage of the ^Eneid. He held a copy of \ 7 irgil in his hand, and was endeavoring to identify the poet's descriptions. He had not before taken much notice of his little fellow-passenger, but now, in answer to her eager questions, and moved by an impulse in search of sympa- thy, he volunteered to translate to her a book of the JEneid. 28 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. It was that which records the departure of JEneas, and the self-immolation of his victim on her lofty funeral pile. " It is not the finest in the poem," said the stranger; " I prefer the description of the sack of Troy." " Oh ! that I could read it all !" cried Amabel. " You can in Dryden's Virgil." " I cannot get the book," she answered, with a voice so melancholy, that it awakened at once the mirth and the com- passion of the stranger. " Shall I send you one from England ?" " God bless you ! God reward you !" sprang to the lips of Amabel ; and if she repressed the exclamation, it was not because she thought it ill-suited to the obligation. There is a species of enthusiasm of this nature which is not unusual, even in very sober minds. It occurs when a portion of beautiful poetry has been read or heard, the remainder of which is unattainable. The remembrance of the broken plea- sure dwells upon the mind ; the melody of the verses the interest of the story haunts us in the daytime, and comes back to us in dreams ; we brood over it ; we cherish it, and we feel as if a part of our very being was wanting, till the missing portion is restored. All the interest of Bella's trip was swallowed up in an intense desire to possess the promised Virgil. The chances of war were various, it may have been lost upon its passage, or the promise forgotten it never arrived. But Bella was never long under the influence of discourage- ment. " If I cannot have what I want, I will use what I can," was, throughout life, (with one sad interval) her watchword. Her resolution was taken. An hour after their re-establishment in their house in Valetta, she had slipped away unobserved from her uncle and the doctor, and when the latter at midnight entered his own study, he found her seated there, with his old Virgil and a Latin dictionary, too much absorbed to have taken note of time. Then first came to him the idea of educating her. Then it first struck him, that, though a woman might never be remark- able as a Latin scholar, though she might not wring her brain AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 29 for nonsense verses, or pass a creditable examination in the Eton grammar, she might become mistress of the poetry of old. The notion pleased him. He invited her to come every morning to his quarters ; and soon the hours they devoted to the study of the poets and of history became to both the hap- piest of their lives. Her enthusiasm supplied the place of early habits of study. Her early responsibilities had disciplined her mind. But if, in these respects, she fell something short of the standard of pas- sive obedience required in a school, she had at least escaped tho evils of an early over-education. Her faculties were not stunted ; her thirst for knowledge never had been satiated- With her, the demand for information exceeded the supply, and thus retained its price and value. Her little capital of know- ledge was constantly employed. To say that the better part of education is self-bestowed, would be an impertinent truism ; but my father was accus- tomed to go further, and assert that all education is of self, and that the mere acquisition of knowledge and accomplish- ment is unworthy such a name. " Till knowledge," he observes, " has become a portion of our being something upon which we act which, subtracted from us, would make us other than we are it has not entered into our education. A little know- ledge is only dangerous when it lies crude and undigested, without working its way into the heart, out of the head." French and Italian she acquired naturally the former from her aunt, the latter from her intercourse with the better class of the Maltese ; but, at the same time, she became mistress of two patois languages the mixed Arabic and Italian used by the lower class of the native population of Valetta, and the harsh, inflexile Breton, which was by inheritance her native tongue. Her earliest pleasure had been to sit upon a little footstool, gazing up into her aunt's pale face, whilst, with lingering enthusiasm, Louise talked to her of Brittany, or, in a soft, low voice, sang ballads, framed when men wrote little, but reflected much, and the experience of a lifetime was compressed into a 30 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. song. Brittany was, in the Middle Ages, the storehouse of romantic literature. The songs of the Trouvere and the Jon- gleur, which afterwards degenerated into our nursery ballads, had their origin among that people whose sober enthusiasm betrays their Celtic origin ; and the child's imagination warmed at the recital of the adventures of the Breton hero, Arthur. There are distinct stages of mind, which mark the progress of our years, developed in different degrees, according to cir- cumstances or character, in every specimen of human nature. The child's first impulse is, to personalize all objects ; and, in this state of mind, ideal things have, to him, a reality. Next comes the stage of youth, when real things are idealized ; and the restless melancholy common to those just entering life, has its origin in an unacknowledged instinctive conviction that the first encounter with the realities of life will break in upon this state of feeling, and that the heart cannot repose itself in dreams. It was Bella's transition on her return from her Mediterra- nean voyage from her first into her second period of mental history which had taken the doctor by surprise. Cut off from her usual companions,, occupations, and resources, with the poetry of Virgil yet ringing in her ears, she had given herself up during her residence in Gibraltar to a new state of existence. The pleasures of her infancy were renewed and now appre- ciated. The tales of her aunt became her Waverley Novels her Ariosto and far more. We sober people, who can comment on our own enjoyment, seldom rest on such enchanted ground, where, falling asleep as it were to earthly objects, the dreamer is transported for a season to the poet's fairy land. With that egotism of early youth which leads us to asso- ciate ourselves personally with all that interests us, she gave life and breath to the fancies that delighted her, and played a prominent part in her own ideal world. She lived amongst these wild creations, she felt with them, she imitated them. She adopted their scale of virtues, she imbibed a portion of their exaggerated sentiments, she adopted the country in which her fancy had located them, and their very religion had a pecu- liar charm for her. The only stipulation respecting her educa- tion made by Mr. Lane when he gave her up to Mr. Sibbes AMABEL; A FAMILY BISTORT. 81 was, that she should be brought up a member of the Church of England ; but in Malta she imbibed a leaning towards Catholicism ; its poetry impressed her fancy, and she cared little for its creed. And it was well for her that she had even such slight links to bind her by a crude notion of loyalty to some form of Christianity ; for the Doctor, her preceptor, called himself, in the disguised language of the tunes, a " philosopher." He could point out bigotries and fallacies ; could make her feel a void a want, by laying bare the insecure foundations of her faith ; but there were points on which her warm young heart distrusted him ; she accepted a great many of his opinions, always in the hope of seeing through them a something never there. Two years thus passed ; and Bella, now sixteen, grew restless and oppressed by the vagueness, the inapplicability of her feel- ings. She had no one into whose bosom she could pour them all, and learn by the mere recital that they were exaggerated and wrong. Then was felt that void which nature has im- planted in a young girl's heart, to teach her, perhaps, that hu- man life is incomplete without the union of two souls. She was living in the house of Dr. Glascock. Mr. Sibbes was engaged in constant voyages, and in the melancholy con- dition of his wife's health, it seemed desirable that Dr. Glas- cock should receive her as " a nervous patient," with her niece and servant to occupy the first floor of a house which govern- ment had assigned him in that part of Valetta, called the suburb Floriana. The health of Amabel was perhaps less strong than in her earlier years. Her temperament had always been of a nervous character, and she was growing morbid. The Doctor's bitter theories struck painfully upon her sensibili- ties, and weakened the attachment she had early conceived for him. She had given up her healthful intercourse in works of charity and mutual kindness with the world without ; and since " the salt had lost its savor " wherewith were the tone and freshness of her mind to be restored ? The doctor saw all this ; with a sigh confessed that it was suitable companionship she wanted, and invited to his house 32 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. the daughter of an early friend of his, a lady who had just come out to Malta, the wife of a Captain Annesley. Captain Annesley had an intimate friend, a Captain Warner. Both commanded sister brigs on the same station, both were looking eagerly for post rank in the service, both were gentle- men by birth, and gallant officers, and both had entered into the " holy estate," though Captain Warner was a widower. He had lost the year before, a wife, whom he had married when only a Lieutenant, who had left him two young children ; now resident in England, under the care of their grandmother. The brig which he commanded, came into Valetta a few days after the departure of Captain Annesley, and one of Captain Warner's first movements was, to pay his respects 'to the wife of his friend. Dr. Glascock having admitted Mrs. Annesley as an inmate of his family, had no power to prevent the daily calls of Cap- tain Warner. In her society he saw the doctor's pupil, and Bella's beauty made a deep impression on his sailor-like suscep- tibility, whilst his attentions (the first ever directed to herself ) produced all the feelings of surprise and gratification, which that sort of devotion naturally calls forth, ere circumstances have compelled the recipient to weigh its worth, or to calculate its probable conclusion. Captain Warner was an excellent sailor ; he could fight his ship with gallantry, and keep her in good discipline. He had a thousand anecdotes to tell, of adventures that had befallen him afloat and ashore ; and told them so effectively, that the doctor began to fear lest, Othello-like, he should work his way into the affections of Bella. With the careless insouciance of his cha- racter and his profession, the Captain, considering that a mere medical man had no business to concern himself about Miss Karnac's affections, though too much of a gentleman to treat the doctor in his own house cavalierly, plainly showed that he came only to visit the ladies of the family, and that he consi- dered all interest in himself, or his proceedings, as clearly beyond the limits of the jurisdiction of the doctor. Dr. Glascock, in his turn, resented this by great stiffness of deportment when they met ; by making and promulgating the AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 33 discovery, that the Captain's temper was imperious and exci- table ; and by threatening to remove his family across the Island, to a country-house he had at Ramalah, whither the Captain's professional engagements would rarely permit him to follow. And here it is that the doctor's narrative may properly be said to open. It was sent in 1819, with the following letter to my father. " SIR : " A man of the world knows always how to draw consola- tion from the society of objects worthy his affection, and to console himself for their removal. " My knowledge of Miss Amabel de Karnac's early life does not enable me to pronounce any opinion upon her conduct or her character under circumstances unfamiliar, but I send, as you request, particulars relative to her early love affair, before leaving Valetta. I have no personal objection to this letter being shown to Capt. Warner. For this reason, I have begun my narrative at a point which will enable him to estimate the kind of way in which she then regarded him ; and he may learn, possibly, to consider my wisdom was prophetic, when I counselled her to avoid all connexion with a country, where manners and dispositions not conventional, are misrepresented, misinterpreted, and misunderstood. " Your obedient humble servant, "Tnos. GLASCOCK, M. D. " Government Inspector of Hospitals at Valetta." AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. CHAPTER III. Standing with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Maidenhood and childhood fleet. Why thus pause in indecision, Whilst the angels in thy vision Beckon thee to fields Elysian ? H. W. LoxorKLLOw. ONE of the places which the great war of this century raised into the highest military and commercial consequence, was Malta. In its palmy days, the little island was the great emporium of British commerce. In 1808, even the friendly ports of Portugal were closed to English goods, and the only opening left for the introduction of our manufactures into Europe, was through the Ottoman Empire. Under these cir- cumstances large numbers of English merchants emigrated to Malta, to maintain their trading communications with the East ; the families of naval and military officers established themselves at Valetta, as a convenient residence in the vicinity of their friends ; travellers shut out from continental tourage, were flocking eastward, taking Malta on their way : its praises or the contrary during that 'period have been said or sung, by Coleridge, Byron, and by many other visitors ; and the lit- tle island notwithstanding the denseness of its population, ten times exceeding that of any known corner of the world, in its average proportion ; the immensely high rental of its land, or rather rock, for almost every foot of soil is artificial ; was in a state of activity and prosperity, unparalleled in its experi- ence ; though the industry of its inhabitants, and the forced fertility of its shelving hill-side terraces, have been the theme of classic song. No spot of ground has ever had so many masters, and no portion of Europe has a history so obscure. Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Huns and Saracens, Normans, Emperors of Germany, Kings of Arra- gon, Knights of Jerusalem, and French and English kings. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 35 have by turns possessed it ; and political events seem lately to have raised it to higher consequence than ever as a dependency on our crown. " Under the English rule," says Pico, writing before the great plague which desolated it in 1813, "it was delightful to see the cities of the island, and particularly Valetta, crowded to excess with a contented population, intent on a variety of occupations, trades, and novel enterprises. Amidst the inces- sant hum of busy life, were heard various idiomss, accompa- nied by different national customs, by reason of the many foreigners of divers nations there congregated together ; a con- tinual crowd of carts, asses, and porters, thronged the streets and lined the harbors ; ships were unlading merchandise, and others were receiving cargoes ; at the gates there was a perpe- tual jostle of busy comers and goers. And when this general activity of business ceased with the close of daylight, at night the shops, cafes, theatres, and all places of amusement, were frequented by a gay and festive crowd. The patriot congratu- lated himself on seeing every kind of wretchedness exiled from his birth-place, which had become the great commercial emporium of the European world ; the stranger enjoyed its hospitality, and the government reaped the fruits of its wise provisions in the general happiness of the population." The presence of a large naval force added greatly to the liveliness of Valetta. So many English families had settled there, that officers on coming into port looked forward to much gaiety, and were in the habit of returning, either at their own lodgings, or on shipboard, the attentions paid to them on shore. The Admiral of the Port, at the time of our history, deter- mined to do his part in aid of the general festivity, and issued cards for an entertainment on board his Flag Ship, which some young and lively women of his acquaintance undertook to per- suade him must be a Fancy Ball. Though Amabel was unknown in the English circles of Valetta, Captain Warner had no difficulty in procuring her an invitation, at the same time that he got one for Mrs. Annealey. 36 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. " Doctor," said Bella, exhibiting this note, " I am grown up. I want to see the world. Giacinta says I ought, and " "And?" " Captain Warner." " Pooh ! silly child the world ! Do you not think the pri- vate study of your private friends, who, in their daily lives, lay bare their hearts before you, better than looking on the var- nished face of what men call society ?" " How should I know till I have tried both, Doctor ? I dare say society is bad, but at least when people meet, each one dependent on the rest for pleasure, which all seek, there must be something of the law of love (nay, Doctor, not ' its counterfeit politeness, and not much of that') amongst them." " Not so ; men congregate in multitudes to make each other miserable. Hobbes, Grotius, and Spinosa, tell us right that society was first organized by men for their own advan- tage, each one hoping to win that advantage over his fellows by address or force." " And what account do you make of family affection ?" " A thing you know but in wild theory. You make your own bright notions of what life should be, and fit your facts to suit your vague imagining. In 'love,' as you call it, there is little of loving kindness as a principle," said the Doctor. " I will be loved, and I must love," cried Bella, passionately. " Listen to me," replied the cynic. " You will grow like others, selfish, jealous, and covetous, after your kind. These things, instead of love, are mingled by men even with their religion. The condor wings his flight to Chimborazo, but his nature brings him back to the plain in search of prey. Captain "Warner, let me hint to you, appreciates the value of your ffold, your promised dowry. Widowers are mostly on the look-out for young and trusting hearts with money" Bella smiled. Had her own mind been made up as to the degree of liking that she felt for the gay Captain, she would pro- bably have answered by a perverse defence of her new friend (had he been nothing more to her), or by some pettish observation thrown out to irritate the Doctor, had he touched her heart thus roughly on a tenderer string. But the conclusion of the whole AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 3Y matter was, that the Doctor admitting some reason in the reproaches she addressed to him on her seclusion, and still more influenced on the subject by his housekeeper, gave his consent reluctantly to her appearance at the party, coupled with the astonishing condition that she should accept him as her body-guard, over and above the chapsronaye of Mrs. Annesley. Having small time for preparation, she resolved to make her appearance as a peasant girl of Brittany, in a dress some- thing like the gala dress of the richer Bernese maidens. As hour after hour she labored on this costume with the occasional assistance of Mrs. Annesley, the Doctor would make constant pretexts for coming into the room that he might gaze upon the beauty of their young and happy faces, enhanced by a contrast of character and charms. Mrs. Annesley, scarcely past the age of legal childhood, was an example of that fair and rounded healthy English beauty, which expresses generally great amiability of disposition and little activity of mind. But her companion ! A stranger would at once have pro- nounced her a Maltese, for her dress, all black, was of the fashion of the isle, yet an accurate observer would have hesitated to assign that beautifully rounded speaking face to the daughter of a people of confessedly African extraction, though her hair was very dark and her eyes of a rich brown hue. At times a shade of sadness quenched the sunshine of her beauty ; it was always full of thought, the mirror of the soul, but smiles and dimples were its natural expression. The cares of life had not yet fallen upon one of the most free and natu- ral of God's creatures, but her mind had lately caught a vision of existence, and she shrank shuddering from the realities of life, when she reflected that she too might be called upon to struggle and endure. With no one to repress the natural expression and free expansion of her nature, she had till recently been infinitely happy, though the careful hand of dis- cipline was wanting to teach her in these days of early girlhood, when life was lavish of the gifts it flung around her, how to store up the materials from whence to fashion perma- nent felicity, when the dark days of her destiny should come, 38 AMABEL; A FAMILY* HISTORY. in which she should say of the things that now delighted her, " I have no pleasure in them." The child gathers flowers in the sunshine, but he weaves them into garlands wherewith he crowns himself, when sitting in the shade. " The best attainments are made from inward impulse," says the lamented Margaret Fuller, in her Papers on Literature and Art ; " but it does not follow that outward discipline of any liberality will impair grace or strength, and it is impossible for any mind fully or harmoniously to ascertain its own wants, with- out being made to resound from some strong outward pressure." She was but at that age when childhood imperceptibly is merged in womanhood ; that age when a tender and judicious mother, relying on effects already wrought by the loving disci- pline of early days, will exert her influence rather than her authority ; when the human soul, if gifted with any powers of reflection, stands bewildered with the responsibilities just open- ing before it ; when ceasing to live for self we begin to carry forth the hoarded love of infancy upon the service of others ; when human life seems a dark problem ; when the spirit, fear- less in its inexperience, sometimes longs to try its powers ; when the philosophic observer watches the unfolding of the character, and the parent and true friend lay up before the throne of God their prayers in store for the young creature, whom they would fain hold back a short time longer from the world in which she pants to share. Sixteen ! the poet's sweet sixteen ! We protest against the bard as an authority. It is the most important era in a young girl's life, and to many, we are certain, the least happy. She struggles with her own position, she finds life incomprehensible. New duties are rudely thrust upon her. She has to achieve consideration even in the domestic circle ; she commits follies, which, long wept over, will influence her character ; faults which appear to others and herself an earnest of future error. She is restless and unhappy. The period of life (even with all the spring-tide hopes of an opening destiny before her) that a wise woman would least willingly take back again, would be the poet's " sweet sixteen !" AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 39 The evening came, hazy with heat. At about six o'clock news was brought to Mrs. Annesley that her husband's ship, the Sea Gull, with a prize in tow, was coming into the Great Harbor, and she hurried to the water's edge to be the first to go on board of her. When the hour came for the departure of Bella and the Doctor, he went into the garden and called her. " I am ready, Doctor," was her answer, and her sweet head parted the flowering shrubs upon her trellised balcony. " An angel's living portrait," he exclaims, " framed by the leaves and flowers !" " Beauty is a great gift of heaven," it is true, but it is chiefly valuable because it gives, at starting, a large advantage in society. In the social circle it can be of no account, unless the want of the complacency it gives is allowed to sour the dispo- sition of the plainer members of a family. Beauty always becomes associated in idea with excellence, assert to the contrary who may. And this is the true answer to those foolish actualists, who nowadays object to having the heroes of romance made handsome and the heroines all fair. If their characters, noble or lovely, had been known to the reader in actual life as well as he learns to know them in the pages of the novel, they would assuredly have seemed beauti- ful to him. It would be giving him a false idea by describing them as unattractive ; he must therefore be presented with a beautiful idea. But to return to her as she stood waiting in the Doctor's study. The rattling cabriolet swung upon two high wheels, and weighing down behind, drawn by a lusty mule, was at the door. He put her in, and they drove off along the narrow, steep, irregular street (swarming with population, and crowded with knightly monuments of the chivalric ages), which led to both of the great harbors from the suburb Floriana. They crossed the Plaza Britannica, where troops of English red-coats were parading, a scene of mechanical regularity totally opposed to that presented in the streets, or rather alleys, where ladies of all ranks sat en pleine air on the flat roofs, or in the flowery balconies of tall white houses, whilst market- 40 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. women, standing beneath the canvas of rude booths, sold pro- visions to the passenger. Now, as an opening was passed, they saw down a " street of stairs," the deep blue of the harbor, dotted with white shipping ; and next they passed before some public building, the residence of a proud " language" in Valetta's knightly days, built of grey stone, and more remarkable for attention to general symmetry of effect than for any elabora- tion of ornament ; and rattling down a rough steep hill, they arrived at the Marina. The Doctor saw Pietro, an acquaintance, amongst the loung- ing boatmen, and signed to him. He launched his boat into the water, and came round to meet them at the Nix Mangare stairs. As he did so the gig of Captain Warner's ship, the Dodo, touched the stairs, and Captain Warner, springing on shore, made his way towards them. " I am sorry, sir," he said to Dr. Glascock, " to detain this lady by asking you to make a little detour on our way to the Undaunted. The Sea Gull has lost her surgeon in the action, and the French Captain of her prize is badly wounded. Cap- tain Annesley presents his compliments, and would be glad if you would come on board." " To the Sea Gull !" There she lay, sail after sail coming down with cool and practised regularity her crew no more in a bustle than if she had been lying lazily becalmed in the waters of the Tropics. Scarcely a word was said until they reached the vessel : before the accommodation chair could be got ready, Amabel had followed the doctor up the side, to the great admiration of the midshipmen, and, shading her beauty with her large straw hat, passed below into the captain's cabin. " Glad to see you, Dr. Glascock," was his salutation ; " and you too, Miss Bella. You will find my prisoner intractable, and I ventured, my good sir, to send for you to parlez-vous to him. Persuade him to have his wounds dressed ; he won't listen to my English, and I think him in rather a bad way, doctor." So saying, he opened the door of his own cabin, which had been given up considerately to the wounded French commander. Bella remained in the cabin, listening to the doctor's broken AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 41 remonstrances addressed to the sick Frenchman, and, with a woman's ready sympathy for the unfortunate, straining her ear for his voice in reply. From girlhood she had, as we have said, been at the hospital, No one had taught her that attendance on the sick could be unfeminine ; on the contrary, the doctor's creed was, that a woman was always in her sphere, if she can be of use to others. Accustomed to be listened to, she felt sure she could persuade where all the doctor's arguments had not succeeded. She opened the cabin door, and no sooner had she appeared upon the threshold, than the young Frenchman, with a half- cry, rose from his pillow. His face was of death's yellowish paleness, his long dark hair thrown back from his forehead, matted with dried blood, stood up around his face, stiffly and wildly. Dark hair was on his lip, the soft fine growth of very early manhood, which, having been for some days untrimmed and neglected, made him look even more haggard than his paleness. Yet still they could dis- cover fine features. The fires of intellect were not extinguished in his blood-shot, glazing eyes ; the arm that lay so powerless upon the coverlet, had, a day or two earlier, wielded the lost sword, now hanging, a trophy of success, in a corner of the captain's cabin. Parts of his martial accoutrements, spotted with blood, and torn with rents of battle, lay scattered on the bedding. " Speak to him," said the doctor. Her voice was choked, but her face spoke to his heart with the eloquent sympathy of tears. The prisoner first broke silence ; stretching out his hand, he drew her towards him. "Etes vous Bretonne ?" he said, in a low voice. The doctor made ready his instruments, and watched them. " Yes. Not Bretonne by birth. I was not born there ; but my father was from Brittany." The young man gazed upon her fixedly. " Are you "he began. She started. " I am Felix," he said, painfully. 42 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. In the years that had elapsed since they last met, his image had faded in her heart ; yet not so utterly, but that she spoke the truth when, as he clasped her hand, she whispered, with a blush, that her companion and compatriot had never been for- gotten. There was a pause. The heart of the sufferer was stirred within him. Dr. Glascock was preparing to come forward. Amabel collected all her courage. "For the sake of our dear France," she said, "you must submit, and let us aid you." With woman's sweetest tact she had found out the vulnera- ble point in his affections, and had associated herself there. *" No," he replied, half fiercely. " I will not live to pine over the ruin of my hopes in any English prison. France should be served only by the fortunate. Enough, who have not failed, are left to serve her. Those who fail should die." She fell upon her knees beside his cot ; clasping his left hand fast in both her own, she pressed it to her forehead, to her lips, in an agony of supplication. The young man looked at her irresolute. Something to live for, in what had seemed to him his last hour, he had found. Convulsively the blood-stained hand she held returned the pressure of her soft warm fingers. At that moment the Doctor drew near and caught his eye. He saw his aid would no longer be rejected. Two balls were extracted, and his wounds dressed, whilst he lay without speak- ing, looking at Amabel with a fixed yet sad expression. When all was over he grew faint; Bella's small hands parted his matted hair upon his forehead, and applied restoratives. Dr- Glascock called up the Captain's steward, gave him direc- tions for his attendance that night upon his patient, and unwil- ling to agitate him further by the sight of his companion, took her by the hand and led her into the cabin. *'A highly improper thing," they heard Captain Warner saying as they entered. But he broke oft' his observation at that word, and merely remarked to Amabel, in a tone of irrita- tion, that " they would be confoundedly late at the Admiral's ball." " Can you think that I am going to the ball after such a AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 43 scene as this ?"she replied, surprised, " and in such a dress ?" she added, holding up her skirt stained with large drops of blood. The Captain began eagerly to remonstrate, assuring her that this would be the last time he should see her for some months, the Dodo being under sailing orders. Unmoved by what he said, she coldly wished him a good night, and, in a few moments, she and Dr. Glascock were seated in their boat pulling for the Marina. " You might have gone on to the ball," he said ; " but please yourself. I hope you will find a woman's satisfaction in the thought that your conduct has been exceedingly disagreeable to-night to Captain Warner." " And what signifies Captain Warner's displeasure to me ?" she said impatiently. " Less than it did this morning, I suspect," replied the Doctor. CHAPTER IV. Who sows in tears his spring-tide years Shall bind the golden sheaves ; Who scatters flowers in summer bowers Shall reap but the withered leaves. MRS. HOWE South Boston. BELLA, like the Sultaness Scheherazade, the mother of Female Novelists, was roused " an hour before day" by an unusual bustle, in the midst of which she could distinguish the voice of Doctor Glascock, who was scolding on the stairs. It was seldom the custom of that cynic to scold aloud, still less to swear out roundly. He was doing both on the present occasion. " What is the matter ?" said Bella, opening her door and encountering the housekeeper. " Signorina" said Giacinta, " il Capitano fyglese is bringing in a sick Frenchman, a young prisoner. The officers' quarters are all full in the Hospital, and he has got an order from the Governor to remove him here into our spare chamber. This 44 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. house belongs to the English government, and the S iff nor Padrone had it on condition that he should give up any of the rooms when they were wanted ; but, cospetto ! it never happened so before !" And she went on to complain to Amabel that there being no nurses disengaged in the Hospital the Doctor had ordered her to attend on the young prisoner. " Oh ! stay, Giacinta, stay ! I can help you. I am as good a nurse as you," said Bella, hurrying her toilette. "Impossible!" said Giacinta. "The Doctor's orders are express, that you shall not go into his room for fear of dis- turbing or exciting him. When the Signor Dottore com- mands, bisognio obbedire" Bella made a little face of mutiny at this, an expression which soon changed into one of disappointment, when she found it impossible to break through the cold stern reserve of the Doctor at the breakfast-table. His general deportment and his mono- syllables did not encourage her to ask him questions. In vain she tried her usual occupations. There was a change that day within herself which infected everything around ; and yet its influences were not unpleasant ; hr restlessness brought with it no vexation or remorse. The day before she had been unfettered, free, thirsting for enjoyment ; looking on life as a dark problem, and her own powers of every kind with a strange fear because they were untried. Her heart overflowing with lovingness which was undemanded, enthusiasms repressed, and poetry and speculations others little understood. A more timid a more English nature might have been repressed into mediocrity, and have retained nothing of all its early promise, save the seeds of morbid sentiment to bear a crop of eccentri- cities, invalid peevishness, or disgust of the world in after years ; but Bella, while bewildering her young mind with great problems, had kept her heart fresh by contact with the world without, and waited for her destiny. Her hour had come. The sun had risen on her path, and all her being was about to waken into life under the first influences of love. All Malta, at midday, was taking its siesta ; the house was hushed ; Amabel, who never slept by daylight, sat in silent reverie in her own room. This midday hour was the Sabbath AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 45 of her day, devoted to her studies, contemplations, and the communings of her young spirit with itself, and with its God. She sat leaning her head against the trellis-work, festooned with a profusion of sweet flowers, which overhung the window of her chamber, when she was surprised by the sudden entrance of the old housekeeper. "C&', Giacinta r " Signorina, he has come to himself; but he is greatly changed. I cannot understand him perfectly, but he is calling you ; saying your name over and over, and Mrs. Annesley has sent me here for you ; but the Signor Dottore said so positively, you were not to see him, and .... I dare not wake the Signor Dottore" A smile broke over the face of la Signorina, so bright, bewitching, and persuasive, that Giacinta felt that by such another smile her master's worst displeasure might be at once subdued. " Cara Giacinta ! Certainly one must not wake il Signor Dottore. It is an act of humanity. Let us go." But, when they reached the chamber, the prisoner appeared to have dropped off into a sudden sleep, and it was not wise to awaken him. Amabel found a letter lying on the table, directed to herself, but "Apres ma mort " was written in one corner. She sat down on the floor of the ante-chamber. The day- light waned, and the shadows of the evening quietly stole on, and she still sat with her little white dog nestling in her lap, leaning her head against the door-post, listening to every sound. Giacinta had opened the door a little way, and a stream of dying sunlight lay flickering and narrowing upon the floor. As she sat watching it in silence, her mind less occupied with thoughts than with sensations, she remarked that it was suddenly invaded by a dark, yet shining stream, moving across it slowly. The dog, too, stretched himself, whined, sniffed, and darted into the chamber. She saw his paws dyed as he went. A dreadful fear came over her. She sprang forward touched it . ..." Maria Santissima, help ! " she screamed to Giacinta. "It is blood!" 46 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. It was found that the prisoner had quietly removed the dressings of his wounds, with an intent to bleed to death ; and, but for the little stream of blood which had trickled on the floor, and caught the eye of Amabel, in another half hour he would have been beyond their care. He was not quite gone, however ; weak as he was, his consciousness had not forsaken him ; he pressed the hand of his young nurse as she leaned over him, and directed her attention, by a feeble glance, towards the letter on the table. Leaving him in abler hands, she turned aside, and broke it open. Inclosed was a short letter to Ferdi- nand, a brother, serving in Spain, in Dupont's army, beseeching him to consider this document as a last will and testament, and to restore to the Viscount de Karnac's daughter, for his sake, all that part of the Viscount's Breton property which had fallen by their father's purchase, and subsequent distribution of his estate, to his (Felix Guiscard's) share. " Doctor Doctor ! " cried Amabel, shocked at the idea of pecuniarily profiting by the death of her early playfellow. " Tell him that he ought not to do this. Tell him that he will not die. Tell him so dear Doctor." " You had better hold your tongue, Miss Bella," the Doctor answered sternly ; " I will not answer for his life if you repeat these scenes." " Oh ! God forbid ! He must not die ! Only tell me, Doc- tor, that he will not die. Save him ! Oh ! say one word to me. Say he will not die, dearest, dearest Doctor ! " But Dr. Glascock did not condescend to give an answer. He was again binding up the wounds of his patient, now quite incapable of resistance or exertion ; and Amabel insisting on her right to stay beside him, with comments, sotto voce, on the insufficiency of Giacinta, was suffered to remain watching all night the wavering of the spark of life, administering cordials, bending over him with her sweet looks of interest and compas- sion, and praying for him with an intensity of feeling which took the place of mere expression; whilst Giacinta told her beads in the same cause at the foot of the bed. He who does infinitely " above all that we can either ask or think," who is full of compassion and consolation, would never refuse to grant AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 47 the letter of such petitions, did He not feel that in taking the beloved one, He does all " far better than we know." In this instance the prayer was heard, and Felix Guiscard, after days of unconsciousness and suffering, gradually regained his powers. The life that Amabel had saved was now her right, and she asserted it ; not that the prisoner was any longer disposed to make away with himself. Like Napoleon, after the abortive poisoning at Fontainbleau ; or Clive, when his sui- cidal pistol had twice flashed in the pan ; he seemed sobered by his attempt, and inclined to accept and make the best of the decreees of Destiny. The individual most to be pitied in the group was the poor Doctor. He had quarrelled with Amabel, who scarcely felt the cold- ness, so engrossed was she by her new interests in Felix. Dr. Glascock had insisted after the night of her first watch- ing on taking her with him to the seclusion of his country house at Ramalah. A somewhat violent scene had taken place between them, in which the Doctor stretched impru- dently the bounds of his authority. Amabel fortified herself with the opinion of the Annesleys, and Dr. Glascock had been overcome. Between them now there was a great gulf fixed. Feeling that an attachment to the young French captain was inevitable, he thenceforth kept aloof, that he might not watch its progress ; and as day by day he saw her more engrossed with her new hopes and occupations, he drew back into himself, growing more caustic, more cynical, more the enemy of the world. Oh ! the joy of those first days when Amabel could lead her patient out into the summer air at sunset, when she sat by him in the garden and sang him Breton lays, or listened to his descriptions of his father's home. When women discuss together the mysteries of courtship, they often remark that it is a pity the task of love-making has not been confided to them. They understand the secret workings of the heart so much better than the sex to whom it is permitted to be demon- strative ; their tact is so much finer their attention is_so much 48 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. more habituated to trifles and trifles make the sum of court- ship that it often seems a pity that the exercise of these abilities in the most important passage of their whole lives is denied them. " Man carves for himself, woman is helped to her destiny," says a dear, dear friend of mine, the brilliant Julia, and the same thought is gracefully expressed in a little Spanish poem : Alas ! to seize the moment When heart inclines to heart, And press a suit with passion, Is not a woman's part. If man comes not to gather The roses where they stand, They fade amidst their foliage, They cannot seek his hand. Here, however, was in part exception. Amabel held the chief authority. Felix was helpless, thrown upon her loving care for the recovery of his health, and for his amusement in convalescence ; it was for her to plan, devise, and bring about all that could make him happy. She could give him her sweetest smiles without a fear of misconstruction ; she could dare to be true in act to her own feelings without drawing upon herself the slanderous clamor of the strife of tongues. Captain Annesley, before the Sea Gull left, made arrange- ments for his prisoner's removal, on parole, to Citta Vecchia ; whilst Amabel accompanied Dr. Glascock to his country-house at Ramalah. But the decayed capital of Malta is at no formidable distance from the southern centre of the island, and Felix met her every day. Bella long pondered in her heart the memory of therf walks along the rocky beach ; their whis- pered words to the deep sounding melody of the mysterious ocean ; the tales he told of his adventurous life by sea and land, and of the great Xapoleon ; whilst in return she read to him her favorite authors, and shared with him her inner life, " those sacred things that belong unto the soul." And yet they were half children. They threw pebbles into the ocean, they made merriment from trifles, they laughed, enjoyed, and joked, rather than sentimentalized or sighed. Felix scarcely knew he was in love, but felt the pleasures AMABEL: A FAMILY HISTORY. 49 of the courtship, and Amabel gave no account to herself of her sensations. In highest art is the repose of power. A love perfected has also its repose. When you can prattle to another unreservedly of yourself, without calculating even unconsciously on the effect you are producing, be sure you love with your whole heart, and are basking in the consciousness of a reciprocity of Bella, like most young persons who have any profundity of character, was jealous over her deepest feelings ; to talk of herself was a stretch of affection and of confidence that in earlier days she had rarely accorded even to the Doctor. But now the passing mood, the flash of thought, the impulse, grave or gay, was shared with Felix. Love listens first, then speaks. She had mounted above the earlier stages of a true devotsd love, and loved him as the completion of her being loved him less for his sake than her own. Mrs. Annesley, growing a little scandalized at the extent of the intimacy which withdrew her young companion from her former friends, in writing to her husband, did not fail to put into her letter an account of what she called " this strange engagement." Belle would have said she was in Captain Warner's interest, yet it was not exactly so, for she would not have been unwil- ling that through her husband, Carpt. Warner should learn something to the disparagement of the young lady, for whose sake, during his late stay in Valetta, he had relaxed in the atten- tions he had formerly been wont to pay to her. ' % 50 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. CHAPTER V. " We wives of sailors only can lay claim to any real knowledge of the noble profes- lion. What natural object is there, or can there be," exclaimed the nautical Dowager, in a burst of professional enthusiasm, " finer than a stately ship breasting the billows, as I have heard the Admiral say a thousand times; its taffrail ploughing the main, and its cut-water gliding after I know notj piy dear Wyllys, if I make myself intelligible to you." RED ROVEB. "June 17. H. M. S. Dodo ; Commander Leonard Warner. Off Cape Passaro; latitude 36 33', longitude 15 2'; wea- ther clear ; wind S. S. W, ; light breezes, and making about four knots, with only the top sails set,'to keep in company with the convoy. At noon made out a sail to the S. W. of us, standing across from the coast of Africa. Made signals to con- voy to close, as she might prove an enemy. "At 4 P. M., made her out as H. M. S. Sea Gull, Captain Annesley. Passed some miles to the southward of us, standing apparently on her course for Malta. Made us a signal, ' Mis Malta Frenchman engaged Admiral's order ' The re- mainder unintelligible." Such was the entry made into his log book about 6 P. M. of the same evening, by my father, Theodosius Ord, midship- man on board the Dodo, fourteen or fifteen years or so before my existence became an unextinguishable fact in the creation. The weather, so summarily dismissed as " clear " in the offi- cial document, had been early in the morning gloricfusly beau- tiful. The Dodo, having charge of a large convoy of merchantmen, bound from Cadiz to Malta, was hugging pretty closely the Sicilian shore. The undulating coast, crowned by the snows of Etna, was visible with sufficient distinctness for those on board the Dodo to mark the glancing patches of bright sunlight on the mountains, in contrast with the masses of deep shadow lying between them over the valleys. Objects, however, unless thrown into clear relief by gleams of the mellowing sunliaht against a. background of blue sky, were not uniformly dis- AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 51 tinguishable. The water, deepest blue, was more than rippled, for the wind was rising, and the twenty sail of merchantmen, scattered over an area of two miles, according to their respec- tive rates of sailing, presented the same contrast of glittering light and massy shadow upon their, quivering sails. At a long distance to the south-east, on the direct course for Malta, a practised naufiHfc eye might yet discern the upper sails of a far-off v _! a glimmering speck of light, but dimly seen on the extreme verge of the two blues of the horizon. It was H. M. Brig Sea Gull, which had passed the merchant fleet about two hours earlier, and it caught at once the eye of Captain "Warner, of the Dodo, who had come up on deck after his dinner, at the moment of the opening of this portion of our story. He was a man of middle height, stoutly yet trigly built, of a make and size well fitted for activity. He wore the hand- some undress naval uniform of the good old days, when panta- loons and coat pockets were yet unseamed with unsailorly gold lace, and a commission of taste at the Admiralty had not patched the cuffs and collars of the service with red cloth, like the coats of the two-penny postmen. His forehead, which was high, sloped slightly back, and was extremely broad and full over the eyes ; a style of feature enhanced in beauty to the utmost by the way in which his light hair, not exactly curled but waving, was combed back from his temples singularly calculated to convey an idea of firmness, nobleness, and author- ity, and much more often met with fifty years ago than at the present day. His face, habitually expressive of easy enjoyment, denoted that the cares of this world were strangers to his heart, or else sat lightly on him; but in moments of command or irritation it could assume the very sternest of expressions cold and hard, softened, however, by his eyes, which were a clear, bright blue, more sparkling and vivacious than is usual with blue eyes. He took a rapid survey of sky, convoy, land, and ocean, in which he was assisted liy his first lieutenant, a man much older than himself, kept down in his profession by occasional fits of inebriety, who, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket 52 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. and a cap upon his head, awaited, -with rather a sulky expres- sion of countenance, the remarks of his superior. " Keep her head three points more off the land, Mr. Grump," was the first order ; " there may be wind to-night, and I had rather get an offing." " Confound those lumbering merchantmen," remarked the first lieutenant, pointing to the t-ternmost of the convoy, " there are three or four amongst t; .ug about like tubs." "Make the signal, Mr. Grump, t< HI in for the night, and let that make-shift whipper-in^^HBWow up those two brigs yonder. Here, Ord ! Where is that young gentleman ? Call him and let him make the signal." The first lieutenant passed the word for Mr. Ord, who at that moment was engaged in making in his log the already quoted entry ; and having sent for him observed gruffly to the Captain, that, " that lad would ' be sure to make some horrible mistake some day. Always confident no consideration he could not show less care or act with more precipitation if he had swallowed the signal- book." " Mr. Ord," said the Captain, somewhat sternly, as he came upon the quarter-deck, after this observation, " you are certain you were right about that signal ?" " I am, sir. What more there was I cannot say ; the ship dipped. But so far as it goes I am confident of accuracy. There are not many pairs of eyes in the ship that could have made out any signal at a distance of so many miles." "There's not a single ship in His Majesty's fleets in the Mediterranean that begins with M. I. S.," put in the first lieu- tenant ; " but plenty with M. I. N. Minotaur, Minorca, Min- strel, Min " " M. I, S.," repeated the Captain, interrupting him, " you are quite positive, Mr. Ord ?" " Positive, indeed," muttered the first lieutenant, as Theodo- sius reasserted his firm belief that he had rightly interpreted the signal. " Positive, indeed. What man, I ask you, in his senses would abbreviate a ship's name in a signal ? M. I. N. it must have been, and you mistook the second number. Cap- tain Warner, sir, I'd lay my life the Minotaur, the Min- AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 53 strel, or Minorca, is engaged with the enemy at this moment somewhere between this and Malta ; and the Admiral's order is for us to reinforce her." And Mr. Grump concluded with an angry glance and an accompanying gesture towards his junior, distinctly signifying, " But for you we might have been upon the spot to share the fun and prize money." " Make the night signal to the convoy," said the Captain ; and soon the little Ik^flBuxie closing round the Qodo like chickens snuggling beneath their mother's wing; and lest some hovering Frenchman like a stealthy hawk might chance during the night to filch or.'- of them ;uvay, a sailor was sent aloft an hour before night-fall to sweep the horizon with a glass, but even the Sea Gull had disappeared and he saw nothing but blue water out to seaward. The Captain leaning over his vessel's side watched these pre- parations ; saw how the night closed jealously over the momen- tary gleam of twilight, and remarked the shimmering light of a full moon upon the water. He had put his cocked hat between his knees as he gazed over the side of his vessel, and, as he stood half leaning against one of the ship's guns and half against her bulwarks, the wind blew his hair about his face, the spray dashed up at intervals upon him, and the Lieutenant, who had set his watch, remarked, that lost in thought he seemed indifferent to outward circum- stances, and that the expression of his features was disturbed. The signal by which his first lieutenant was disquieted was no mystery to him. It had been made, he knew, but for his private information, and with a sailor's quickness he had under- v , stood it immediately. " Engaged ! engaged, is she ? Engaged to that French prisoner !" And as memory in moments of vexation loves to dwell upon the little sacrifices that have been made in hope for those who have disappointed us, he called to mind the various little rari- ties he had collected to offer her as gifts, at every port that he had touched at after leaving Malta, and remembered the cir- cumstances of each purchase, and the impression lie had hoped they would produce on her. 54 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. Uncertainty, and jealousy, and mortification, and displeasure, were struggling with the remembrance of lier charms. So simple, naive, beautiful, and joyous ! What a splendid woman, as Mrs. Leonard Warner, she would have made ! How greatly she would have graced his always well-kept table ! How proud he would have been of her ! How much his marriage would have mortified all the ambitious spinsters of his neighborhood in England ! He was naturally a man who loved his home. Like most of those engaged in active lite, it was pleasant to him to have a spot set apart to hold his treasures ; a shrine of his own rearing, to which he might (returning) bring large tributes from his fame, his fortune, his hopes, his happiness. He had once had such a spot, but it was only for a brief interval in his life; his household gods had been both suddenly and rudely broken ; death had made desolate the little plot of happiness that he had redeemed from the exigen- cies of his professional career. He had married young ; a woman not interesting yet he had invested her with interest ; though merely domestic, she had sufficed for his requirements. She was the portionless daughter of a lieutenant in the service ; but the bride that he now coveted had noble blood, and would inherit money. His first wife had given him, in all things, his own way was pale, delicate, and querulous, a sort of upper-servant to his children ; but this was not the idea he had formed of his new bride. She, he intended, should be perfectly domestic, ministering in every particular to his comfort, yet at the same time to his vanity. He contemplated Amabel with complacency. He thought how he would exhibit her beauty, with pride, as his possession ; and the society of so superior a being would be of such advantage to his children ! Katie, the elder, would grow up, under her care, no uncouth country-maiden, but would uncon- sciously acquire grace and grow another Bella. He had almost thought his dream into reality, when an angry whisper, on the other side the deck, broke up his medi- tations. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 55 " I tell you, sir, you did mistake that signal. The Minotaur, the Minstrel, or Minorca, must be engaged out yonder with some Frenchman. Had you made the thing out plain, we might have put the convoy into some Sicilian port, and gone in search of them." The Captain looked up at the night, clear, starry, with the wind rising. " You may let that matter rest, Grump," he said, passing his first lieutenant, who had the early watch, on his way to the companion. u I am satisfied with Mr. Ord ; as signal midship- man, he has my approbat^ff^ " Yes, always so. The lad would do anything for praise. He will be guilty to-morrow of some new piece of inconsideration or absurdity," muttered the lieutenant, as Captain Warner descended to his cabin. "A relation of the Captain's ! Enough to serve him upon all occasions. Pah !" And Mr. Grump balanced himself upon his heels, and took hold with both hands of two ropes near him, and still balancing, looked out, between his arms, into the night ; forgetting that, partly owing to his own prejudice against the lad, and partly, from an exaggerated desire on the Captain's part to avoid all suspicion amongst his officers of nepotic partiality, Theodosius was the lad most frequently found fault with, and most often put upon unpleasant duty in the vesM-1. Ue was right, however, in his estimation of his character. " That lad will do anything for praise," struck at the root of his disposition. He had run away from school to join Captain Warner, the first cousin of his mother, who had called him a " smart fellow." As the kinsman of his Captain, it was always suspected he was favored by authority. All the fancied slights and vexa- tions received from their superiors, by his comrades, were revenged upon him. When disposed to do him justice, they allowed that he was good-tempered and safe; his love of approbation, leading him rarely to risk the good opinion of a comrade, by telling any anecdote to his disadvantage. He was not a lad of very 56 A M A B K L ; A FAMILY II I S T O R Y . social habits, or the temptation of shining at another's expense might possibly have proved too strong for him. He adored his profession. To have been honorably men- tioned in a despatch, he would have accepted any danger. He was eager, energetic, and self-confident, when he had only him- self to depend upon ; was always going beyond his functions, or the wishes of his superiors, and in constant scrapes on every occasion. He was one of those persons, in short, who would have won all praise, had he stoural midway in every under- taking ; but, not being able tBBU^stand the temptation of making any one his friend, he wlWnways carried by excess of zeal beyond the .confines of prudence, duty, and authority. He was the most active spirit of the ship, and never could resist any glance of approbation. If I cast blame upon his motives, it is because in after years he taught me, that man's duty rests upon more stable princi- ples ; and if T point out as a weakness, his love of approbation, it is because he taught me early to consider it so. But the majority of men who have adopted these ideas as their auxili- aries in the work of education, have no right to call his princi- ple of action worthless, or his ambition un-christian, vain, or unennobling. He kept his watch that night, with a light heart, proud of the approbation of his commander, and of his own quickness of sight which had made out the signal. Little he knew that with the facts that it communicated, there lay bound up his own history. * * * * * * Hurrah ! for the Valetta harbor ! No captain ever ran in there with a convoy more eagerly than Captain "Warner, five days after he had made out the unwelcome signal. Beautiful harbor ! On the one hand frowned the Castle of St. Elmo, a vast mass of jagged freestone broken here and there by loopholes, and squared windows, cut out without regard to architectural regularity. Before the city stretched the beautiful smooth bay. whose mouth opened to the north-east, guarded by the round and light-house looking Fort Riascoli. It was Sunday, and the ships were dressed in flags ; the hum AMABEL; A F A M i L Y H i s T o R r . 5*7 of commerce was lessened if not hushed ; and but for the bustle caused by the entrance of the little merchant fleet, there would have been a Sabbath stillness in the harbor, the vessels almost basking in the intense heat of the sunny summer day. There was a couple of three-deckers at that time in port, but the object that first struck the eyes of Captain Warner, was the Sea Gull anchored near the quarantine harbor, or Marsa Musat, which is separated from the larger, outer harbor, by the sharp and tongue-like promontory on which is built the town. The moment Captain Warner could feel it right to leave Lis vessel, his gig was mannet^and pulling alongside the Sea Gull, he asked eagerly for Captain Annesley. The Captain had gone ashore. " Had the Sea Gull only come into port that morning ?" " No, yesterday. They had been in chase of a French brig, which had run them a hundred miles out of their course to the eastward." Captain Warner saluted the officer at the Sea Gull's gang- way, and threw himself back in the stern sheets impatiently. His coxswain asked his orders. " To the stairs ! The Nix Mangare." They landed him beneath the frowning front of stern St. Elmo, and, turning to his right, he walked along the quay of the great harbor. Here lay boats of every shape and of all sizes drawn up upon the beach out of the water ; sailors of all nations lounging lazily around. The trig man-o'- war's man in blue jacket, white trowsers, and straw hat, was awaiting the arrival of somo officer ; Maltese fisher sailors, the best in the Mediterranean, who had spent their night upon the waters, lay sleeping out tho day beside their fishing craft, dressed in white cotton shirts, full trowsers to the knee, the rest of the leg naked or swathed in loose unwieldy bands, long knives in shagreen sheaths with tho handles sticking out of their gay girdles, and striped caps of red or blue upon their heads. There were likewise lounging, smoking or asleep, Greek and occasionally Turkish sailors ; for the trade with the Levant, at that time very flourishing, was all carried on through Malta, and the dresses and accoutre- 3* 58 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. irients of these wild groups were remarkably in keeping with the semi-Orientalism of the scene. Shops for eastern goods, and sailors' eating-houses, bordered the Marina ; but all the rest of the buildings facing inward, gave to the mere European traveller a notion of domestic architecture in the eastern style. The Captain's intention was to call on Mrs. Annesley, but remembering that it was Sunday, he took his road past the little chapel of the English near the Governor's residence. He met the congregation coming out ; amongst them Captain and Mrs. Annesley. "Ha! Warner, old boy!" said the Captain. "How are you ? And what did you make out of my signal ?" " That Miss Karnac is to be married to your infernal French Captain," was the answer. " But that was not the point of it," the other replied. " Since I heard how things were going from my wife, I have been off Tarragona, and Admiral happening to ask after you, I told him the whole story. Says he, ' Be hanged if any Frenchman cuts out his prize from him.' It is his plan that something might be done by way of an exchange for this young rascal, and I have here a letter for the Governor, and an order to take him with me when I make sail for Gibraltar. " I should like you to see him," he went on to say. " He is on parole in Citta Vecchia. I am going to ride over there this morning, and tell him to hold himself in readiness to sail next week." . " No, I can't go, thank you," said Captain Warner, who in these expressions understood an invitation to accompany him, and was not altogether sure how far he was acting fairly by proxy towards his rival. " I have to pay my respects to the Governor." "Well," replied Annesley, "if he joins me when I sail, the coast is clear for you." " Warner ! ahoy ! Warner !" He called after his friend ; who with a few rapid strides had almost got beyond hail of him. " You must dine with us to-day at our rooms in Floriana. Half-past five, mind, and Mrs. Annesley will accept of no excuses." AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 59 " Nothing can be further from my thoughts than to excuse myself to Mrs. Annesley." It was the turning point of Captain Warner's destiny. CHAPTER VI. Gather the roses while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying, The fairest flower that blooms to-day To-morrow maybe dying. HERRICK. IT was a beautiful May morning. The north-east breeze was gently breathing odors from the flowery shores of Sicily, where gloomy Dis seized his unwilling bride : it was 1 the commence- ment of the Maltese summer, but as yet the glare reflected from the stone walls and shadeless plains of the grey rock, was not intolerable. The temperature of Valetta itself is almost always equable, and at the pleasant spot near the Palace of the former Grand Inquisitor, not far from which Dr. Glascock's country residence was built, near the centre of the southern shore of the island, the heat was scarcely greater than that of an English spring. The landscape that here presented itself was not altogether dissimilar to that of certain of our less cultivated districts. At the south-west portion of the island is a double line of cliff's ; the outer one rising from the sea, and sloping inward, till the freestone wall of the second line abruptly flanks the valley. It was upon this cultivated slope at its lower and eastern end, and looking up the hollow formed by the chain of rocky hills that almost bisects Malta (dividing it into two nearly equal portions the eastern thickly populated, and the western a Petrea), that Dr. Glascock had erected his small country house, and surrounded it with orange trees. The road to this retreat led through the prettiest and most cultivated landscape in all Malta. The plains and gentle declivities were rich with crops of grain and fodder, amongst which fields ofsulh, gay with large ' 60 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. red flowers, were particularly beautiful and conspicuous. All were surrounded with stone walls, coeval with the field's crea- tion. The peasant, in making a grooved bed for the two or three feet thickness of earth scraped from the fissures of the rocks, or brought occasionally from Sicily, removed large fragments of the porous rock and made his wall of them. " How admirable is God's Providence !" cries a pious Maltese writer ; " no sooner is a field formed than on that very spot lie the materials to raise around it the defence that it requires !" The steep acclivities of the hill sides presented a succession of terraces, which, rising rapidly one above the other, suggested to the beholder the idea of seats in a vast amphitheatre ; whilst the curved lines of the opposite hills strengthened the impres- sion. These little terraces were prettily planted with fruit trees, especially the apple and the vine, which being trained together, intermingled th'eir branches ; for having been carefully pruned and kept low, few even of the apple trees were larger than mere shrubs. In full bloom at the time, and covering so consi- derable an extent of ground, they presented a singular appear- ance, broken as the cultivation was, at intervals, by ridges of gray limestone ; whilst on the right, lay the lovely valley of Boschetto, crowned with its quadrangular castle, a spot which is now laid out in groves of fruit trees, oranges, lemons, or pomegranates, and where only the dark olive, once, it is sup- posed, was the indigenous product of the isle. Winding between the hill-slopes, on the one side, and the entrance to the valley, is the hard, white road, running south- wards from Valetta, passing through Citta Vecchia, the ancient capital of the island, now silent and deserted like an enchanted city. In 1809, it still retained some portion of its splendor; and was the residence on parole of a small number of French officers, who, later in the war, well nigh fell victims to the fanaticism and resentment of the lower orders. It was at the close of the Sunday afternoon mentioned in the last chapter of our story, that Captain Felix Guiscard rode at full speed to Ramalah. An hour earlier, Amabel, descending to the garden, had gathered her lap full of sweet flowers, more richly perfumed AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 61 it is said, in Malta, than elsewhere. Holding her poor aunt by the hand, and accompanied as usual by her little white dog Barba, she climbed over a broken portion of the wall, which inclosed the garden of the Doctor ; went slowly down the hill behind his cottage, and stood at the eastern extremity of the cliffs, beside the sea. Whither had flown her former doubts of life ? She doubted not her happiness, for perfect love casts out all fear. Alas ! alas ! that dread mistrustfulness will after first deception follow on such fearlessness ! Alas ! that tender hearts, well capable of warm affection, should, early wounded, grow defiant ; that caustic words, and a curled lip, and Rochefoucauld philosophy, should be the signs that half the so-called love on earth is false, and that the unhappy one has learned to mask her fears, her wrongs, her helplessness, by simulated fearlessness. If it be real, it is the fearlessness of that poor, widowed, fallen Queen, when, passing out of the low wicket of the Temple, on her way to the Conciergerie, she struck her " grey, discrowned head " against its lintel, and answered the rough inquiries of her jailor with the saddest words, that, perhaps, ever have been uttered by a woman's lips : " Nothing can hurt me now." But we will not linger on such thoughts, for, as yet, they have nothing in common with our subject. In Amabel, all thoughts were swallowed up in a sensation that pervaded her whole being, that Felix Guiscard loved her. She had no anxiety to hear him say it. The most impassioned words could have added no certainty to her mind. She knew their lives, to be happy, must be passed together : to be complete, must be united. She was as necessary to him, as he to her. She had no thought for the future the present had absorbed it, together with the past. Or rather, the past was but the prelude to the present ; the future, the guarantee for its continuance. Her eyes were fixed upon the path over the cliffs, which led from the main road to the shelving shore ; and the moment ho appeared, she caught sight of him. She ran to meet him ; more joyous, more childlike, than usual, for a fresh, free air was blowing, which had given her high spirits and a high color. 62 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. She wore, as she always did. the costume of the country ; her hands and feet were of more than Maltese beauty, and the peculiar fashion in which her dark hair was strained into the sugar-loaf form, back from her forehead, though not in itself beautiful or natural, gave a brilliancy to her eyes, and a piquancy to the fair young face, so expressive in its beauty, that was perfectly bewitching to those accustomed only to the totally dissimilar style of countenance sought to be produced by the fashions of the times. Over her head she wore the black silk faldetta, of Moorish or Saracenic origin ; which thrown back, looked like .a classical, wide, floating mantle, but when she walked, was twisted gracefully on one side, and drawn so as to cover the lower part of her face. The skirt of her wide robe was black, but opening on one side, gave to view the ample, snowy petticoat ; and the corset, also black, stiffened with whalebone, and laced over the graceful figure, whose out- line seemed to have been rounded by the softest touches of Dame Nature's hand, gave something the appearance of a modern court dress to the costume. The faldetta, her black mantle, blew out sail-like behind her as she ran, embarrassing her movements, and causing her to stop every few moments and draw it closer round her bright and rosy features. Felix stretched out both his hands, and as she placed hers in them, the faldetta blew forwards, enveloped his head, and the hood held two faces. What wonder that, under its friendly screen, his lips met her forehead. It was two hours later when Dr. Glascock, having risen from a leisurely siesta, mounted to the top of the acclivity, on the side of which his house stood. At first his eyes rested on a vessel in the offing, with all her white sails glistening as she glided across a golden path that paved the waters to the setting sun. The " tideless Mediterranean" rises nevertheless a few feet morning and evening, during the months of spring and autumn, above its usual level. It was now nearly high water, and along the foot of the cliffs lay a mere margin of white sand, sloping gently out of which rose a large rock, once AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 63 Bella's favorite retreat for study or for solitude, now dearest of all places upon earth, from the memory of hours she and Felix had there passed, shut in from prying eyes, the blue sea murmuring at their feet, the grey cliffs sheltering their heads. Upon this rock it was that they stood, the flowers she had brought had fallen from her lap, and now lay scattered round them. He seemed in act to go, yet lingering still ; as loath not to prolong that " sweetest sorrow of the parting words." At sight of them the Doctor, with all speed, began his descent from the ridge of the acclivity, but a sudden bend in the steep path hid them for a moment from his view. When Doctor Glascock next caught sight of the young lovers, Felix had renounced his purpose of departure. Amabel was sitting or half kneeling on the rock, and he had placed himself beside her. " Bella, one word of answer !" Her eyes turned pleadingly to Doctor Glascock. Her lover knew that she thus mutely told him that the happiness of which he had been speaking, hung on the consent of others. He rose, and eagerly addressed the Doctor. As Amabel's nearest protector and guardian, he implored his blessing on their union, and that it might be speedily ; that he might carry her with him if he returned to France, and restore her to her father's home. " I have no such authority as you suppose," replied the Doctor. " Mademoiselle is under the guardianship of her uncle. You must gain the consent of Mr. Sibbes." " Then, Felix," cried Amabel, starting up with sudden anima- tion, " refuse this terrible exchange on any plea you like, and stay in Malta. My uncle will not be back from Smyrna till October, and meantime" Captain Guiscard shook his head, but Dr. Glascock inter- rupted his reply to Amabel's bright hopes. " Go up to the house," he said, " and we will come to you in half an hour. I must have some talk on this with Capt. Guiscard." She rose up and obeyed him. The wind had lulled. Both watched her light figure, till in one of the windings of the path it disappeared, when the Doctor turned to the Captain 64 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. with a remark not to have been expected from one of his cynicism and years. " She loves you, sir," he said. " No man can doubt that ! She loves you, sir ; she loves you." The words seemed wrung from him by an extremity of emotion. " I have entire trust in her affection," was the answer. " And you may have in her constancy. Hers is one of those clinging natures which cannot detach themselves, even from a common friend, without leaving a part of life itself behind. Some persons, Captain Guiscard, dissociate them- selves as they are from themselves as they were or as they hope to be. Progressive natures, on the contrary^ cherish the memo- ries of the past, because they see in them the germ of the pre- sent, and prophecies of the future, nor can they live without a prospect in life before them. You are associated with her past, in you are centred all her visions of the future you are her life. Were her future existence to be severed from you by accident or treachery, she would live indeed, and in time recover herself I trust, but every hope, taste, and affection, which embellish life, would long be bruised, sickly, and imperfect in her." " Do you intend, sir," he resumed after a pause, " to give up your exchange, and wait for Mr. Sibbes in Malta ?" " That would not be possible. My honor as an officer my devotion to my country my professional prospects all forbid my making use of any false plea of ill health," began Captain Guiscard. " Enough, sir. I knew that you would not. Be it my task, therefore, to make Mr. Sibbes favorable to your hopes, and to receive security for your good faith from you." " Security !" " Most certainly. If you leave Malta, have we any cer- tainty that in your active changeful life you will form no other hopes love no other pretty woman ?" And without regarding the fervent protestations poured out by the young lover, he went on to insist on this security. "You are attached to her, you say. That is between you and her. You say you love her ; but, sir, is Mr. Sibbes, whose A M A D E L ; A FAMILY HISTORY. 65 ideas are all pecuniary, to be satisfied to have his niece remain unmarried in his house on such security ? Are you sure that in the end his arguments would have no weight with Amabel ? "Bon dieuf you torture me. What would you have me do, M. le docteur ? " " Offer the man security for your fidelity, of a nature that he can understand. Bind Amabel to constancy by her honor as well as her affection." " And how ?" " Those Breton lands you hold, v 7 rung, by the devices of revolutionary times, by your father the intendant, from her father the noble, restored to her by deed of gift, would secure all these advantages. At the end of the war, you might reclaim both wife and property. Mr. Sibbes could not object to a suitor who had already made such sacrifices. Bella could never doubt your tried fidelity ; you would have acquired new claims on her affection by your sacrifice." With a sort of weak generosity he meant to secure to her the object of her choice. At the worst, he gave her the inheri- tance of her fathers, and for himself, if he must lose her (and he saw but too clearly that all his early claims upon her love had lost their force) better a Frenchman should win her than an Englishman ; better Felix than Captain Warner. " The father in IS Amour Medecin" thought he to himself, " spoke not unwisely when he lamented the hard fate of those who bring up female children, only to see them, at the age when they have grown most useful, most desirable, most com- panionable, pass into the hands of a stranger." " I see that my proposition is distasteful to you," he resumed, having, during the pause, closely watched the other's features. " Nevertheless, it is the price of my influence with her uncle. Nay, sir," (for Felix was about to speak) " we will not chaffer, if you please, over such a bargain." He began ascending to his house with some rapidity. Felix followed him, lost in thought. He saw that his only real secu- rity for his own happiness or the safety of his patrimony, if he did what Dr. Glascock required, was the affection of Amabel. 66 AMABEL; A TAMIL Y HISTORY. x - 1 But he had full trust in her. lie saw her in the glow of setting sunlight, standing on the cliffs above the house and looking down. He fancied she was weeping, and he would have ''coined his blood to drachmas" could gold have stayed the tear- - drops that fell from those bright eyes. He hastened his steps ; he overtook the doctor. " Will you give me time, sir ?" he said. " Give me till to- morrow, that I may make sure I have understood the instruc- tions of Captain Annesley." He ran up flfe cliff to join her. He told her not the price he was to pay but that the doctor was their friend and their protector. He told her how he trusted her and loved her ; and every word he said awoke its echoes in her heart, repeated and multiplied. " To-morrow !" he said, parting at length. " To-morrow !" she answered. " To-morrow dear to-mor- row !" She walked with him to the spot where he had left his horse. He was glad to escape a second meeting with the doctor ; and, with a heart less light than that with which he had left Citta Vecchia, he rode more slowly back to it as evening fell. He had not ridden half a mile from Ramalah, when he be- came aware that her dog, who had taken a great fancy to him, was following him. As he passed through Citta Vecchia, he stopped a moment at the residence of the English officer, then on duty, to obtain permission to pass the night in Valetta, as he had busi- ness to transact there. On his arrival at Valetta he put up his horse at an inn with which he was acquainted, in the suburbs, ordered a bed, and then set out in search of Captain Annesley. It was half past ten o'clock. No moon. The night was cloudy. The scanty lamps burned dim. Felix turned into the street where Captain Annesley had taken lodgings, and found it quite deserted. Not a living soul appeared to be abroad. AMABEL; A' FAMILY HISTORY. 67 * * CHAPTER VII. He who too far indulges hope, Will find how soon hope fails ; He's like a seaman bottling wind In hopes to fill his sails. TRANSLATION OF A MALTESE SONO. "MR. GRUMP," said Captain Warner, coming on board the Dodo in no good humor, about the hour Captain Felix Guiscard set out for Ramalah. "Mr. Grump, we are to sail again to-night with a devil of a French spy on board, whom the Admiral has ordered me to take to join Sir John Warren in Sicily. Have his cot slung in my cabin. He will mess at my table. You will receive him when he comes on board, and take care of him. He is a personage of importance, with particular news for the army in Sicily. His name is Girard. I shall be on board by nine. I am going to dine on shore with Captain Annesley." Mr. Grump, left in command of the vessel, paced the quarter- deck in dudgeon, remembering that he too had an engagement in Valetta, and that the second lieutenant having had leave to go ashore, it would be out of rule for him to quit the ship upon the eve of sailing. As the evening advanced, however, and there appeared nothing particular for him to do, he made up his mind to intrust his command to the officer of the watch for half an hour, the acting junior lieutenant, my father, Theodosius Ord, and taking a boat, was landed on the Marina. He stayed longer than he had intended, for a friend detained him over a pleasant bottle. It wanted a quarter of nine when he returned to the vessel. Theodosius met him at the gangway. " Mr. Grump, is that you, sir ?" " Yes, sir." u Have you seen anything of Mr. Girard, sir J" 68 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. " Mr. Girard, sir ?" "Yes, sir J;he French spy. He came on board just after you left, sir, in one of the boats from the flag-ship, and as it was only seven o'clock he asked leave to go ashore and get his kit. I gave him leave, sir." " The devil you did, sir ! And I, sir, am responsible to Captain Warner. Did you know he was a person of import- ance, sir ? Do you know I can be broke for this by a court- martial ?" cried the lieutenant, jumping back into his boat with angry gestures towards his junior. " Hang it ! I am very sorry, sir. He must be on board soon, sir, I think. He promised me, in less than an hour, 1 ' was Theodosius's answer. " On board again !" repeated Mr. Grump disdainfully. " Do you suppose, sir, that he'll come on board again? It is a stratagem on his part, and if I can't catch him in half an hour I shall order you under an arrest, sir." So saying, Mr. Grump pushed off again from the Dodo, and swore at Theodosius all the way across the harbor. * By the time he landed, his wine and his vexation had put him quite beside himself. He rushed into every sailors' shop in the Marina, making incoherent inquiries. " Anybody know a Frenchman ? A French spy living in Valetta ? a Frenchman ! a Frenchman ! a Monsieur Girard ! a man who landed from the Dodo about two hours ago ?" " Go this way," said one. " Try that way," said another. Poor Grump in despair dashed, at the head of his boat's crew, up the principal street of Valetta. Some one (he questioned every man he met) had told him there was a Frenchman living in Floriana. Thither he went, and having no definite ideas of the geography of that locality, happened to strike into the quiet street where Captain Annesley had taken lodgings, just as Felix Guiscard reached his door. "Ahoy there! you!" cried the lieutenant. "What is the way out of this street? Do you know any Frenchman in this neighborhood ?" " Comment, monsieur ? " said Captain Guiscard. " Come along. I am in chase of you, sir. You're my man," AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 69 cried the lieutenant. " What are you doing here ? What did you go ashore for ? Is your name Girard, sir ?" " I am le Capitaine Guiscard" said the other, who, whether he understood the last question or not, thought it better to declare himself. " Guiscard I Hang their French pronunciation. The cap- tain called it Girard.* Never mind ; it's all the same. Come along with me, sir ; you are the man I want," poured forth the lieutenant, pressed for time, overjoyed at the rencontre, and with his brain a good deal fuddled. Felix had mastered a few words of Italian during his two residences in Malta, but could not speak a syllable of Engh'sh. Nevertheless he endeavored to remonstrate. " Collar him ! Take hold of him ! Gag him ! Make him be quiet, men !" cried the lieutenant, shouting into his ear the two words most likely to be understood and to explain the business, " Captain Warner of the Dodo ; Captain War- ner!" Still Felix struggled. Windows were opening in the street ; there was no time for ceremony. One of the sailors stuffed a ball of rope-yarn into his mouth ; his arms were seized and pinioned. Four stout men lifted him off his feet, and, at a word from the lieutenant, all the party, followed by the dog, dashed down hill at full speed to the Marina. Felix was stowed in the boat with little ceremony, and the Dodo's men pulled off to join their vessel. She had weighed anchor; she was working out into the Great Harbor. Mr. Grump stood up in the stern sheets, and exhorted his men to " give way," to pull harder. "Aye, aye, sir." And the little boat skimmed over the dark water, for the night was clouded, as we said. Before them all was black ; but the bright lights of the harbor, shining like stars in an inverted sky, were gleaming in the path behind. Felix, stunned, gagged, and bewildered, lay in the bottom of the boat, and gazed at them. Hope lay behind : every mo- A similar miitke occurred, during the last war, in Mahon harbor. YO AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. ment bore him swiftly to an unknown future doubt, distress, and darkness. They have come up with the Dodo. Again Theodosius meets them at the gangway. "I have him," cried the lieutenant, springing on board. " Hand up that Frenchman." " Have who ?" cried Theodosius, hoarsely. " The spy your M. Girard. What's his name ? Guiscard. You pronounced it wrong, my boy," replied the other. " Mr. Grump, it is the wrong man, sir. The right one came on board just after you left. We shall have two of them on board, sir." " Don't speak too loud," continued he, as the lieutenant burst upon him with a volley of execration. " I thought it best to say nothing to the captain." " Hoist him up here in the boat. He '11 be safe there for the present, and throw my boat cloak over him," said Grump to the seamen who were bringing his prisoner over the side ; and, without further concern at present for his fate, he went down to report himself to Captain Warner. The captain was in good humor, drinking wine and talking French with M. Girard. The lieutenant escaped his reprimand, and had so much to do for some hours, in attention to his duties, that it was not till all hands, save the watch, had turned in for the night, that he had time to feel troubled as to the consequences of his adventure. As he paced the quarter-deck, he observed something to lee- ward of the vessel. He opened his night-glass, and found they were running close down upon a boat of that kind called, in the Mediterra- nean, a speronara. It is a sort of shallop without deck, from twenty- four to thirty feet in length, manned by a crew of seven Maltese sailors the captain, or patron, and six rowers. He hailed it ; the Padrone answered him, and, in a few minutes, she was dragging alongside the Dodo. She proved to be the Santa Maria degli Angeli, engaged in carrying cattle from to Malta. She had about fifteen head on board, lashed 1 thwarts or benches. I lieutenant, hanging over his vessel's side, soon made an AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 71 agreement, by signs, with the Padrone, who understood he was to receive a passenger, and land him within a few hours at Malta. Mr. Grump trusted that, even if the story of the kidnapping got abroad in Valetta, he would be able to represent it so hu- morously in an after-dinner conversation with the captain, when the consequences were all remedied and the affair had aged, that he would get off himself without anything worse than a cau- tionary reprimand. And, after all, a few hours' fright to a Frenchman and a prisoner could have little importance to the government authorities. He called to an old sea dog who was near him, and together they dragged Captain Guiscard out of the boat, his hands still tied and his mouth stuffed with rope-yarn. The speronard's crew received him at the gangway. The lieutenant, with his own hands, cast off the Santa Maria, making signs to the Padrone to unbind his prisoner, as soon as he was beyond hearing of the Dodo. The Padrone jingled together some sil- ver given him for the service, and stood up in his boat making signs of intelligence and bows. The lieutenant watched the little craft as she worked her way into the thick darkness, and congratulated himself on his good luck and dexterity. The affair might be spoken of, very likely, in the forecastle, but would never from that quarter make its way to Captain Warner. CHAPTER VHI. Helas ! II m'a done f.ii sans me laisser de trace, Mais pour le retenir fai fait ce que j'ai pu, Ce temps ou le bonheur brille et soudain s'efface Comme un sourire interrompu. VICTOR HUGO "NEWNESS of life!" In their general, their highest accepta- tion, these words have a scriptural and theological meaning, but the historian of the heart may borrow the expression, for 72 AMABEL; A FAMILY HIS TORY. it designates exactly that change which passes over the whole being on the first certainty of loving and being loved. A sister will sometimes hardly recognise the companion of her nursery, her studies, her girlhood's hopes and joys, when this great change has taken place, and the happy one has found even her own past life look strange to her. . But to Amabel the loving and the lonely whose life had latterly been aimless (disqontent had not grown upon her sim- ply because she understood no happier lot,) to be so loved, so blessed, with such a perspective view of future happiness opened suddenly before her, embodying at once the realization of every dream of her childhood, however wild ; of every yearning of her heart in later years, however vague ; .the newness of life that broke upon her was overwhelming in its strangeness and immensity. It was many hours deep into the night before she sought her pillow ; she spent them walking backwards and forwards in her chamber, with her hands clasped and her eyes beaming, her smile satisfied and proud. She could not defi- nitely fix her thoughts on any speculations for the future, or reminiscences of happiness, but mechanically, almost without perception of their meaning, out of the very fulness of her heart, her lips kept on repeating words that he had said to her, so strange so new so beautiful. The language of love is the only language understood when heard for the first time ; and she had heard it and had spoken it a few hours before, as the shadows of the night crept over them, and they sat together on the green hill-side alone. And then again she would fall down on her knees beside her bed, or near the window, and pour forth the fulness of her heart, thanking God, who had given her such happiness ; for, ignorant as she was of forms, and creeds, and doctrines (barriers wisely set around our faith to prevent the encroachments of mysticism into religion), it was the voice of nature that pro- claimed that love is God's best gift ; that its tendency, till the soils of earth pollute it, is to lead upward to the Giver ; that happiness is the state in which man may best serve his Creator here, as he served him in Eden, and shall hereafter serve Him in the courts of heaven. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 73 Yet who knows, if she had married as she desired and ex- pected, how long this loving happiness would have endured ? Though her beloved and herself, for a few months or a few years, might have merged their individualities together, so as, indeed, to be but of one heart and of one mind that period in married life must have come to them, as it comes to all, when differences of character, of views and tastes, must have jarred upon their happiness ; when each would have discovered the other was not perfect, when allowances on each side would have been 'called for, when, for the first time, must have been enter- tained by each a vague feeling of the possibility of future dis- union and unhappiness. Was their love of such a nature as to stand firm and come purified, triumphant, and enlarged out of these trials ? "Was it so founded as to be likely to gather prin- ciple in hours of happiness wherewith it might withstand the threatening aspect of a darker day 1 In misty rain broke that desired to-morrow. Dr. Glascock did not go into Valetta. He sat with gloomy face and watched the clouds hanging low over his dwelling. Amabel wandered about the house from window to window, straining her sight to catch a glimpse of the high road through the thick mist that surrounded them, Watching afar, if yet her lover's steed Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew ; endeavoring, through all her anxiety and the sickening nervous feeling which follows upon long and eager often deluded expec- tation, to excuse the tardiness of him who disappointed her. " Doctor," she said at length, " did he say he would be early ? There may be such a little time before he leaves us, doctor !" " My child," said the doctor, rising and coming up to the window where she stood, " have you taken the idea that the mere talk of idle hours is the true expression of love ? To try the love a man professes for you, Bella, you had better touch his pocket. The pocket tests mankind." Bella looked inquiringly. " I have put him to this proof. I made a proposition to him last evening to settle upon you his portion of those estates your father held in Brittany." 74 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. Anger glowed over Amabel's bright face ; the pent up vexa- tion and excitement of expectation of the morning burst forth against the doctor. The vehemence of its expression positively alarmed him. She almost wept away her senses at the thought that Felix should have been insulted for her sake. She was sure that he could not forgive her ; that was the reason he had not come. Evening fell, and she was half distracted. There was no post across the island, and no communication with the world without had taken place that day. Miserable Amabel ! Felix she felt was angry the doctor angry and her poor aunt, more exacting than usual, on account of the confinement to the house occa- sioned by the weather, was made fretful and capricious by an inattention to her pleasures, the cause of which she could not understand. The heavy rain still fell, and Bella early sobbed herself to sleep, exhausted by emotion. Yet the innermost conviction of her little aching heart was secretly that Felix would be with her by the dawn, and the last employment of her thoughts was to imagine for him excuses ; to frame some probable cause for his delay, which should make up to her tenfold for this day's disappointment by the additional prospect of happiness in store for her upon the morrow. She was awakened by the clatter of horse's hoofs at the early dawn of morning. Starting up, she flew to her little window, and saw not the brown horse that carried Felix coming up to the garden gate but the broad, black flanks and flapping tail of Dr. Glascock's pony, urged down the road at a quick pace. Her screams brought in Giacinta. " Has anything happened ? Has any messenger been here ?" " No, signorina. E partita di buon ora il Signor Dottore." Day of agony made still more dreadful than the dreadful yesterday, by glad, bright, mocking sunshine ! About three o'clock came back the doctor. He dismounted at the gate, came into the house slowly, hung up his hat and cloak on their accustomed pegs, walked into the drawing-room had not dared to go and meet him), and took both her AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 75 hands in his. She saw he had ill news, and her speech failed her. " He was a traitor worthless unworthy, my poor child. He is better gone. Don't mourn for him," said the doctor. She fell senseless on the floor senseless at his feet. She read the certainty of her fate in his compassion. It was hours before she could make inquiries, or would suffer herself to be told that, together with his vows to her, his promises to the doctor, he had broken his parole, and had left Malta, no one knew how, no one knew whither. His horse had been put up in a stable in Valetta ; no accident, therefore, had befallen him, and he had been seen, by one who knew him, on foot, in a retired part of Floriana. Some persons remembered, about ten o'clock, a bustle in the street, but the night was dark, and to those who looked out of their windows, all was undistinguishable. The doctor had been into his chamber at Citta Vecchia. No money was there, and he was known to have received of Cap- tain Annesley, the day before, a sum not inconsiderable. Dr. Glascock was astonished at the firmness with which Bella insisted on her right to investigate, personally and thoroughly, all that made against her lover. >he went with him next day to Citta Vecchia and to Valetta ; visited his rooms, questioned the neighbors, made inquiries on the Marina. She there learned from the boatmen the agitation of Mr. Grump upon that evening, and his frantic inquiries after a Frenchman. A glimmering vision of the truth broke in upon her. " We shall have certainty when Captain Warner comes into port," she said once to the doctor. But she seldom spoke to others of her hope; it was too fragile for the rough touch with which they handled it ; too dear to be profaned. The excitement that had sustained her in the first days of her loss, vanished speedily away. The affair was a nine days' wonder in Valetta ; but, though the admiral and governor were very angry, and the French prisoners upon parole were more strictly watched than they had been before, all interest upon the subject was exhausted by the time that Captain An- nesley, of the Sea Gull, sailed to join the Gibraltar squadron. 76 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. Those around Amabel lapsed into their usual state of feeling, and expected her to do the same. But in vain ; the days of her sweet loving trustfulness, the days of her first youth were over. Happen what might around her she could never be the same again. Sometimes a burst of passionate, fierce grief, like an ocean-storm in suddenness and fury, \vould take the doctor by surprise, and make him fear, if not for her reason, for her future peace. He was wrong ; it is despair, taking the common form of indifference of heart, that is so dangerous, not the half-civilized wild cry of a strong nature. And her eyes would then grow bright with latent fever, her movements would be hurried and impulsive, her temper capricious, her attention difficult, almost impossible to engage. To this mood would succeed another its contre-coup, its reaction when she would bitterly bewail her starts of passion, and think of herself as one deserving the loss of every blessing for the ingratitude with which this sorrow was received. Then she would hide her troubles in her heart, and try to go forth as she had done in her days of hope and gladness, to in- terest herself in others' griefs, and so forget her own ; but the attempt was but a cold effort of duty. The life had fled from her exertions ; we can do no good thing to others when we seek them for our own sake, and the remedy must fail even for our- selves. Another phase in her distress fell temporarily upon her. She recovered herself suddenly. Her step regained its former elas- ticity ; her lip a proud and fierce, though not a happy smile. Her eyes still burned with an unusual brightness, but a droop- ing of their lids sometimes relieved the glare. She had laid aside her sorrows for a time, and had resigned herself to the conviction that Felix must be trite. That her trust in him was too strong to be shaken by the power of circumstances. That he must come back, what matter with what interval of years 2 to explain all that had happened, and to claim her love. In the midst of this mood of feverish hope, the Dodo came back into the harbor of Valetta. It was October. Dr. Glas- cock had moved his household to the city to meet Mr. Sibbes, AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 77 ' who was expected home from Smyrna, and old Giacinta brought Amabel word the moment the desired vessel was made out from Fort Riascoli. Amabel heard her with an unchanging smile without interrupting her occupation. The doctor had gone that morning across the island. All day she betrayed no sign of emotion or impatience. At noon Captain Warner was announced. She received him, and entered upon the usual topics of the day. He said no- thing of Felix. Her heart began to fail her, and she had less courage than ever to venture the inquiry ; but the thought came that they both thus cruelly might be preparing her a surprise. At that moment Dr. Glascock entered. " Captain," he said, " a word with you," and drew him apart to a window. "I am anxious to inquire whether you took a Frenchman, Captain Guiscard, to the coast of Sicily ?" " Monsieur Girard ? I did, sir ; a mighty pleasant fellow." " Was he your only French passenger ?" " Yes, sir," said the captain, with surprise. He had not yet heard of the mysterious disappearance of his rival. " Favor me by describing Monsieur Girard. " " A short man, middle-aged, thick-necked, with a wound over his left eye." The doctor asked no more. The captain turned to take his leave. Amabel did not rise, or take the least notice of his de- parture. She had comprehended the conversation ; and, when the doctor spoke to her, she looked up in his face smiling, and sat playing with the trimmings that were sewn upon her robe. Oh ! breaking heart that will not break, Oriana. Oh ! pale, pale face, so sweet and ineek, Oriana. Thou smilest, but thou dost not speak, And then the tears run down my cheek, What wantest thou ? Whom dost thou seek, Oriana? From that time not a word escaped her on the subject of her sorrow. Perhaps sometimes a half thought of reproach to Felix may have crossed her mind ; but, so far from giving utterance 78 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. to it, the dread lest her changed looks should seem to others to reproach him, was her strongest motive for exertion. Oh ! the subtlaties of true affection ! How into the least of things creeps woman's love ! The sun of her existence was put out. She was groping her way in life through darkness. The roses in the crown of her youth had been broken, and were faded. The world danced oa around the shrine of hope, but she had drawn back into soli- tude and silence, a spectator of the throng. Her tears fell in the long nights, and they seemed to fall in vain ; for, as yet, they watered not the ground for the reception of a better, more enduring kind of household love and trustful happiness. 'They gushed from rock, they were drunk in by the sands of a desert ; for, like a dusty whirlwind of the wilderness, this sorrow had passed over her, burying the bright oasis of her life in. desolation. No pleasures, no remembrances, no hopes, no fears, and, worst of all, no loving interest in others, no kind affections seemed to have escaped the ruin. Her pas- sion had drunk up the streams of lovingness that had fertilized her life and watered her own soul. That choked or flowing undergound, she had none left for others. If she wept for others' griefs, it was because they called to mind her own. And the Santa Maria degli Angeli lay at anchor in the harbor or made her winter voyages to Sicily ; and Mr. Grump kept his own counsel during the few days the Dodo stayed in port, reflecting that nothing called on him to declare his blun- der, and that, as the prisoner had not been returned to Malta, the consequences might be more serious than he had at first anticipated. As the spring came, Mrs. Sibbes's health grew worse. Amabel watched over her, and waited on her with a sort of mechanical attention. She had an affection for her aunt, but it was not of a nature to attract many of her thoughts from the absorbing subject that occupied her mind. Yet, when the sufferer was dead, and she knelt beside the coffin, her grief was made more bitter by the reproaches of that affection. It whispered to her night and day that, carefully and laboriously as her daily duties to the lost had been performed, her heart had not been in them. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. . 79 No sooner was the funeral over than Mr. Sibbes resolved to part with Amabel. Business called him to the East, and he could not leave her with propriety, under the care of the doctor. He would have preferred that she should marry in Malta ; but, as she showed no disposition to do this, he determined to return her to her mother's care. Lady Karnac was living at a country town upon the eastern coast of England with her hus- band, Captain Talbot, and her children by this marriage. Scarcely anything was known of them by the family in Malta, but Mr. Sibbes wrote word he should be with them speedily, and sailed for England with his niece early in the spring. I am inclined to think that Dr. Glascock tried every means in his power to induce her to remain in Malta ; that, in short, he pressingly offered himself to her, and that this offer and its rejection caused a coolness between them. The doctor, how- ever, says nothing on either of these points in his narrative. With the restlessness of youthful sorrow (for the young hope often to cheat grief, as the sick cheat pain, by a change of posi- tion) Amabel was glad to go to England. New scenes, new duties, new hopes, and new relationships, would put the apathy- of her heart, she thought, to trial. She would learn thereby whether her life was to be henceforth anything more than one long, vain regret for the loss of earthly happiness, and whether there were other things worth living for or no. END OF PART FIRST. DRAWN CHIEFLY FROM AMABEL'S OWN LETTERS ADDRESSED TO CAPTAIN WARNER. Yet as happiness in domestic life must depend mainly on the personal influences of those around us, our power of cultivating that happiness must depend Tery consi- derably on our understanding the nature of such influences. With partial exception it may be said that all great personal influences are mutual, and are derived from the sympathetic power which we have for the expressed feelings of another. SPECTATOR) 1847. Article on the Duchesse de Praslin. PART II. CHAPTER I. Sweet flower of Hope ! free Nature's genial child, That did'st so fair disclose thine early bloom, Filling the wide air with its rich perfume, For thee in vain all heavenly aspects smiled, From the hard world brief respite could they win ; The frost nipped sharp without, the canker preyed within. COLERIDGE. " I HAVE spoken to you freely of what I felt on leaving Malta," says Amabel herself, in a letter that she wrote in after years to Captain Warner, " and I would do so also of my first impressions of England, not because they have any direct bearing on the matter immediately before us, or that in them- selves they are likely to afford you interest, but because fully to appreciate my position in the new home to which my duty called me, you must bear in mind my previous way of life, and the circumstances in which I was placed, and look upon the aspect of things around me, less as they really were, than from the point of view in which it was natural I should regard them." The voyage was tedious, and without events, at least nothing that she saw at sea made any powerful impression, but her sensibilities were blunted by the indulgence of her sorrow, and nothing had power to rouse her, save to a sharper poignancy of regret. A long monotonous sea voyage was the very thing for sobering an active grief into a settled one ; no one on board claimed any of her sympathy, she asked for none of theirs, still, as the only lady in the vessel, she was petted and courted, as had always been the case, but nothing whispered that it 84 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. was the last time in her life she should be spoiled to give it value, and these advantages in her position made at that time little impression. They stood along the English coast for two days after enter- ing the Channel ; on the third, being close in shore, a fishing boat came oft' to them. They were opposite to the little town of Worthing, and Mr. Sibbes resolved to land. The ship lay to ; they were shifted with their luggage into the fish- ing boat, and the ship stood on her course towards the Downs. Worthing was an insignificant collection of fishermen's huts at that period ; one long thin line of better houses only, loom- ing out of the morning haze. Half a mile from shore the boat of the customs came off to meet them, and with wetting, confusion, swearing, and not without, on the part of the fishing craft, what Mr. Sibbes damned as " English extortion," they were transferred into her. Bella was carried ashore through the surf on the stout back of an amphibious animal in jack- boots, whether man or woman she never could determine. Another plucked the earings from her ears, a third soused her carpet-bag in the water, and when they found themselves on Eng- lish ground under an escort of the revenue officials, Mr. Sibbes dragging her by the hand, pushing, swearing, and pursued for sixpences, she was roused to sensations that were extremely disagreeable. " Cramped, cabined, and confined " in an inn parlor, the curtains of which had not been taken down for half a century, harboring dust and fusty smells, a smouldering fire smoking on the hearth for though the month was June, the town was dampened by a dreary drizzle the luggage gone in a taxed cart to be examined at the Custom House at Brighton for contrary to the information of the fishermen, there were only officials and not offices at Worthing and with a scanty English breakfast (thin chips of dry crisp toast, black tea, and an egg apiece before them), things looked to her (though English people might have called them snug) neither liberal, inviting, nor comfortable. The luggage w;\s kept a whole day at Brighthelmstune. Mr. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 85 Sibbes, an easy man abroad, could not resist the influences of the climate, and a fit of English fussiness took hold upon him. At day-break Amabel was called. The morning happened to be fine, the country was green and beautiful. They put her into an old-fashioned, rattling, awkward, fusty, rickety post- chaise, which Mr. Sibbes agreed to share in a proportion of two thirds with a gentleman of Worthing, so Bella rode bod- kin all that day to London, along a road diversified by English country seats and English commons. She remarked the deference paid to their gentry by all the inn people with whom she came in contact during that day's journey, nor had she ever occasion to alter the opinion then formed, that amongst the English peasantry and the class immediately above them, less real independence of opinion than amongst all other civilized people is to be found. Every man, while following the occupations of his class, tries to adopt the manners and opinions of the class above him. For which reason it is easy on occasion to lead the entire English nation by the nose. On the whole, the great impression made upon her mind was that smallness indicated restraint, and that mutual dependence made classes look selfishly upon each other, instead of being the guarantee of feelings more kindly. London was hot and hateful. They spent a night there, and the next day journeyed by coach into the eastern counties. Mr. Sibbes rode outside, Amabel within. The morning had been fair the afternoon proved rainy. The perfect travelling ar- rangements, the smoothness of the roads, the greenness of the country, struck her much ; but she probably made few general reflections, unless it may have been on the condition of society in England as typified by a fat woman, her companion, whose talk was all of lords, which made her fellow-traveller, who carried in her bag a volume of Evelina, imagine her some member of the aristocracy of England, so much were the private affairs and family histories of persons of that class at her tongue's end. The other two places were filled and emptied at most of the chief towns, sometimes by country gentlemen with white-top boots and strangely florid facos, once by a man disposed to be 86 AMABEL; A FAMILY BISTORT. disagreeably familiar, and several times damp children were thrust in, whose friends were slowly soaking in the rain out- side. It was dark without, weary within ; the lamps were lighted and the streets were sloppy when they drove into the county town, half a seaport, yet not correctly so, for its boats are launched upon fresh water, where, for some years, the mother of Amabel had been living, together with her second family. The communication between mother and child had been so much interrupted, -that Amabel was entirely ignorant of the present circumstances of the family ; judging, however, from all that she had heard of her mother at the time of her second marriage, she fancied they must be people of consideration, and live in style. At the inn, where the coach stopped, her uncle Sibbes's good-natured face appeared at the coach door. She had been more drawn towards him during that day's journey than in all her life before. " Get out, my dear," he said, " and come into the coffee- room. I have made an arrangement with the coachman to take off his leaders and take us on. They live in St. Clement's, half a mile through the town. I shall order my supper ; for they won't want me with them at your first meeting. I am no favorite of your mother's, nor is she of mine." These were the first words she had ever heard her uncle say about her parents. She looked round the cheerful coffee-room, and almost wished to stay and share the steak she heard him order. " My dear," he said, coming back to the box, where she stood patiently. " My dear," fumbling in his pocket-book, " if you don't find yourself comfortable amongst your friends, my advice to you is marry. You may let the world know that your marriage portion from me will be 10,000 ; that will procure you, any day, plenty of suitors. Take this, my dear," he added, pressing a 20 bank-note into her hand. " You may want it where you are going." She threw herself upon his neck ; she wept bitterly. She regretted she must leave him ; she felt afraid of all that was to come. He was flustered by the action, and disengaged* her AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 7 arms. At that moment the coachman called. She was put into the coach again, and they rattled with weary horses over the rough pavement of the back streets of the town. They stopped at a green door ; her uncle Sibbes rang, and, after an interval, a maid in pattens, holding up her clothes, came down the sloppy flags and admitted them through the gate into the garden. " Go in, child," said her uncle. " The coachman and I will bring your things in after you." Springing past the maid, Amabel ran into the house through the wet garden, dashed into the first room that was at hand, and came upon the family. " Gracious me !" exclaimed her mother. " Who are you ? I thought it was Captain Talbot." Bella made her understand who she was ; she clasped her in her arms, and, for the first time in her remembrance, her heart beat against the heart of her mother. The letter of Amabel dwells upon the first days of her arrival in England, as though it gave her pleasure to linger over her last recollections of her uncle Sibbes, but she grows less diffuse at this point of her narrative. It is easy to see that something pained her, and we gather that the first cause of her distress was the cavalier reception bestowed on Mr. Sibbes. The trader, however, with a pride of his own, had no inten- tion of staying long to be made uncomfortable by Lady Karnac's airs and insolence- He saw his niece's things safely deposited ; wrung her hand ; she threw her arms around his neck, and, in another moment, he was gone. Years and years passed before they met again ; and, ere they did so, if we measure age by our experience in sorrow, she was far the older of the two. Lady Karnac was still a handsome woman, with beautiful hair, a slight lisp, constant complaints of ill health, and an expression of peevishness. She had been a great belle in her day, loved flirting and gay parties, saw no medium between flauntiness in dress and dowdiness, and could not for- give her husband, whose taste for speculation had dissipated their fortune, and had brought her down from the high estate where she was fitted to shine triumphantly, to live in a back 88 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. street of a small commercial town, where he held a patent in a manufactory. They had four children. Olivia, the eldest, a large girl of fourteen, with a heavy looking face, of which the expression of sullen, settled ill-temper never varied. Almost idiotic as she looked, she had the influence of a strong will over her mother, a sagacity which always showed her an advantage, and a per- severance which enabled her to keep her ends in view, and to accomplish them. Annie, the second daughter, was a sickly child, cowed by her sister, made fretful by constant ailments, and obstinate and shy by the excess of her timidity. Edward was the pickle of the family ; too audacious to be kept under by Olivia, too good at heart for her, as yet, to spoil. Little Joseph was the baby. When people meet who ought to be intimate, yet have not seen each other for half their lives, they have nothing to say. There is no common point of interest from which to start a conversation, unless by bringing forward things set generally out of sight as too precious for common handling. Olivia rang the bell with authority, and ordered tea. It was a long time coming, though she left the room to worry the slowness of their servant of all-work, and, when it did make its appearance, the smoked and tepid water, the stale half loaf of knobby bread, the children's clamor and untidy way of eating, Olivia's and the mother's slaps and scoldings, took the elder sister's appetite away. Alas ! in her secret thoughts, she could not help contrasting that comfortless, noisy, miserable, tea-table, with the peace and plenty of her Maltese house. By ten o'clock, after the servant had taken off the children, Captain Talbot's knock was heard at the hall door. He was a gentlemanly man, of middle height, with a slightly bald, and high, retreating forehead. He received Amabel with much kindness and cordiality, entering into conversation, and asking her questions upon Malta, the relations she had lived with, and her voyage, with the ease and tact of a man of the world. Amabel felt more at her ease than she had yet done in her new home. Why should we linger over the life, to which this was the AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 89 prophetic introduction ? It is sad to trace the shadows creep- ing over a young and happy spirit, the growth of selfish feel- ings and their attendant evil thoughts, in the mind of one un- used by nature or experience to be neglected or unloved. She was the one too many everywhere. There was no place for her in their hearts ; there seemed no duties for her in their home. So soon as she attempted to win her way into the affections of the children, or to be useful to her mother, or to protect little Annie, to whc^ she " took " in preference to them all, Olivia's watchful jealousy strewed briers in her path, and some outbreak of bad feeling upon her part awakened echoes in her sister's mind. She never was alone ; for she shared the sleeping-room of Olivia, and could not even lay her head upon her pillow and secretly weep bitter tears for her lost happiness ; Olivia's ear was swift to hear, and those cutting taunts which it is be- neath us to revenge, but which the greatest and most patient are not too great nor too patient to feel, were the price she paid for even this melancholy species of relief. Or worse, her mother would be informed of these repinings, and would take advan- tage of their next disagreement to inform her that, if she was too fastidious to be satisfied with her relations, she had better seek another home, or, better still, have stayed in Malta. The twenty-pound note hep uncle Sibbes had given her formed her greatest consolation. As long as it lasted she was able, by little presents, to gain favor even with Olivia, to pro- cure books for herself and various little comforts, and lighten, in many ways, the lot of their poor servant girl. But twenty pounds is far from inexhaustible, and, by Christmas, it was spent, leaving her without pocket money, and dependent on her mother's purse even for her clothes. Then it was she learned the value of money, and felt as if an ample fortune would almost of itself suffice to make her happy. Her ideas of happiness were now much changed, from what they were in better times. To " flee away and be at rest" from the wear and tear of evil feelings, excited or endured ; to bo free again to do, or think, or weep, or speak, and not under thraldom to Olivia ; to have power to help the suffering ; to be placed in a position where her enjoyment of even the lesser 90 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. things of life might be unmarred by a conflict of feelings, now seemed to her a degree of happiness she never should enjoy. And after every annoyance, every quarrel, or humiliation, her tears flowed faster from the thought, that had Felix been true to her, these things would not have been. Yes, she distrusted Felix ; that sorrow was the worst of all. She was growing, as Dr. Glascock had once prophesied, " sel- fish, jealous, and covetous, after her kind." She had been suddenly plunged into the responsibilities of new relationships. She was not gently or lovingly initiated into them. She was not called to fulfil active duties, but to take up passively the heavy burden of life. Her service was onerous, her position distasteful to her. There was no well-spring of lovingness left within, her heart, her affection for Felix G-uiscard had exhausted it. Earth no longer seemed to her like the great moving ocean, which must be governed by some law harmonious and good, though yet unknown to her ; but cold, hard, dry, a round of petty grovelling cares, endurances, and duties, to which she had no clue. She, the spoiled child of Dr. Glascock, whose very caprices were looked on as endearing, whose wilfulness was tolerated, whose love made many happy, had now no kind word said of her, save by one who had no influence in the contracted circle to which her existence was confined. It was her step-father, Captain Talbot, who remarked sometimes to his wife, when she was peevish with her eldest child : " Poor thing, there seems no harm in her, she looks to me very quiet and inoffensive ; but I agree with you, I wish she were well married with all my heart, my dear." AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 91 CHAPTER II. She will weep her woman's tears, She will pray her woman's prayers, But her heart is young in pain, And her hopes will spring again By the suntime of her years. E. BARRETT BHOWNINO. THE society of the country-town in which Amabel found her- self, was no less distasteful to her than the interior of her home. But had she been older in years, or in experience, and personally independent of that society and its influences, it might have afforded her amusement to watch the oddness of the elements of which it was composed. A country-town, even twenty years ago, before the age of railroads, was a rich museum of human curiosities. The young student-artist of character could have found no better model- room. But Bella only reflected that these were the people amongst whom her life was to be passed ; she had nothing in common with them, not an idea, an interest, or aim. It was a forced alliance upon her part ; had they appeared in any way dependent upon her exertions for their self-esteem or their amusement, her better feelings would have prompted her to meet the obligation ; as it was, she thought it not worth while to find pleasure or improvement in her intercourse with them. There was old Miss Maddox, driven sometimes into their society, when there were no card parties in more fashionable quarters, by mere stress of ennui; and big Mrs. Bathurst, whose husband died of care and curry, a colonel in the East Indies, who exacted a deference and attention on the ground of her father having been an honorable, which it was positive humiliation to their society to pay. She had a niece who lived with her, who wore long ropy ringlets, was kept in abject subjection by her aunt, and consoled herself for her home mise- ries by looking out for admiration amongst the officers in gar- 92 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. rison. No regimental gossip was unknown to this young lady, who called all the gentlemen by their surnames, and spoke fa- miliarly of " the men," meaning the private soldiers. Nor did Bella see anything to interest her in the clergyman's wife, a country-bred young woman, with lots of children and of parish business always accumulating on hand. The Talbots had withdrawn in a great measure from society ; for in England one must regulate the circle in which one moves, by one's pecuniary ability to cope with those composing it, and these persons, who for purposes of their own found their way into St. Clement's, were nearly all with whom they visited, save that Captain Talbot had a professional acquaintance with Ad- miral Sir Jeremiah Thompson, a triton amongst the minnows of their little society, who mvited them to a state dinner once a year, to feed them off of plate, and would have considered himself ineffably insulted by being asked to eat off of stone- ware in return. Bella only perceived that the idee fixe of all the persons that she met was a holy hatred of the French, and that a man was held an infidel except he acknowledged a be- lief in every malicious calumny then in circulation against the " Corsican monster." Conversation amongst them never grew O O exciting, save when they compared their interpretations of the prophecies against him as the Beast of the Revelation, or Da- niel's little horn. Dr. Glascock had early prejudiced her mind against the English, and she could not see the intrinsic excel- lences of character, national and individual, that lay beneath the surface both of society and manners. The exterior dis- gusted her, and, poor thing, she was too unhappy to look deeper. No mere stranger and sojourner can understand Eng- land or like its people. He must live amongst them, associate himself with their interests, work with them, feel with them, hope with them, in short, f/row English, before he will have the least idea of their real excellences. The things a foreigner most generally admires in a six weeks' stay in London in the season, are precisely the " evidence of things unseen," of which the true Englishman is the least proud. As spring advanced, there began to be talk amongst the gay people of the town about the Easter Ball. Peace had been AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 93 proclaimed. London was getting ready for the visit of the allied sovereigns, money was plenty, all England was beside itself; brothers and beaux were expected home from .foreign wars, or naval stations ; and, Mrs. Beamish, who had always young persons to recommend to places, county poets with books to be got out, and loads of lotteries and raffles, exerted herself on behalf of the society for the relief of seamen's widows, to get up a subscription ball. Lady Karnac, who could ill afford it, was pressed into taking four tickets, at a guinea each the Cap- tain, herself, Amabel, and Olivia were to go. The white dress of Amabel was prepared. Weary of work and sick at heart, for the morning had been one of continued fretfulness and dissension, she offered, about four o'clock, to take the children for a walk along the London road. It was a dreary expedition. She set out, thinking with what expectations of delight she had looked forward two years be- fore to her first ball at Malta. " Then there were so many to be proud of me and love me." That thought crowned every bitterness, and in spite of all. her efforts her tears flowed silently, starting fresh thoughts of Felix and of Malta. She was very unhappy. Peace was proclaimed ; a year and a half since they last met had passed, and yet no news of him had reached her. " Stand back, children, and see the coach come over the bridge," she cried, drawing them aside, as the sound of the guard's horn reached her. Over it came, with its four shining brown horses, thin but sinewy, scenting their stable from afar, and putting new life and energy into their exertions. It passed. A gentleman on the box seat looked back. A few yards fur- ther it pulled up abruptly. The gentleman got down, tossed his half-crown to the coachman, and joined them. It was Captain Warner. How full of warmth was his first greeting ! How cordially he shook her by the hand ! How readily he praised the chil- dren ! How he answered all her hurried, eager questions about Malta ; not that he had been there lately, for he had been cruis- ing with the Gibraltar squadron ; but he could talk of old times, and of old scenes, and call back pleasant reminiscences. 94 AMABEL; A FAMILY BISTORT. By the time he left her at her own door, she had learned that his ship having been paid off, he had gained his post rank, had come down on a visit to the admiral, and would meet her at the ball. With very different feelings from those with which she had looked forward to that evening, did she now put on her plain white dress, and wistfully gaze mto her little looking-glass, marking the changes Time had made in her young features, and regretting the loss of the fresh bright complexion that had paled since she left Malta. What a new feeling of pride and of protection it gave her to find him waiting for her at the door of the cloak room ! She felt that she was not so very isolated, when she introduced him as her friend to her mother and Captain Talbot ; and when she entered the ball-room leaning on his arm, and he had got a smart young ensign to be the partner of Olivia, she felt her consequence increased by his attentions, and knew they would ameliorate her position at home. Captain Warner was, as sailors mostly are, a spirited Terpsichorian ; and this evening, being in a state of high excitement, he outdid himself in his exertions. " Make way, there, for the gallant captain," many cried, as he came down the middle, ably seconded by his now bloom- ing, smiling, animated partner. " We'll show you how to do it," he exclaimed. " Miss Kar- nac and I will show you how they do these things in style in Malta." It was the first time her residence abroad had been men- tioned in England to her honor. After the dance, he led her up the room to introduce her in form to Lady Thompson. The Captain, though destitute of worldly tact, had insured her kind reception by telling her ladyship at dinner that he was going to dance the first dance with a pretty girl- with a large fortune. She held Amabel affec- tionately by the hand, and hoped she should have the pleasure of seeing her young friend at a dinner party next week, with her father and mother. The captain was too ingenuous to keep his knowledge of his AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 95 pretty partner's money to himself, and soon the room was talk- ing of " that lovely girl and her large fortune." Partners, the elite of the garrison and of the townsmen, contended for the honor of dancing with her, but in the midst of her triumph her constant thought was, " how stupid they all are compared to Captain Warner." At the end of every dance he contrived to find himself beside her. When tea-tables were introduced into the ball-room, he waited upon her, he cloaked her care- fully in the passage when Lady Karnac insisted on going home, and she got into the carriage with a confused remembrance of pleasant things said, felt, and suggested, and with a crowd of questions on her mind that she had meant to ask him. By the time, however, she was awake, and had breakfasted, Captain Warner came to call, full of hopes that she had spent a pleasant evening, and was none the worse for her exertions, and with proposals for a morning walk, which he was certain would restore her. To be sure they were hampered with Olivia and the children, but the Captain would break off in the midst of his pleasant chat with Amabel, to run after " the young rascals," and set them to play with one another. Olivia remained gloomy and silent ; but to the rest of the party, the walk, which led them along the river's bank, was most delightful. "So different," thought Amabel, "to our daily dreary promenades up and down the rope walk," where the children were sent out to take exercise during the winter. The admiral's dinner, too, was most agreeable. Lady Kar- nac and CaptaH Talbot met quite a different set from tho people they had been invited with before. Captain Warner sat next at table to Amabel, and old Lady Thompson in the drawing-room ventured some solemn jokes with her about his admiration. He expressed a wish that she should sing when the gentle- men came in from table, and instantly the old Admiral and his lady seconded the proposal. She sang some Breton songs, and her piano was surrounded by gentlemen applauding the performance, and talking with her of things abroad. Captain 96 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. Warner said something in reference to them about " puppies," but even he was pleased that she should be an object of admi- ration. He got her away into a corner soon, however, under pretence of examining some Chinese curiosities, and talked to her about his place the Cedars. Days rapidly rolled on ; walk succeeded walk, and there were several more parties. Amabel cared not to examine the state of her own heart. She only knew she was immeasurably happier since Captain Warner's arrival ; that his attention was something she possessed all to herself, independently of Olivia; that the niece of Mrs. Bathurst was "dying in love" with him ; and she could not help regretting that the time was drawing near for his departure. CHAPTER III. " Why art thon weeping?" maiden mild, Said a Friar Grey to a lonely child ; " I weep for the swallows gone over the sea, Who used to come and be fed by me." " Then dry your tears," said the Friar Grey, " They will all come back in the month of May." " Oh ! tell me, Friar," the maiden cried, " Why my sister weeps since her lover died, Will he come back with the early spring To woo his bride with a gay gold ring ?" " Hush, hush, my child, he is gone for aye ;" "Will my sister's life have another May '" PAWSEY'S POCKET-BOO^OB 1847. WE have hurried over that part of our heroine's history when all in her that was most good and lovable was growing stag- nant, for want of a free course amongst the barriers that repressed it. But all is changing now, or on the eve of chang- ing. Captain Warner has called forth pleasurable feelings and awakened strong emotions. She cannot go back to the state of apathetic indifference from which she has been roused. His departure from Admiral Thompson's was fixed for the AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 97 day after a great fancy fair which was to be held in the Park of Sir Julius Matthieson, the member for the county. All the neigh- borhood was there ;. all the county people persons of landed property, who would have scorned any association with the townspeople, and even whilst they admitted them as buyers to the/efc, kept themselves aloof from them. This local aristocracy was, however, on good terms with Cap- tain Warner, himself the heir expectant of a large estate in the next shire. He had cordial, pleasant manners, which, in addi- tion to his property (his card of admission into that circle), enhanced his value there, and made him welcome. He held a private license as a single man, a travelled man, and (not being of that county) in some sort as a foreigner, under which he might do anything he pleased ; and shake off, on occasion, the shackles of conventional etiquette, which pinioned nature in that treadmill circle. He very soon detached Bella from Lady Thompson, and went with her amongst the booths, paying, whilst she looked at the pretty trifles, a sailor's ready compliments to the pleased but aristocratic ladies who presided at each table. He was not a person who required any great amount of conversational power on another's part to " set him going." If he was in good spirits, and he found his earliest sallies well received, a woman of any disposition or capacity would have been sure to find him pleasant and agreeable. He had a great acquaintance amongst the dowagers, most of whom had not seen him since he became a widower, and were glad to welcome back his attentions and his rattle. To many of these great 1 Aes he introduced our Amabel ; amongst the rest, he made her known to Lady Matthieson, the mistress of the mansion, who invited them to go into the house to a colla- tion. Captain Warner had one idee fixe with regard to social cus- toms that an old lady should always give place to a young one, a plain to a pretty woman. He carried his companion up to the end of the room, amongst the highest of the company, and though the seats of honor were already filled, procured her a charming place at a little side-table just fitted for two persons, 5 D8 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. in the bend of the window ; saw that she was helped the first to everything ; pledged her in the first opened bottle of cham- pagne, and, strange to say, gave no offence to any of the com- pany, for the news had run amongst the guests that she was a foreign heiress, the elected Mrs. Warner. " Under the costliest embroidered waistcoat beats a heart," says a quaint modern phi- losopher ; and people, however stiff, etiquettish, and unnatural, have always sympathy with the progress of a love affair. Cap- tain Warner, but just returned from foreign service, had slighted none of them in his selection. The pensive, subdued manners of his bride elect, together with her pretensions to birth, were in her favor. " Come," said the captain, rising from his seat before the toasts were given, and offering her his arm. She rose, and they step- ped out of the long, open window upon the mossy lawn. The kindly wishes of many of the guests went with the lovers. He took her through the shrubberies, away from the crowd and bustle of the park, across a little bridge, into a hayfield. The laborers had left their work half done ; their hay -cocks were still standing. Captain Warner selected one under the shade of a fine elm, on the slope of a hill near the Park paling, and made a fragrant couch in the sweet new hay for his com- panion. She sat down smiling, closed her eyes, and leaned back, giving herself up to the sweet and peaceful influences around her. The sun peeped through the nodding leaves upon the trembling branches, and seemed to press his warm, soft kiss upon her eyelids, whilst he called up a brilliant blush on her pale cheek, and caused her to shelter her sweet face from his glances with her hands. Captain Warner thifcw himself beside her, and, lost in thought, began tossing about handfuls of the delicious hay. Amabel had held a loving intimacy with nature in her hap- pier days. Nearly a year had passed since she had wandered far from the dull and dirty precincts of that country town. The peaceful scene around her, the quiet, the seclusion, brought back the saddening memories of the past ; and, bending her head down in the hay, she found relief in quiet weeping. A barrier of hay hid her face from Captain Warner, who, busied AMABXL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 99 with his own hesitations on the eve of an enterprise important to his happiness, did not perceive her tears. " This is the sort of day which ought to make a man happy," he began at length, drawing a little nearer. A sigh escaped her, and was echoed by the captain, as though his feelings were not quite in unison with his words. " Beautiful !" she sard, drying her eyes, and gazing upward at the summer sky through the trembling branches of the elm that threw its shadows over them. " I wish it might make me happy," rejoined Captain Warner. He put aside the screen of hay that was between them and stretched his arm out till it was almost around her. An instinct prompted Amabel to change the theme. "All this is very different," she said, " from the rocky aridity of the greater part of Malta ; but not unlike our own sweet vale at Rarnalah. That lovely valley is constantly before me, even in my dreams." " England bears away the bell, however, in home scenery," replied the Captain. " I have it much at heart, that you should grow familiar with our country life in England." "I could grow warmly attached, I do not doubt, to any scene so beautiful as this. But I have never till to-day been beyond the dirty suburbs of the town, since my arrival." " My place, ' The Cedars,' is considered very beautiful," con- tinued Captain Warner. " I wanted you to have seen it, Miss Karnac, before addressing you. You would be happy there. I would shield you from everything painful or unpleasant. I would love you I mean rather, I do love you as truly as any woman can desire to be loved. The Cedars only wants a pretty mistress. I have a sailor's heart, Miss Belle ; forgive a sailor's blunt proposal. Your college men might have carved out their periods with more eloquence, but by no one could you be more passionately beloved." Bella had started up. The Captain threw himself forward, but at the sight of her face he too sprang to his feet. Her lips were parted, expressionless, and that very absence of all expression sent a thrill of horror to his soul. Her face was pale ; her eyes, red with her previous weeping, wandered wildly 100 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. round the field, as if in search of friendly aid. Suddenly they rested on the ivied village church, which stood at the bottom of the field, parted from it only by the grave-ground. "With a cry she started forward, running swiftly towards it. In vain Captain Warner followed her, imploring her to compose herself, to go back to the house with him, for he would not distress her did not mean to say another word. She heard not, or she did not heed him. Her light steps were as quick as his, and she gained the churchyard in advance of him. The church door happened to stand open. It was Friday, cleaning day ; she flew in, and sank down, clinging to the rails of the altar. Lonely and unhappy one ! it was as if failing all human sympathy, all human friends, she had flown for refuge to her Father in Heaven. She was cruelly ignorant, as we have said before, of even the first principles of religion ; but there is something in every human heart which vice has not perverted, prompting it, in the extremity of sorrow or excitement, to turn aside and recognise its God. Captain Warner followed her, and stooping over her, attempted to unclasp the fingers she had wound convulsively around the oaken railing ; her head was leaning on the velvet- covered balustrade, and she was weeping bitterly. "Dearest my dear girl get up, I entreat you. Get up. Come away," he repeated again and again, imploringly. " No no. Go away ! Leave me ! Take pity on me !" broke from her, as she caught breath between her intervals of sobbing. " I dare not leave you here ; but I promise not to speak to you. Get up. Take my arm, my dear Miss Belle. Come 'with me," repeated Captain Warner. " No no. Leave me," continued Bella. The Captain, totally at a loss, like any other man in such a case, bethought him of a glass of water, and went to the church door to look for some neighboring cottage. By the time he returned with some water in a tea-cup, Bella was standing up before the altar, and was more composed. She had prayed as she knelt, for strength, and for decision, and with tho prayer returned her self-possession. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 101 She drank some of the water, and wetting her handkerchief with it, cooled her eyes and forehead. " Shall we go now 2" said the Captain, offering her his arm. " No," she replied, " not yet. I have much that I must say to you." " Not now ; when you are better." " Yes, now,'" she said, with energetic determination. " Cap- tain "Warner, you have been very very good to me. What must my conduct seem to you 2" He tried to soothe her. She went on. " You know that I once loved loved as not every nature can love. See ! I am not ashamed to own it. And with my hope there fled at once ray early peace of mind, my early bloom of youth, my early capabilities of happiness. Till lately I should certainly have told you, that all power to love again was for ever dead within me. Nor do I love again ! I do not love you, Captain Warner. Not as I could once have loved- Not as you yourself would wish to have me love. But some- thing lately, sinc"e you have been so much with us, has whis- pered in my heart that I might love again not passionately perhaps but fondly, gratefully one who would be willing to take me as I am not to exact too much from me ; who would cherish me, and bear with me, as a loving mother bears with a suffering child. I think I speak the truth in saying thus. I am so unhappy here." " But this is all I ask of you, dear girl," said Captain War- ner, trying to draw her nearer to his side. " I have no fear but that in a little time you will get over the past. Your sufferings at your age have been too much for you. / will cherish you. I will love you my mother too. You shall begin life with us over again, at the Old Cedars." " I cannot ! I cannot ! I believe you and I trust you ; but I cannot !" she cried, starting back with again that wandering look of pale, unmeaning horror. " If Felix were to come back, even years hence, could I love you ? I vowed to love him all my life. I cannot break my vow. It is binding till his death ! How then .... Have pity on me ! I fancy con- stantly I see him. When your image comes before me, his is 102 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. always there. Dead or living, it would give him pain were I ever to forget him. How can I marry you ?"* " He is dead. Take my word for it, Miss Belle," cried Cap- tain Warner, eagerly. " Dead ? Dead ? How dead ? When ? Where ? How long have you known it, Captain Warner ?" She stood up erect before him. Her face assumed another expression. Stern, earnest, fierce, and almost threatening ; as though despite her eagerness, she warned him against being led astray by any unworthy rivalship, in what he answered her. " If he were not dead," he said, in a lower tone, and as if subdued before her, " he must have broken his parole when he left Malta. Tell me, Miss Belle, in that case would you not think him too dishonorable to be beloved !" "Annesley is now in Paris," he suddenly exclaimed, after waiting a moment, and receiving no answer. "If I write to-day to Annesley, and Annesley discovers that his name is entered on the Naval Obituary at the French Admiralty, will you believe me then \ If he is dead, Miss Belle, will you con- sent to hear me ? If he is not reported dead, then I, on my part, will cease, if you desire it, to importune you." " Oh ! let me know the truth. I pray you I implore you, Captain Warner ! I promise nothing, for I cannot promise, but pity me ! Be generous, as I am sure you can be. Get certainty for me, at any rate. I should be happier with cer- tainty, be it what it may." He was about to speak, when suddenly the words were arrested on his lips by the swelling notes of the church organ, and sweet, warbling voices of the village children chanting their Sunday hymn. Again Amabel knelt down on the stone flooring and hid her face before the altar, and Captain Warner stood beside her, watching the colored light which streamed upon her, and seemed to form a carpet for her kneeling on the pavement ; for the sun was hastening westward, and his beams cast colored shadows through a few panes of stained glass spared in the upper divi- sion of the windows. It was a quiet village church, no longer greatly decorated, as it had been in times when faith impressed AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTOKY. 103 its semblance upon material things, or rather, feeling borrowed a material expression. Its oaken carving, its stained glass, and monumental marbles, had been replaced, since the iconoclastic days of the Long Parliament, by whitewash, deal, and window- panes with bulls' eyes ; but it was still, serene, neat, and devo- tional. On the spot where, for six hundred years, the weary and the suffering had knelt to pray and weep whilst in the body, and where each villager rested for the last time in his coffin, ere " dust to dust," he was gathered to his fathers, Captain Warner stood beside the woman that he loved, who was silently pray- ing. The place was sad and calm, and, coupled with the influ- ences of the music, brought, notwithstanding the exciting nature of their recent conversation, a sad and holy calmness into both their souls. She rose up from her knees at length, and took his arm in silence. Nature without looked calm, and spoke the lesson, that, in the revolvings of time, however short, joy often follows on the track of sadness, encamping on the very spot where traces of a recent grief may still be seen. A merry party of young boys were shouting, struggling, and tossing about the sweet, new hay on the spot where they had sat, under the old elm tree ; and Bella, as they paused, was pleased to see the place look glad again. They walked on through the shrubbe- ries, and were met upon their way by Sir Jeremiah Thompson's servant, sent in search of them. They hurried on. Admiral Thompson's carriage was at the hall door, and Lady Thompson in it was waiting for her companion. The captain put her in, and, as he closed the door, leaned forward and said, " God bless you ! I shall not see you again till I have had an answer." He pressed her hand. She bent forward for a moment as the carriage started, and a tear fell upon the hand he had laid upon its door. "What were her feelings ? She herself would have been puz- zled to define them. Deep gratitude for his preference and forbearance, a young heart's yearning for kindliness and affec- tion, a pity for him should his suit with her not prosper. Certainly all these feelings towards him argued the absence of indifference, but also, all united, they were not exactly love. 104 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. CHAPTER IV. Grave will I be And thoughtful ; for already it is gone God's blessing on my earlier years bestowed The clear contentment of a heart at ease. All will I part with to partake thy cares Let but thy love my lesser joys outlast. PHILIP VAN ABTKVCLDI. WITH her heart oppressed and her brow throbbing, and thoughts so crowding on her brain that they seemed too closely pressed together for any one to struggle itself into pre-eminence, she was set down at the garden gate of her dull home by Lady Thomp- son. The immediate consequence of the/ete was, that a number of smart carriages were seen inquiring their way, for several days afterwards, to St. Clement's ; and that the people, who, out of compliment to Captain "Warner, called on Lady Karnac and her daughter, went away with a very changed opinion of his taste, after having been admitted to a peep into the casket which contained his treasure. The congratulations and politenesses thus showered on Lady Karnac brought about an explanation with her daughter. The moment her confidence was invited, Bella told her all ; her early love, her early griefs, her present state of undecided misery. Oh ! had some kind, sweet, sympathizing voice then " medi- cined" her wounded heart, " with goodly counsel !" Grief never can be spoken without a hope of help from those to whom it is told, which is the reason why, under the first pressure of a sor- row so great as to seem to us past remedy, only sanguine natures seek relief in confidence. But, when time has at least skinned the deep wound so that it will bear a tender handling, when one would think that the great bitterness of a distress was past, and that human sympathy and counsel were no longer very necessary, the perverse heart, prompted by a hope, however vague, of encouragement or aid from friendly counsel, is glad to pour its griefs into another's ear. And should this confi AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 105 deuce be ill received should the hope be disappointed should the wound re-open the last state of that poor heart is " worse than the first," and we may almost despair of its ultimate recovery. Mute with astonishment, bewildered by this sudden claim on her maternal sympathies for sorrows past instead of joys to come, Lady Karnac heard in silence Bella's broken, eloquent, passionate narration. When it was done, and the weeping, shrinking girl looked up to her for answer, she said, coldly, " You may congratulate yourself that it has been so. I know too much of Frenchmen to have suffered my child to have sacri- ficed herself to one of them. Captain Warner, though perhaps a little old, is in every other respect a proper match for you. It is your duty not to forget, Bella, that the wild speculations you see every day before your eyes, are eating up our fortune, and that Captain Talbot may not be unwilling to give up the care of you." A flush had passed over the young girl's face as Lady Karnac alluded to her first husband. It was with difficulty she could restrain herself, and remember it was her mother who thus spoke, though of her father ; but, by the time her mother ceased to speak, her tears were dried, her lips compressed, her aspect still and calm. She thought no pang could be more bitter than to hear the expediency of her marriage with Captain Warner determined merely by reference to the convenience of the family ; but she was undeceived when she found that the whole conversation had been repeated to Olivia, and that she had become the object of her vulgar curiosity, taunts, and observation. In a few days, however, the house was closed to visitors. The youngest boy fell ill of some childish disorder, which threatened the most serious consequences to his weakly constitution. Then for the first time Amabel became of importance in the family ; and as his patient, loving nurse, cherishing the flickering spark of baby life with alternations of joyful hope and agony, she forgot for a little while the cares and anxieties that were eating into her own heart ; the fear of doing what she should repent, which had given her no rest ; the memory of Felix and of 5* 106 AMABEL; A FAMILY BISTORT. happiness struggling with her desire for peace and indepen- dence, and with the real regard and gratitude she felt for Cap- tain Warner. She had left the sick-room at mid-day, after a night of watching, and was lying on her bed ; not resting, for nature was so much exhausted that the absence of activity and of ex- citement served only to make her feel the prostration of her strength. She was suddenly aroused by a sharp knock at her door, and the voice of Olivia, outside, calling her. " Yes ! What is it ? " she cried, starting up upon the bed. " Come down into the dining-room," said Olivia ; " your lover wants you." It was a cruel phrase, for it called up thoughts of Felix ; nay, perhaps even a half hope of his return, as start- ing up, she smoothed her hair, and went down into the dining- room. Captain Warner heard her footsteps, and opened the door. She entered, closed it, put her hand in his, but did not raise her eyes. " Have you heard ?" at length she faltered. " From Paris ? Yes . . . And Annesley . . . . " "And what?" "What I told you is true. I knew it to be true. A fellow I once met in the Tuileries had told me. He is no more." She did not stir or tremble, but the nails of her left hand which was closed, were pressed into the palm, and each drew blood. Her face was still and solemn ; her eyes, wide open, were fixed upon his face with the old dreamy, distant-looking expression. " Here is his letter," said Captain Warner, taking it from the fire-place and pressing it into her hand. " And now I'll say good-bye to-day, Miss Bella. I would not urge my love at such a time. Only take care of yourself, for God's sake ; you look fatigued and ill. " Take me, Captain Warner ! Take me if you wish me for your wife. You see all you know all. / do not deceive you. But oh ! do not ask too much from me at first. Be patient, and be kind to me." He clasped her in his arms and, for a sailor's heart ia soft, AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 10Y and a sailor's feelings strong, tears stood in his eyes as he did so tears for his own great happiness, tears for his rival's fate, and for her sufferings. She did not, could not weep, but laid her burning forehead on his shoulder. When the Captain grew more rational, he placed her on a sofa. Her heavy head drooped on its pillow, and he sat down beside her, holding her feverish fingers, and talking eagerly of his long cherished love, his children, his mother, and the Cedars. At last, after asking her some question, he paused, waiting for an answer. Bella roused herself a little, drew her hands from his, and passed them slowly over her forehead. " I can hardly understand you, Captain Warner," she said. " I believe my head aches fearfully." " God bless us ! What shall I do for it 1" cried the Captain. At this moment the dining-room door opened, and Captain Talbot put his head in, looking for his lady. " Bear a hand, sir," cried Captain Warner. " Your step- daughter is ill. Call her mother and the servant to her." They did not think that there was much the matter. But when they got her up stairs, and the strange excitement of the moment ebbed away, she found herself unable to go down again, and sent an excuse to Captain Warner. It was weeks before he saw her again, for she had taken the complaint of little Joseph ; and several nights he passed during the height of the disorder, walking frantically up and down the Talbots' dingy dining-room, expecting every moment to hear tidings that she was no more. Even after she recovered and could be brought down stairs, the vapors of delirium seemed floating in her mind. Since her engagement and her illness, every one was kind to her. Olivia was kept away. There was nothing now of which she could complain. But the remembrance of all that she had lived through never ceased ; and every hour of suffering was multiplied by memory. A sort of phantom terror of her life crept over her ; she could feel its approaches, but the pleasant voice of no kind friend drove it from her side. She had not strength herself to give it battle, and, indeed, every attempt at Belf-command seemed to prolong the evil. Vanquished, the 108 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. vain effort was but an added suffering to those which haunted her half- waking visions both by day and night. So, when his bark rides safely in the haven, sheltered from the windy terrors of the deep that foams beyond, the sailor shudders as he tells of his past perils ; so one who has been nearly drowned, and at the time felt little terror, lives over and over again in safety that awful moment, when, slowly sinking, he believed no earthly arm could save, and wakes him- self in agonizing struggles with imaginary death upon his bed ; so Bella suffered, living over and over every bitter mortification, every grief from sad remembrance that had been wrestled with and endured during the last two years. It was the rebellion of the vanquished, who, in rest, had gathered strength. It was not " the mind diseased," but the moral energies. Yet in her darkest moments she could welcome Captain Warner ; his presence was a reality before which the shadows fled away. She learned to know his step, to smile when she saw his pleasant face, to listen to and to enjoy his long sea- yarns, and share his interest in the Cedars. A new life was being grafted on the past. Ha was so proud, too, when, as her careful nurse, he was allowed for the first time to drive her out in a low pony chair ; and though his drives were somewhat protracted for an invalide, he brought her back more fresh from such excursions, till, when a little faint color dawned on her pale cheek, like the dying sunset tints on the peaks of a snow mountain, he triumphed in complete succes^and was boisterously happy. Mr. Sibbes had been written to at the time of her engagement, and an order upon his agents had arrived to pay her fortune. The Captain's affairs had long been set in order, and he hur- ried the lawyers impatiently in their preparations for the wed- ding. It was agreed that they were not to live at the great mansion with old Mrs. Warner, but were to commence housekeeping at a pretty vine-clad cottage, within the Park bounds of the Cedars. Bella wished to have been married in colors. " White," she said once, " was for the virgin-hearted." But Captain Warner AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 109 set his heart on having everything correctly bridal at his wed- ding. He insisted she should have a splendid trousseau, and advanced the money for it by anticipation from her fortune. Every day he brought her handsome presents. In vain she said, " Dear Leonard, I insist that you shall spend no more on me." His marriage gift was a watch, hung on a slender chain of the most delicate Venetian workmanship. This watch he had been up to town to order. It was made as small as in those days was consistent with accuracy, and inside the case was an inscription, " Amabel Warner, from her husband, Leonard Warner," with the date of the day that was fixed on for their marriage. It was not a delicately sentimental gift, it must be owned, but the inscription gave an amazing delight to Captain Warner. When he presented it, with the case open, to Ama- bel, she blushed, hesitated, looked up one moment in his face, then pressed a kiss on the new name he had prematurely given her. All tokens of affection were precious to her heart, and she was still so young and child-like, that pretty things, for their own sake, had a value. 'Tis pleasant to be rich in handsome jewellery 'tis pleasant to have beautiful new dresses the wonder of the town ; and in the bustle of preparation, Bella found an interest which contri- buted a great deal to restore her mind and moral energies to their healthful tone. Her wedding dress was of rich lace over white satin, a pre- sent from Captain Warner. In this she went one morning to the dingy church of the parish of St. Clement's. The sun, strug- gling through its crimson curtains, marooned with dust and age, looked down upon a splendid cortege of Captain Warner's acquaintances. Firmly the bridegroom pronounced the solemn vows, and firmly they were echoed by his pallid bride ; though once, as the ring was being passed upon her finger, she started and ^withdrew her hand, with that old look of agony or terror. It Beemed to her that Felix, a pale phantom, passing between her ^bridegroom and herself, was kneelig at her side. It was but for 110 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. a moment. She looked up, saw the fatherly old clergyman, with his mumbling grey-headed old clerk responding from a big book at his side. She knelt down quietly ; the ceremony went on uninterrupted, and in a few minutes she arose, was folded in her husband's arms (he was no respecter of times, of places, or of persons), and received the congratulations of the company as Mrs. Leonard Warner. CHAPTER V. " Ma tu, fucco d'Amor, lame del cielo, Qursta virtu die nude e fredda giace Levala su vestita del tuo velo." DANTE SONKTTO 'But O, thou light of heaven, fire of Love, Revive that virtuous spirit, which now cold And naked lies, and clothe it with thy veil." LYELL'S DANTE. THE wedding feast was over ; the wedding guests assembled in the hall and at the windows, watched the adieux of the family and the bride. She had changed her lace, orange wreath, and white satin, for a fawn-colored silk pelisse, white bonnet, and veil. Her own handsome chariot, with its im- perials packed, stood with its four horses and a crowd about it waiting at the door. The post-boys of the " White Horse," both in new jackets, with wedding favors the circumference of cheese-plates, were flourishing their whips and turning round in their saddles to catch a peep sideways at the young and pretty bride. The breakfast, served by the first confectioner of the town, and provided by Captain Warner, had been (contrary to the rule of wedding feasts) a lively one. The cake was cut with all honors. The Captain, brimming over with gay spirits, had been almost boisterously mirthful, and communicated an electric spark of merriment, by every burst of gaiety, to the table. He had AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. Ill replied with great spirit to the toasts drunk on behalf of himself and lady, and now he was hurrying her farewells to her family, impatient to have her to himself, to call her wholly and for ever his own. Oh ! parting moments ! how dear grow the indifferent when we are about to say adieu. Bella clung to her mother's neck, and over and over again embraced the younger members of the family. Even her part- ing with her bridesmaid, Olivia, was affectionate, and coupled with a promise of invitation to the Cedars. And she stepped back when her foot was on the carriage step to give a last kiss to her kind stepfather. The moment the carriage started Captain Warner pulled down all the blinds, and, with his arm around his wife, pressed her to his heart. Bella's head was bowed upon his shoulder in an attitude of humiliation. She seemed to ask his pardon that no better return than a divided heart could be offered upon her part for so much care, and tenderness, and love. This little ceremony over, the Captain pulled up all the blinds again. He was very happy, he said, and if the country folk found pleasure in contemplating happiness, he, for his part, had no wish to be exclusive. The day was fine ; a clear, bright autumn day, with a sharp little breeze, making the leaves fall. The country, too, if not exactly picturesque, was eminently English, and highly culti- vated. Bella listened with pleasure to her husband's remarks, to the stories he told her of the country gentlemen whose houses they passed upon the way ; and rather enjoyed his little attempts at the inn, where they changed horses, to make his wedding day a memorable one, and to cause other people to be partakers of his joy. He paid the post-boys treble their legiti- mate gratuity. He sent into the inn parlor to have ten shillings changed into sixpences, and scattered them amongst the people round the door. "The bachelors," he said, "to drink to Hymen, and the married ones to buy some treat for the little ones at home." In pursuance with which instruction, the good health and 112 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. prosperity of Squire and Mrs. Hymen were toasted at the tavern tap that night, with three times three. The evening was closing in, as they drew near their destina- tion. During the last mile or two, the captain's rattle slack- ened ; he grew fidgety, and was continually letting down the front glasses and stretching his head out of the window. " We stayed to breakfast, my love," he said, on one of these occasions, " because I thought we should be late for dinner ; and I would not put my mother or Mrs. Buck out of their way on this first day of our arrival." "Who is Mrs. Buck?" the bride asked. " Our housekeeper, my mother's factotum, the ruler of the roast, the commanding officer of the servants' hall and of the village. You must keep on good terms with her, my little wife > and, indeed, she cannot fail to be bewitched with you. She is a good creature. I have always found her civil ; but she is difficult^ get on with ; all good servants are." A little half ( mile further, and the horses' feet were rattling on a bridge. " D it !" said the captain, starting up and thrusting half his body out of the window. " Where are the tenantry ? This is the boundary of the parish yonder is the spire and we ought to hear the bells." The carriage stopped to pay the toll ; the captain beckoned the pike-man to come up to him. " Master Glass," said he, " where are my people, and have you heard the bells ring ? I sent a man and horse on from the last post-house, to warn them to be on the look-out. Have you seen none of them cruising about here ?" " May be, captain," was the answer ; " but I haven't heerd of any." What naughty thing the captain said between his teeth as the chariot rolled on, need not be here repeated ; and, irritated as he was to find, in his own village, so little account made of his new happiness, he found ample occupation, as the carriage turned off the great London road, in pointing out to Bella the village and its beauties. Yonder was the church, too hand- some for the country almost, indeed, a small cathedral. Near AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 113 it, close nestling under its grey eaves, was the neat vicarage, around which lay the village. This was to the left, as they looked over the valley, with its winding 'glistening river, its sunny meadow-lands, and mills and bridges. On their right hand rose a hill, around the waist of which the road was cut that they were travelling. A bend in it carried them round the hill side, with their backs to the village. Yonder is the house ! Yonder their own cottage. There, to the right of the house, is one of its tall cedar trees. So little were they expected that there was no one at the entrance gate to throw it open, and one of the post-boys had to dismount. On, through the wooded avenue ; through other gates, they had to open ; for even the gardeners had left their work, and all was calm and still. The captain sprang out of the carriage, and, running on beside it as it drove slowly, opened the gates through which it had to pass. And so they reached the house, swept round its broad frontage, and drew up in the flower-gar- den at its hall door. The captain furiously rang the bell. A servant promptly answered it. The gleam of shining lamps fell pleasantly from within upon the carriage. " What can be the reason no one came to meet us ? What is the meaning of all this, sir," cried the captain, "upon my wedding day ?" " I don't know, sir. I didn't have no orders," answered the footman. The captain dared not vent his wrath where it was due. So he opened the carriage door and said, " We get out here, Belle," rather roughly. As he hurried her across the square, oak-pannelled hall, ornamented with armory and antlers, he said to her, " Be particular to please my mother." And the footman, opening the door of the drawing-room, she found herself in a pleasant, large, and brilliantly-lighted apart- ment, and in the presence of an elderly lady, who walked half way across the room to meet them as they entered. " Mother, my little wife," said the captain. " She will be to you a daughter." 114 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. " You are welcome, Mrs. Leonard, if you come here with a determination to bring a blessing with you to your husband's home. But I am sure our English life will prove too dull for you," was the answer, as she touched her daughter-in-law's pale cheek with her lips, and coldly took her hand. " It is dull," said the tactless captain. " Bella must make it gay to suit herself, and make the best of us. Is she not beau- tiful ?" he whispered to his mother. The old lady did not seem inclined to accord any further welcome to her daughter-in-law. Poor Bella turned aside in her embarrassment, and, being cold after her long journey, put up her little feet to warm them at the fire. Old Mrs. Warner was of middle height, with a light wig ar- ranged about her face in tiny curls. Her dress was black, and scrupulously stiff in all particulars ; the materials were what ladies designate as " good ;" the waist short, the skirt gored, with a few tiny gathers in front and the same to match behind ; the bosom was low, square, and filled in with a white muslin kerchief, every plait of which was regularly folded. The most remarkable thing about her, however, was a bonnet, small (fashionable people wore them in that day of an enormous size), made of rich black silk, and lined with yellowish white satin, too thick to be used for anything but upholstery in our degene- rate days. Some people surmised she slept in this ; but cer- tainly, from the time of her first rheumatic attack, six years before Bella knew her, to the last stage of her last illness, she was never seen without one. The room was comfortably arranged, and even elegant; everything having its own place, everything having its own use, and everything handsome of its kind. Bella thought, with a shudder, how great must have been the contrast to her hus- band in his late frequent visits to her own ill-ordered, tawdry, miserable home. " Mrs. Leonard finds our English climate chilly," observed Mrs. Warner, looking at her daughter-in-law as she stood over the fire. " Bless me ! Yes, she does, indeed," cried the captain, drag- ging, as he spoke, his mother's own arm-chair up to the fender, AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 115 and forcing his wife into it. " How cold her little feet are," he continued, feeling them ; " and it is but a little time since she was very ill, mother." " If Mrs. Leonard's health is so indifferent," observed Mrs. Warner, standing sternly and stiffly by the table, for she would have scorned to seat herself in any but her own particular arm- chair, " we cannot hope to keep you long in England ; she will make that an excuse to quit the dull routine of English duties for a gayer life abroad." " Leonard," whispered his young wife, stooping over him as he knelt, tenderly rubbing her chilled feet in his hands, " where are the children ?" " Bless me !" cried the Captain, starting up. " The children ! Where are Katie and little Johnny ? We have not yet seen them." "They are in their nursery. I did not know you would think about the children," replied old Mrs. Warner. " Think about them, Ma'am ! I always think of them !" said her son. " I'll bring them down myself, and introduce them." Saying which he left Amabel alone with her new parent. Had it been for a few months, instead of a few moments, the gentle manners and endearing disposition of the one, and the sterling qualities of the other, might have produced mutually a favorable impression. But this was not to be. Of that which followed, Amabel, in her own narrative, speaks briefly ; but how often I have heard the story told by others of its actors ! The Captain darted upstairs to the nursery, calling to the nurse, " Come, Mrs. Mathers, why have not you brought the children down to their mamma ?" " Mistress gave no orders," nurse began. " Well ! well ! let them come down," said the vexed master, snatching up his little Johnny in his arms. " Come, children, come and kiss your new mamma, my loves." " I won't come ! I wont ! And I won't kiss her !" shrieked the little fellow, struggling in his father's arms, and kicking furiously. . " Nonsense," said the Captain, with a shake. " Hold your 116 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. tongue, you little rascal. If it's you, Mrs. Mathers, that have been filling the child's head with such fancies " " Not me, no more than others," said the nurse, sulkily, tak- ing off the little Katie's pinafore. " You can't expect, sir, I'm to stop their ears when every one's been talking of the change for them." " Silence, at once," cried Captain Warner. At this moment, Johnny, kicking, struggled himself on to the floor. A particularly sharp kick, as he descended, stung the Captain's temper beyond control. Without a moment's thought, he gave a cuff or two (not hard) to the little boy, who, greatly terrified, but little hurt, set up a frightful howling. It reached below stairs, to the drawing-room ; it echoed in old Mrs. Warner's ears, who, with all speed, hastened to the scene of action. Bella, too, hearing her husband's voice pitched in an angry key, hesitated not to follow her. " This is the first beginning of your new wife, then ! These are her first doings ! This is the treatment she is to bring on your poor children !" she heard the old lady say. " This is French influence amongst us ! This is the woman you have brought home to replace the mother of your children, Leonard Warner !" " Madam !" cried the Captain, stopped in a flood of the elo- quence of passion that he was pouring forth upon the nurse and children, " I desire my wife may be received here as she deserves. My late wife was an admirable woman far be it from me to speak in any but the highest terms of her conduct and her virtues ; but she was not to be compared in any way with the present Mrs. Warner !" " Go on ! Go on !" cried the old lady. " All our old English rules of reverencing the dead and honoring our parents may be forgotten, now French influence is amongst us. But I won- der you are not ashamed to speak such language in the ears of your poor innocent children, of their dead mother !" "Leonard! Leonard!" cried poor Amabel, pulling him by the sleeve ; her face was as pale as ashes. The Captain turned to her, still looking red and angry. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 117 Bella caught up the screaming boy, and presented him to his father, to kiss, iii token of reconciliation ; but the little savage, whose hands were free, tore at her face, and brought blood, rending at the same time her rich lace veil to atoms. " Do that again, if you dare, you little rascal," cried the angry father, turning round upon him. Old Mrs. Warner snatched the child ; Bella threw herself between them, and weeping, praying, expostulating, dragged her husband from the chamber. Once beyond the noise of the affray, he himself was glad to go. They got once more into their waiting chariot. The post- boys, who had lighted their lamps, rattled across the park to the cottage their new home. And the household of new servants, assembled in the hall to greet their coming, were astonished when the carriage door was opened, to see a shamed and sulky bridegroom, supporting rather than assisting a pale and tearful bride. CHAPTER VI. Life is before ye from the fated road Ye cannot turn : then take ye up your load ; Not yours to tread or leave the unknown way, Ye must go o'er it ; meet ye what ye may. Fail not for sorrow falter not for sin, But onward, upward, till the goal ye win. God guard ye, and God guide you in your way, Young pilgrim warriors who set forth to-day. MRS. F. KEMBLB THE first thing after breakfast the next morning, the Captain went over to the Cedars, to make his peace with his mother. His. wife had been agonized with the fear that the scene of the preceding evening would have led to a complete estrangement between the son and parent ; but she was mistaken. She did not understand either her husband's character or old Mrs. 118 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. Warner's. Neither did she know how blood allies itself with blood, against the stranger. The excitement of his burst of passion over, the Captain was willing to make peace at any sacrifice ; and the terms exacted by old Mrs. Warner were severe. She had before tried vainly to persuade him to give up his children to her care ; he answered, and truly, that such an arrangement would insinuate a want of confidence in his young bride. But now she again urged the proposal, and made the most of her advantage. " You see that your new wife is not the proper person to intrust them with," she argued ; without, as the reader will perceive, any ground of argument. " A mere young girl her- self; just hatched, as it were, out of the nursery; brought up with French, and other foreign notions. I wonder you can think of giving your young children up to her. If you choose to risk your own happiness, I cannot see that gives you any right to sacrifice your children at any rate -till you have tried her." Thus argued Mrs. Warner ; and the Captain, no great analyser of thoughts or circumstances, feeling that his little wife had been somehow the cause of his humiliation, and so thoroughly ashamed of himself, that he was willing to purchase oblivion of his fault on any terms, yielded the point, and consented to the proposal. Amabel, when he told her what he had done, dared not insist, Or even express her mortification. She had learned to be afraid to irritate her husband, and did not say how much she had looked forward to offering him, as a compensation for her own imperfect love, a mother's watchful zeal for the welfare of his children. So great was her disappointment, so great her earnest wish to win their love, that Mrs. Mathers, the nurse, soon complained to the old lady that she could not walk out, whichever way she went with her charges, without being .troubled with the com- pany of young Mrs. Warner. This was not, however, immediately after her marriage, but only when her walks grew solitary, and the novelty of marriage was over ; for, at first, Captain Warner was always at her side. AMABEL; A FAMILY BISTORT. 119 She had visits to pay to all the neighborhood ; for the gentry around had called upon her, and, after partaking of wine and bride-cake at the cottage, went over to the great house to report their impressions to old Mrs. Warner ; to gather up, in return, the jnuendoes she threw out about " French in- fluence," " infatuation," et cetera ; and to draw conclusions against Amabel, from the fact of her not having her husband's children under her care. Sometimes, however, the old lady would come over to the cottage and help her daughter-in-law to receive any smart peo- ple who she calculated might call ; on one of which occasions a lively girl being present, made some remarks about Lady Harriet Rustmere. " You will like to go to Foxley," she said to Amabel. " The Rustmeres see a great deal of company from London, and have just come from abroad." " I shall like very much to visit there," was poor Bella's answer. No sooner had the young lady gone, however, than old Mrs. Warner turned with her severest aspect to her daughter-in-law. " My ideas of English propriety, Mrs. Leonard," said she, " will not permit me .to sanction the visits of my son's wife to Lady Harriet Rustmere. If you wish to associate with her and her gay circle, I must beg to inform you you must go there alone." "Indeed, madam, I have no wish to know her. I did not know she was not a proper person," was her daughter-in-law's reply. In every way, her ignorance of English modes of thinking and English modes of life brought mortification, beginning with her first great transgression and reproof by Mrs. Warner, when, on the Sunday after her marriage, she came into church at the second lesson. " My. love," her husband who was very smartly dressed had said to her, when she came down ready for church, " you should have put your other gown and* bonnet on. My mother always goes in her best to church, and she is very particular on these occasions." 120 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. The dress was changed to please him. The fawn-colored pelisse and bridal bonnet were put on, but this took time. The eyes of all the congregation were upon her when she entered ; and she sank in the opinion of the farmers' wives as half a Papist and a foreigner, when they observed that she required help to find the places in her Prayer-book ; for the Talbot family were no church-goers, having no pew at St. Clement's, and one of the most wearisome and onerous of Amabel's new duties was to go to Morning Service and the lecture every Tuesday morning, in the cold church, with Mrs. Warner. The old lady went, as did every other member of the congre- gation, for respectability's sake, or for example. It had never entered into her head to find comfort, or blessing, or " refresh- ing of the soul" in it to make that hour of communal devo- tion the sabbath of the day, the sanctifier of the thoughts, the cares, and occupations of the twenty-four ; nor did she dream of interesting in it the feelings of her new daughter. Enough that Amabel, well or ill, in all weathers went. She did not consider that the outward compliance, which is not even a symbol of the inward feelings or fixed principles of the soul,was nothing better than a semi-weekly solemn mockery. But Bella's greatest trial was the housekeeping. For young beginners, old Mrs. Warner had considered it en regie to engage an inexperienced cook (for she herself was what is called a mana- ger), under the idea that Mrs. Leonard ought to see to her own kitchen ; for her practical philosophy was that of the Anti-Ba- conian schools, based on the presumed ought to be instead of really was. Captain Warner was particular about his table. Bella, who had not an idea of what was required of her, suf- fered him often to sit down to a bad dinner, without knowing, indeed, that it was a bad one. How was she to know when to give out white sugar and when to give out brown ? When to stir up mince-meat and when to pickle cabbages ? When John Hodges killed a pig, how was she to know what part she was to take after the first choice had been offered at the great house to Mrs. Warner ? When Mrs. John Hodges sent round notice of a probable increase of family, how was she to know the customs of the place with regard to caudle ? When the ringers, AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 121 and the singers, and the waits, and the grave-digger carne round for Christmas-boxes, how could she equitably adjust their respective claims for half-a-crown or a shilling ? How was she to know that egg-sauce went with poultry, and plum-sauce went with pig, bread-sauce with game, gooseberry-sauce with mackerel, or the difference between goose and turkey stuffing I "The whim we have of happiness," Mr. Carlyle says, "is somewhat thus. By certain valuations and averages of our own striking we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot. This, we fancy, belongs to us by nature and of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts ; requires neither thanks nor complaints ; only such ovej-plus as there may be we count happiness, any deficit again is misery." In like manner, some such balance the village population of England have contrived to strike with respect to the favors of the great, " which are of public right." They measure the gentility of their superiors by their observance of these proprie- ties, and to depart from them constitutes, in their eyes, the " no gentleman" or " no lady." The people round " The Cedars" were, one after the other, offended by little breaches of their customs ; and, never disposed to see " a real, born lady" in a foreigner, began to call her a " poor thing," and to circulate stories of her ignorance about the village. Abundant evidence of her mis- management stood on record on the books of her tradesmen, which old Mrs. Warner was always sure to see, and which gave rise continually to such remarks as, " Dear me, Mrs. Leonard, I find at Booth's you ordered twelve yards of house flannel. It is not the kind I buy. You won't find it wear at all, and it will be a sad waste to have a quantity of such stuff on your hands. I have ordered Booth to send up and take it back again." Or, " Mrs. Leonard, I hear you pay ninepence a pound for brown sugar, and I pay sevenpence half-penny. Young English housekeepers do not commit such extrava- gances; but it is different with foreigners, I dare say." Or, again, " Mrs. Leonard, Buck says you ordered your last yeast from Simpson's. With a stake in the county, you should really inquire into the characters of people. I never went there in my life. He's a dissenter /" And, though Captain Warner 6 122 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. bore all this kind of thing, at first, with great good humor, a growing sense of her deficiencies disposed him to listen to his mother's constant speeches about " English comfort," " English housekeeping," and " the domestic qualities of English wives." " We must really change our cook," he said, one day after an unlucky dinner. " It will be a shame to your wife if she does change," said Mrs. Warner. " She ought to learn her duties. A woman who cannot keep her husband's house, and is not fit to be in- trusted with his children, and knows nothing of parish business, what good is she except to look at ? A pretty face won't last a lifetime. Beauty is but skin-deep, son Leonard, after all." Captain Warner having thus to keep his cook, hit on another plan. He met Mrs. Buck one day in the village, and having hinted to her in a way that he thought delicate, but which con- veyed a great deal to Mrs. Buck's imagination, that his young wife was inexperienced, and wanted a wiser person to see about things, went on to ask her to give an eye to his household, and advise and instruct Mrs. Leonard occasionally. This was enough. From that moment Bella found that authority even over her own servants had slipped out of her hands. The butcher, in- stead of coming to her for orders, took them for both households at the Hall. Every potato cooked was counted by Mrs. Buck, Mrs. Mathers, and Mrs. Warner. Young Mrs. Leonard's " shift- lessness " and " want of management " formed the staple of conversation between the old lady and her satellites, and the essence of these discoveries was repeated daily, in some form or other, to Captain Warner. Alas ! Captain Warner was not the man to be proof against these insinuations. He had loved and admired his young wife when he first married her, with all the warmth and sincerity of his own hearty nature ; but he was one of those men whose first passion of admiration is so unbounded, that they can see no flaw in its object ; and so soon as a doubt of the absolute perfection of an idol works its way into the mind, it loosens their faith in every way, and leads them rapidly to the oppo- site and equally unreasonable extreme. He had little idea of the true trials of womanhood. He believed a pretty woman's AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 123 life to be always as Amabel's was when he first saw her, all play and sunshine ; of its real weaknesses and temptations, the petty duties of life and the trials of the imagination, he had no idea, and for them would make no allowances. He could ap- preciate a woman as a whole, but had no power of appreciating her in detail. The first drops of distrust had oozed their way into the model of perfection he thought water-tight, and soon the enemies of his peace were " to enter, like a flood," through the leak which seemed so trifling. ****** Poor child ! The only love she had amongst the strangers upon whom she was dependent for her happiness was her hus- band's, and that, as we have seen, with all its warmth and its effusion, was not appreciative. " Loved would'st thou be ? Then love by tb.ee must first be given, No purchase money else avails beneath the heaven." And her heart was bankrupt ! Neither did she know, as day by day she felt her hopes of happiness grow less, and with the diminution of her influence, her difficulties multiplying around her, that all might have been smoothed could she have truly loved. Nor was she in a state of mind to follow out the coun- sels of Archbishop Leighton the Saint John amongst our churchmen when he tells us that if there be anything wanting between the married in affection, " they should be earnest suitors for God's help in this, that His hand may set right what no other can ; and that He who is love itself, may infuse that mutual love into their hearts, which they should have sought sooner." She was not deficient in observation, not " set in her own ways " or opinions, there was no reason to believe that she would not surmount her inexperience and learn her wifely duties as other women learn ; but from her first failure, others, whose fault it was, argued her incapacity, and, after a short struggle, she resigned all her authority into their hands. It was not, however, a passive or contented resignation, but ac- companied with an impotent " kicking against the pricks," and a dissatisfaction with herself, which crowned her wretched- 124 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. ness. Disgusted with her mother-in-law's infirmity of meddling, she grew unwilling in anything to be her colleague. It was sufficient that the hand of old Mrs. Warner was put into any enterprise ; there the hand of Amabel was sure never to come. Poor child ! we say again. She had not that love which imparts intuitively the knowledge of how all things may be made to work together for another's good ; which accepts every assistance to promote the loved one's happiness ; is anx- ious only for the end, and self-forgetting in its attainment. She feit that much was owing to her, as a woman and a wife ; and vexed and worsted in her attempts to remedy the evils that beset her, she threw up her hopes of happiness in despair. It was go hard to be unappreciated, to be considered incapa- ble ; to be looked down upon even by the village people, who for the Captain had always been a favorite ranged themselves, as they supposed, on his side, and began to pity him, and to make comparisons between his "poor thing of a wife," and the dashing Miss O'Byrne, who rode so well, and who had always been looked on as the presumptive successor of the first Mrs. Warner. No one, of course, spoke openly against his young wife to the Captain, but the influence of public opinion reached him in looks, and signs, and general observations. He had been passionately enamored of his little bride, he loved her still ; but did he love and cherish her, when he admitted the thought that an English wife would have been better suited to his position or regretted that he had ever seen her happy and childlike in her island home ? And so her days and her weeks passed, through that dull winter ; she did not know how to supply herself with amuse- ment or occupation. She was shut out from rumors of the great world, after long residence at a place like Valetta; and to procure new books from town, or magazines, anything in short but the Weekly County Paper, would have seemed to her as impracticable an enterprise as anything in tales of fairy land. Mrs. Warner recommended her (in English) Rollin's Ancient History, a production, which, with its adaptation of the manners and sentiments of the Court of Louis XIV. to the history of the Egyptians, Greeks, and successors of Alex- AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 125 ander, she herself, in after years, said, always reminded her of a print that hung in the library of the Cedars, representing Garrick in the character of Romeo, descending from the win- dow of his mistress, in ruffles, a flapped waistcoat, and a bag- wig. She also read the Rambler and Spectator, and looked wistfully at the backs of the Sentimental Journey, Julia de Roubigne, Gil Bias, Percy's Reliques, Tom Jones, and other similar light reading, which she saw through the glass panels of a book-case, of which old Mrs. Warner had pocketed the key. And she took long walks in the park, which was damp under the trees in winter, or drove out with old Mrs. Warner, to make formal morning visits, stopping sometimes at poor cot- tages, where she learned to think charity an odious thing in England, on seeing the old lady call some poor woman up to the carriage door, and tender to her imperious advice, or re- prove her, or inquire into all the secrets of her life and family, with a want of delicacy which seemed to argue that she thought the poor not gifted with tho same nature as her own. All this jarred harshly on the sensibilities of Amabel, for she did not know to what extent the old lady was looked up to, as the model of a gentlewoman, by her neighbors ; or the confi- dence that the poor had, that their real wants would be relieved by her, according to a scale which squared with public opinion, of their deservings and necessities. Mrs. Warner tho- roughly understood the character of the people, and if she considered it her privilege to be harsh in her reproofs, meddling in her inquiries, and exacting in her notions of worthiness, and of propriety, the village people considered it so likewise. Her system of personal supervision, and attendant charity, was well suited to the public opinion of which she was the centre, and the character of our institutions in that day. Now things are changed, and changing. Every railroad, every fusion of parishes, every idea of the times which pene- trates into the hearts of the people, serves to break up caste ; and, with its attendant evils, has at least this advantage, that it must make all men, rich and poor, base their relations to each other less on relative position, than on the ground of a common humanity. It makes men remember that their fellow 126 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. men have hearts, and opened for their entrance to those hearts, many broad ways, never thought of in the days of Mrs. War- CHAPTER VII. Of human faults poor woman has but two, She nothing right can say she nothing right can do. PROVERB. " HERE is great news, by Jove, Belle ! Old Towser, our Mem- ber, is just dead, and my friend O'Byrne will dispute the county." Thus cried the Captain, returning to the breakfast-room, whence he had been summoned one morning, early in February, to receive a verbal message, carried by a trusty horseman to all the influential supporters of the Blue interest in that part of the county. The prospect of an election, which so greatly ani- mates "true Britons," conveyed but very vague and feeble notions to Bella's mind. Not so to the mind of the elder Mrs. Warner. No sooner had her son, leaving his farm business (for like all Naval offi- cers on half pay, who are possessed of a few acres, he was a great trier of what he called the experiments of common sense ; wiser farmers called it sowing guineas), no sooner, we say, had he started for the county-town on horseback, than the old lady sent over the housekeeper, with a quantity of blue chintz under her arm. " What is all that for, Mrs. Buck 3" said Amabel, when en- tering the drawing-room, she deposited her burden on the floor. "It is to cover up the yellow, ma'am," Buck answered. " My mistress's principles is Blue, and we never have so much as an orange in her house, at the time of the 'lection. And young master the Captain, could not be bribed to eat an egg when he was a boy, bless him, during the polling time, 'cause of the yallar in the yolk, ma'am." AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 127 By the close of the day all the county was alive and astir. Public houses were getting up their flags, busy fingers were manufacturing cockades ; the addresses of the rival candidates, O'Byrne and Eccleston, were posted on every dead wall ; can- vassers were scouring the country ; landlords were calculating the votes they could command, and the price that they should claim for the support they lent their party ; and the few " inde- pendent electors" were lying in waiting, till the necessities of one or the other party should force them to buy up consciences at famine prices. It was the second morning after the news came, and Amabel was sitting idle, alone, before her fire ; for the rug-work she was engaged upon being grounded with buff, was, by Mrs. Warner's order, put aside, when the foot-boy announced two gen- tlemen. She rose, and at the same moment, two young men, very smart, in riding-dresses, with the self- satisfied look of those prepared for fascination, followed the servant into the room. " The lady of Captain Warner, I presume," said the foremost, bowing most politely. " My name is Eccleston." Amabel stood bowing, and motioned to the strangers to take chairs. " Your husband I find, madam, is from home," pursued the stranger. Amabel was sorry he had gone to C that morning upon business connected with the Blue Committee. " At least," said Mr. Eccleston, " I may consider myself for- tnnate in being admitted to his lady, of whose attractions and accomplishments I have heard. You are the scion of a noble family in France, I am assured, madam." Amabel bowed. " France is a noble country," pursued Mr. Eccleston " a country with which it is our interest to cultivate the closest ties. That last most bloody war was a mistake, as we conceive, upon the part of this country. It is our policy henceforward to preserve peace, to cultivate commercial and friendly rela- tions, to wreathe the olive branch with the laurels we have won." 128 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. " War is very terrible," said Amabel, interrupting the rough sketch of a speech he was composing for the hustings. " The present ministers require to be closely watched by an active opposition of the disinterested of this country," added the friend of Mr. Eccleston, " or we may fear lest private views, the flatteries of royalty, or the national tendency of aristocratic principles should lead them so to pander to the lust of aggran- dizement among the autocrats of Europe, as to overlook the weal of nations, and place the peace of Europe on an insecure foundation. There is another subject which, in this present Parliament, will engage the attention of our leaders, the dis- abilities pressing harshly on the consciences of our fellow-sub- jects sufferers, for conscience sake, for their allegiance to an ancient church. I mean our Catholic fellow-subjects," looking at Mrs. Warner. " The Catholics appear to me not to be liked in England," said Amabel. " And you agree with us" said Mr. Eccleston, " that a man who serves his God conscientiously ought not to be held inca- pable of serving king and country. Your unbiassed judgment, your pure heart, ally you with a liberal policy, and make you feel, that either politically or religiously, it is an unworthy thing to coerce consciences. You would not compel, I feel convinced, the sacrifice of privilege to interest. You would not condemn the man who voted according to his conscience any more than one who worshipped according to his creed ?" " Oh ! no," cried Amabel. " Neither would your generous and noble-minded husband," pursued the Yellow candidate. " No, I am sure not," said Bella, confidently. " Ah !" exclaimed the candidate, rising, with his hat pressed to his heart. " And with such beauty with the influence of such powers of mind with every fascination, what may our side not dare to hope, when its principles are advocated by such a bride to such a husband ! We take our leave, ventur- ing to hope, at least, a generous opposition on the part of Captain Warner." Amabel bowed, and rang the bell. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 129 * -^ " What can they have come for ?" she thought. " They have not solicited ray husband's vote. They only ' venture to hope a generous opposition.' " " And, madam," said Mr. Ecclestoa's companion, turning back as his principal went out of the door, " we may then venture ourselves to repose, and to assure others they may repose confidence in your assurance, that Captain Warner is too much a man of high principle and the perfect gentleman, to demand the regulation of the conscience as the price of those benefits which the vicinity has the right to look for at your hands." Amabel bowed again. The strangers bowed. The door closed between them. An hour after there was a run upon Booth's shop for yellow ribbon. The news spread that the Yellow candidate had been seen to ride smilingly through the park gates of the Cedars, and that he had secured the assur- ance that Captain Warner, though on the Blue committee, would not attempt to influence the votes of his tradespeople or tenant farmers. Never before, within the memory of man, had the Yellows been successful in the village ; no man when he got up that morning prepared to second the Blue interest, would have believed the prophecy that in a few hours " Vote for Eccleston " would be scrawled on every wall and even along the park paling. The news like wild-fire ran up to the Cedars. For a few moments old Mrs. Warner was electrified ; and had she per- mitted herself to remain electrified very long, the Blues might have been worsted in the close-run election. In a quarter of an hour all the servants she could command were dispatched over the neighborhood with the intelligence, that conscience or no conscience, promise or no promise, if any vote were given to the principles of the French revolution and their representa- tive, Mr. Eccleston, Captain Warner and herself would, for the future, give all their custom to the shops kept by Blue voters in the town of C . The excited Yellows paused, looked at each other, separated, and sneaked homeward, where their wives, whose eyes were on the home department, frantically demanded, " how ever thev 6* 130 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. could have been such woundy fools as to put a word of fahh in Mrs. Leonard Warner ?" The Yellow ribbon was put aside or burnt The ferment of the place subsided. Every one desired it should be forgotten he had promised to vote Yellow ; and so anxious were the de- linquents to remove suspicion, that the earliest votes on polling- day were those they gave to O'Byrne, to the exceeding discom- posure and disappointment of his rival. Poor little Bella ! When her husband's horse's hoofs were heard in the avenue, she sprang forth to meet him, and, regard- less of the presence of several persons who were with him, told him, clasping his horse's bridle, with a trembling voice and eye- lids swelled with tears, that the village was all going to vote Yellow, and how it had occurred. She needed, in her agony of apprehension and of self-reproach, some kind and hearty voice to reassure her ; and no one was capable of doing this more cordially by temperament than her husband. He was on the point of dismounting, and, forgetting the Blue interest, thought only of assuring her that things could not be so bad as she supposed, and that he did not attribute any fault to her, when the dashing Miss O'Byrne spoke to him. " We had better ride down at once to the village, and pro- tect Tom's interests from the French principles of Mrs. Leonard Warner." " True yes," he answered. And the party turned away at full speed, leaving Amabel uncomforted. Nor was she con- soled when the captain, returning, told her there was not so much harm as they had feared. She cared no longer how the votes went Blue or Yellow she was thinking only of the dashing Miss O'Byrne, and the tone in which she ordered him. The village people, after this event, were afraid of being sup- posed to be influenced by her ; so that one woman sent up to the great house to know if Mrs. Warner would be pleased to wish her to accept some broken meat that had been sent her by Mrs. Leonard's order. And, as the captain scoured the country with the dashing Miss O'Byrne, her brother's most unscrupulous and successful canvasser, and had to listen every- where to multiplied jokes and ironical congratulations on his AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 13 \ wife's talents for electioneering, judge if he did not sometimes think that a high-spirited Englishwoman, of the dashing school, who could aid his fortunes, take a five-barred gate, and be an fait iu local customs, would have been more the wife for him than the woman he had chosen ? And Amabel, mortified and miserable, when her busy hus- band set her aside as one incapable of entering into his employ- ments, and preferred to refer all that interested him to Miss O'Byrne and other dashing women, judge if, amongst her many tears, none ever fell over the thought of that happy happy future sketched for her by Felix ; a future, in which, not only as the wife but as the woman, she would have had her part of usefulness and action, and have been loved, and trusted, and admired by her husband, and, perhaps, a little admired by other people too. There was another thought a thought which made her weep, but which ought to fill the young wife's heart with bounding hope and joy. There were tidings that she had to give her husband, which would unite him to her, she was sure 4 by nature's holiest ties. But how whisper, with her arms thrown round his neck, the blessed name of father ? How speak of her new hopes to him and linger over them, anticipat- ing their blessedness, when his whole time and thoughts were engrossed by the election ? For when he came home in the even- ing, wet, tired, and a little irritable, with his pockets full of lists of voters, and sat down, after a late and hurried dinner, in his dressing-gown and slippers, absorbed in calculations, to call off his attention, and to tell him then the new hopes he must share with her, would have been a profanation. And to have him, the next morning, after a hasty kiss, go off to forget all day, in the society of Miss O'Byrne, what she had told him, would have been bitter mortification. " Bella," said the captain, coming home, as usual, cold, hun- gry, and tired, from the county-town one Saturday. " Bella, I have a note for you in my pocket, asking us to dine on Tuesday with the Rustmeres, to meet Lord Loudoun, Lady Harriet's uncie, who has come down from town, and Sir John Pawley. I saw Lady Harriet to-day at C , and she hopes you will 132 AMABBL; A FAMILY BISTORT. excuse her not having called, as they have but just come down. Rustmere is on our committee, and this dinner is to be rather a political business, I suppose." " I cannot go," said Bella. " And why not ?" said the captain. " Why not pray ?" said Mrs. Warner, who happened to be there. " I thought that Lady Harriet .... that she was not .... not quite a person whom I ought to see," she faltered with a blush. " Stuff and nonsense !" said the captain. " She is a gay, dashing woman, nothing more. Who put that into your head 3" " When I told Mrs. Leonard that Lady Harriet was not a desirable acquaintance for so young a person, so ignorant of our customs, I meant to insinuate nothing, as Mrs. Leonard, from common report, must be perfectly aware, that would render her unvisitable. Her house is not a desirable school of life for a young woman ; but, at the same time, women of con- sideration in the county go there. It may be of advantage to you to meet the Earl of Loudoun and Sir John Pawley ; and, if Mrs. Leonard is squeamish only when her husband's wisltes and the interests of the Blue Party are concerned, I can only attribute it to a want of knowledge of what are the duties of an English wife," said old Mrs. Warner. The old lady stayed with them till late, irritating both wife and husband to the last degree by her ill-timed observations. Both went to bed in an ill humor. The next morning, albeit it was Sunday, the captain started off in a post-chaise to attend a meeting in a distant part of the county ; he was only to be back in time to dress for dinner on the Tuesday. They had parted not in anger but unkindly, and Bella, in the hours that she spent alone, suffered at the recollection, and longed ardently for this her husband's longest absence to be over, that all might be made right between them. Poor child I She dressed herself betimes, for her visit to the Rustmeres, in the most becoming costume she could put on. Her husband's gifts of jewelry encircled her throat and arms, and each one had AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 133 been kissed as she put it on. Her light blue silk set off her clear complexion, and a cunningly devised coiffure of rich lace enhanced the symmetrical beauty of her head. She wished to look lovely she wished to remind her hus- band of her youth and of their marriage day ; for as they drove to Foxley she meant to tell him all. During that winter ride, when she would have him to herself, she would gladden his true heart with her secret, and, in the effusion of that mo- ment, she would entreat him, when the election should be over to take her, for at least a little time, away from the influence of his mother, and give her at length a fair chance of acquir- ing his esteem. As the tender field-flower cannot grow beneath the shade of the proud forest cedar, so she could never acquire consideration and confidence, and her husband's full affection, in the neighborhood of Mrs. Warner. She was dressed ; the carriage waited ; old Mrs. Warner, who had come down to the cottage to see how she looked, was fidgety and fault-finding. Time was pressing; it was five o'clock, and half-past five was the appointed dinner hour. It was a ride of seven miles over cross-country roads, and no great speed could be got out of Mrs. Warner's fat carriage-horses. The captain had not come home. Bella heard horsehoofs in the park, and started up. It was not her husband, but a messenger ; Captain Warner sent a note. He was detained on business could not tell when he might see her. She must go without him, and make his apologies. " I dare not go alone. I shall send an excuse," said Bella, dropping the paper from her hands ; but in a moment she re- pented her exclamation, for old Mrs. Warner followed it up with her usual speech about " English wives," and " the Blue interest," and " French principles," &c. " Then I must go !" said poor Bella : and breaking brusquely from her mother-in-law, she sprang into her carriage, and gave the order to drive rapidly. With her head pressed in her hands, and leaning against the side of the carriage, crushing the lace so coquettishly put on, she sobbed for the first four miles, as though her little heart would have discharged in tears its weight of sorrow ; then, as 134 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. she remembered that she was about to make her entry alone in an assemblage of strangers she began to think of her appear- ance, and half forgot the causes of her grief, in the efforts she made to dissipate its traces. She fanned her swollen eyes ; she opened the windows, that the fresh air might revive her ; she renovated her pretty head-dress; and when the, carriage turned into the grounds at Foxley, she sat up erect, drew her shawl around her, and strained her features into the social smile. It was a quarter after six. Her heart fluttered as they flung open the hall door. Dinner was evidently going on, and she would have to meet the dreaded strangers in the dining-room. Gathering her dress around her, she was about to alight, trembling with nervous apprehension, when a wild bark, fu- rious but joyful, hailed her from the hall. A white dog, with long curling silky coat, and pointed ears, pushed past the Fox- ley footman, and sprang, leaping, barking, through the carriage door. "Barba!" she cried. "Barba! Barba! My own Barba!" and pressed the little creature in her arms, and wept and kissed him, without regard to the opinions of the servants, who were witnessing the scene. " Who brought this dog here ?" was her first question. " I believe he came with a French gentleman, my lady. Didn't he, Reynolds ?" said the footman, looking round. Then Felix was alive ! Felix was there and she about to meet him. She, the wife of Captain "Warner. Her limbs trembled. For half a moment she felt it would be impossible for her to meet him ; but she remembered what might be said against her, if she persisted in not entering ; she thought of her husband's wish she should attend this gathering of Blue supporters ; she dreaded old Mrs. Warner. Resigning the dog, with a last kiss, to Reynolds, she passed her hands over her brow, and then pressed them to her heart. She felt she must retain, if possible, her presence of mind, or at least the full possession of her senses. AMABEL; A FAMILY BISTORT. 135 CHAPTER VIII. Our course is onward, onward into light ; What though the darkness gathereth amain, Yet to return or tarry, both are vain. How tarry when around us is thick night ? Whither return ? What flower yet ever might In days of gloom, and cold, and stormy rain, Inclose itself in its green bed again, Hiding from wrath of tempest, out of sight ? Sonnet. B. C. TRENCH. THE door of the dining-room opened, and a tepid fume of din- ner, and a buzz of many voices issued from it into the hall. The master of the feast came out, retaining his table-napkin in his hand. Amabel, trembling with excitement, and forgetful of the awe with which strangers had inspired her, ever since she caught the tone of society in England, poured forth to him a torrent of excuses for her husband, and regrets for her late arrival. "Never mind it, my dear madam," said Mr. Rustmere, a young man, rather tall, of as much consequence, as a leading man of property in the county, as his wife was, as a leader in society. " Warner is such an active fellow, that his friends must be content to Catch him when they can. He is doing Blue work in another part of the county. The Yellows, I hear, call him and O'Byrne's sister ha ! ha ! the Blue devils ! She is a dashing person a great flirt and a prime favorite with your husband. We have old Sir John Pawley here for you ; the chairman of the Blue Committee. I have kept a vacant place for you by him." Trembling leaning on the arm of Mr. Rustmere, Bella made her entry into the assembly. Trembling, she dared not raise her eyes, lest encountering those of Felix, she should falter in the exchange of civilities with Lady Harriet Rust- mere. Trembling, this introduction ended, she made the cir- 136 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. cuit of the table, and took her vacant place by the Bli/e Chair- man. The bringing back of cold soup, and one after another of the earlier dishes, for some time occupied her attention. Amongst the voices of the guests, she did not recognise the tones so well remembered, the tones that rang in her ears so often in her dreams. She did not dare look up, the eyes of the whole assembly, she fancied, would be on her ; should she blush, God knows what reports might be made to Mrs. Warner. A low whine caught her ear ; the little dog, watching his opportunity, had made his way between the footman's legs, into the room, and now jumping upon her, testified its love and happiness, by every possible canine illustration. " Giu ! Oiii ! Barba ! Down ! down !" said Bella, trying to soothe her happy favorite to lie unnoticed under her chair. " Take that dog off," said Mr. Rustmere. " Come away, sir, come," said the servant, attempting to catch it. " Colonel Guiscard," cried Mr. Rustmere, " call away your dog. He is troublesome to Mrs. Warner." Colonel Guiscard rose. It was not Felix ; but a slightly older, and more military looking man, with reddish hair and beard, taller than Felix, with well marked, thin, and foreign features. " Ha ! ha ! Colonel !" said their host, " we should have put you next to Mrs. Warner. Love me, love my dog. Ha ! ha ! Eh ? Mrs. Warner ?" Deeper and deeper crimson flushed poor Bella, and, for the eyes of all were on her face, she turned aside to the old gen- tleman, her neighbor, and in a low, trembling voice, to change the conversation, asked him the first question that came into her head. " In what month may we expect to hear the nightingales ?" " Eh 1" said the old gentleman, seeing that she spoke, and turning towards her. " When may we expect to hear the nightingales ?" she re- peated, in a louder key. The old gentleman bent down hia ear, after looking at her vacantly. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTOEY. 137 Bella felt obliged to shout again. " Eh ? What did you say ?" said the old gentleman, bending his ear closer. By this time all other remarks were hushed, and every per- son at the table turned towards her. " Nightingales ! Nightingales, Sir John !" shouted Mr. Rust- mere. " Nightingales ! Mrs. Warner wants to know when you expect t,o hear the nightingales?" A titter ran round the table. " Eh ? Ah ! very pretty," said the old gentleman. " I expect to be in town." Nothing could have persuaded Bella to make any further observation, or utter more than " Yes" and " No," whilst they remained at table. Ah me ! It took a weary time to eat that weary din- ner ; and the ladies sat long over their dessert, for they were all politicians, and the county election interested them as greatly as the gentlemen. Even after they went into the drawing-room, the same con- versation was renewed. Lady Harriet Rustmere, of whom we have not yet spoken, was a coarse, bold woman, with plenty of tact, if not to please, at least to do what she pleased with other people, and abun- dance of dash and good-humor about her. No woman in the world better understood how to make the most of her position. Her house was always open, her table always handsome, her love of patronage extreme. She was one of those many wo- men who, if they have never put themselves out of the pale of society by committing the unpardonable sin, it must be attri- buted to position rather than to temperament or to great virtue, and whom the world, swift to judge, pronounces unprincipled. " I told the captain I wanted to introduce you to Lord Lou- doun, old Pawley, and one or two other men," she said to Amabel, as soon as they were in the drawing-room, " or I dare say that old mother-in-law of yours would not have let you dine here. I baited the hook with my uncle,. Lord Loudoun ; for I knew that, to sec a ministerial peer, she would let you go to the devil. I had to catch your husband, years ago, in the 138 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. same way. . Though she does use her influence on our side, there never was a more bigoted old female, in many respects, than Mrs. Warner." Bella looked up in amazement at the free-spoken Lady Har- riet, who, as she said this, was standing warming her feet over the fire, with her face protected by a screen. Her gown was pulled up high above her ancles. She had large, broad feet, a coarse, stout, but not ill-shaped person, and large plump arms. She was dressed (I like to tell how people dressed ; I am my- self short-sighted, and have learned to judge the characters of people much less by their physiognomy than their clothes) she was dressed in a black gauze, spangled with round gilt vignettes of three sizes. Her black, oily hair, which was cover- ed by no cap, and grew far back upon her forehead, was put up in great puffs at the crown of her head, revealing strongly- marked and somewhat Jewish features. " Well, my dear," she said, seeing Amabel did not answer ; " you look toute ebahie. We shall know one another in time." " I wanted to ask Sir John, only he is so deaf, and I could not make him hear across the table," said a stout, single lady in a cap, " what is the reason Huddisfield gives seven more Yel- low votes than it ever did before ? I dare say, Mrs. Warner, you can tell me. Your husband canvassed that part of the county." No. Bella did not know. She had never heard of Huddis- field. She sank at once in the estimation of these ladies, who could not comprehend such indifference. " Poor Warner ! He had better have taken Bessy O'Byrne. One may go further and fare worse. He has found that out by this time," said one to another, in an audible whisper. Having thus weighed in a balance the powers of the bride, and found her wanting, the ladies gathered round the fire and went on with what they had to say. " Tell Lady Harriet," said one of them to the stout lady, Miss Armstrong, " how you paid yourself out of the pockets of the Yellows." AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 139 " Miss Armstrong took a Yellow bribe !" shouted Lady Har- riet. "Hear ! hear! hear! I will never believe that!" " Yes ! Yes ! I plead guilty," said the accused, her eyes sparkling at the recollection, " and this is how it was. Bill Purchell (you know Bill Purchell, Lady Harriet? my man at Lawton) has a little freehold, in addition to what he holds of mine, which brings him just within the qualification. A fellow came over to me late the other night to give me notice there was a Yellow agent down at Bill's, and he thought it very likely the old fellow would be bribed to rat over to the Yellows. Now, Bill, you must know, owes me a little matter of rent, which I have not been hard in pressing for, because I knew his wife had been ill and the lease was nearly out, and he did not make the farm answer. Well, I put on my garden bonnet and clogs, and was off two miles in the dark over to Lawton. I went up to his cottage did not knock. I suppose Bill expected me about as much as the d . I opened the kitchen-door and looked in. There was the agent, sure enough, with a pile of shining Yellow Boys spread out upon the table. " ' Hoity-toity !' said I, ' my masters. Why that is bribery and corruption. I've caught you with the wages of iniquity in your hands.' ' No, my lady,' says he, struck up all of a heap at sight of me ; ' it is only a present from a brother of mine.' ' Is it ?' says I. ' If so, then prove it. You promise O'Byrne a Blue vote, do you ?' ' Yes, I do,' says he, pushing the gold across the table. ' Not so fast,' said I. ' If that money is a present, I ought to have a share. You remember the five quar- ters' rent you owe me !' He looked at the Yellow, and the Yellow looked yellow enough at him. ' Well,' said I, ' which is it ? Do you prefer a prosecution for bribery and corruption ?' ' No,' said he. And the end of it was, that I choused the other party out of both money and vote ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! That's what I call a blue joke ! " " Capital !" cried Lady Harriet. " Why did not that Yellow fool buy one of Purchell's winter cabbages, and pay a guinea for every grub he found on it ? Who is to call that bribery ? Nobody has a right to stop me if I choose to give 20 for a tom- cat or a cauliflower. 140 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. Amabel had heard enough. No one, it was evident, took thought of her. She stole away from the circle, and, passing through the division of the room, which, separated from the rest by scagliola pillars, contained the harp and piano, she went into the conservatory. No lamps were there ; but it was dimly lighted by the re- flection from the dining-room, for a glass door, opening on a little ante-chamber, communicated by another glass door with that apartment. She could hear the buzz of conversation amongst the gentlemen, she could see them indistinctly drawn around the fire with their glasses, all save Col. Guiscard, who sat thoughtfully alone at the long table, with a bottle of claret untasted at his side. From several things that had reached her ear at dinner, she judged that he was staying with a French emigrant abbe, long resident at C , and that the Rustmeres had met him during their tour abroad. He was Ferdinand , Felix's elder brother. She could not be mistaken. She watched him ; her eyes never turned from him ; she was tracing the likeness. Felix's brother ! Did he know her ? Were his thoughts of her, as hers of him ? Undiscovered in her retreat by the servant with the coffee, she was yet found out by Barba. Alone with the little dog, the. Jiving memento of past days of her young life's brief hap- piness, she gave full vent to her tenderness and to her emo- tion. Her large tears glittered in his curls, her arms were thrown around his neck, her fervent kisses were rained upon him. It was, as she was thus engaged, that a little noise aroused her. The gentlemen had risen from table, and Col. Guiscard, having opened the dining-room door which led into the ante- room of the conservatory, was passing by the outer door into the garden. Amabel rose, and pressing her burning forehead against the glass, looked after his tall figure as he moved, with rapid strides, into the darkness. The little dog sprang up, scratched against the door, and whined. She did not wait to think, but winding her lace scarf about her head and neck, she opened the conservatory door, and fol- AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 141 lowed him into the garden. The lawn was white with snow, but the gravel paths were freshly swept. She followed the one which she had seen him take, which led her by an easy sweep around the shrubbery. It was the last time in her life she was permitted to believe her least action of no consequence the last time in her life she dared to follow, without after thought, the bent of her own impulses or fancies. She hastened on till, in a narrow path that crossed the lawn, she spied him walking rapidly towards the house, and then she slackened her pace. It struck her for the first time that he might think it strange she followed him. She drew back, therefore, into the shade, and left some distance between them,' intending to slip after him, unobserved, through the door of the conservatory ; but the presence of the little dog prevented this. Col. Guiscard had reached the door, paused, shook the lock, and as he did so, his little dog jumped on him. He turned and saw her. " It has been locked," he said. " What brings you here, Madame, by night, at this season, and alone ?" " For God's sake," she said, " tell me something about Felix." He shook her roughly off, for she had laid her hand upon the lappels of his coat, involuntarily, to detain him ; and now he kicked and thundered at the door. A servant opened it. " Enter, madame^ said Col. Guiscard, drawing back. She dared not disobey, and, with her face crimsoned, she passed him. All the footmen of Foxley saw her as she came hi with him from the garden. He opened the inner door of the conservatory, and there, too, she passed before him ; but when she turned upon him to de- mand some explanation of his conduct some apology, he was gone. She unwound her lace scarf from her head and throat ; but before she had recovered her self-possession or repaired her ruffled toilette, Mr. Rustmere came into the conservatory with a peti- tion for a song. Her feet were damp, and her teeth chattered. As she re-entered the drawing-room, Col. Guiscard was stand- 142 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. ing at the fire. Lord Loudoun, Sir John Pawley, and others, were making up a whist table. Whilst the piano was being opened, she went up to the fire. Colonel Guiscard did not address her. She would have given worlds to speak to him, but there was a something in his eye and in his manner which assured her she would only give occa- sion for fresh insolence. She went to the piano. She preluded a little, and then struck up a wild old Breton air a song that Felix loved, a guerz or peasant ditty of the country. She watched the change that came gradually over her hearer, for to her there seemed but one. His air of insolence softened into one of fixed atten- tion ; and, rising from his listless leaning against the fire-place, he bent forward towards her, all eye and ear. The strain ceased, but she did not leave the piano. Satisfied with what her essay had accomplished, before the politeness of Lady Harriet could ask her to resume her singing, she had struck the first chords of the Marseillaise. 8he appealed not in vain to the Frenchman, the revolutionist, the soldier of the empire. Col. Guiscard drew nearer to her nearer. His voice in the chorus joined with hers. But when after having sung three verses of the original, she began one that Felix had taught her that Felix had composed, she observed Ferdinand's voice falter. The song ended, she rose, but no one drew near to compliment her. The name of the air had been whispered through the circle, and the Blues shrank back as though there had been treason and revolution in her singing. She stood by the piano putting on her gloves. At length she said, abruptly, trying to speak in a tone of indifference, " And Felix is he dead ?" " Who told you he was dead ? Did Captain Warner ?" " Before I married him." "And marriage has taught you a mistrust of Captain Warner ? You believed him then, and now you disbelieve him?" . " Is Felix dead ?" she repeated. "Tell me all he told you." AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 143 " That Felix was dead. Is lie dead ?" she said the third time. Col. Guiscard clenched his hand. " Felix is dead he said. " Ask me no more. Be satisfied with that half truth. He would not wish to live and know that fraud, and 'shairie, and enmity had triumphed. Nor do you wish him living. His sighs would trouble the security of your peace. Better his loving heart should rest and be for- gotten." Amabel had sat down upon the music stool, and made vio- lent efforts to control her tears. " God knows what is the best for him and me," she said at length. " God knows !" " How did he die ?" she resumed presently. " Ask your husband how he died !" he said in a low, distinct, but almost hissing whisper. " No man can better answer you." " How so ?" she cried. " How so 2" But Col. Guiscard turned away. He went up to the whist- table, and took a hand. For a few minutes she found it difficult to recover herself. She bent over "the music books, that her heightened color and tearful eyes might escape notice, and was * grateful to the company that she was left alone. Dreary as the rest of the evening was, she stayed till the whist table was broken up, when she was obliged to inquire for her carriage. Mr. Rustmere cloaked Jier, and conducted her across the hall. As she got into her chariot, Barba tried to follow her. She caught him in her arms, and strained him to her bosom with a kiss. As she did so, she remarked Colonel Guiscard at the door, with his eyes fixed on her. She beckoned to him. He obeyed. " May I take him ?" she said, pointing to Barba. " As you will." " Thank you, for Felix's sake." She put out her hand to him. The carriage was about to start. He drew back with- out touching it. " I should not have offered you, Madame, the gift you have been pleased to ask, lest your possession of my dog, after what these people round us may conclude this even- 144 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. ing , might expose you to unfounded suspicion of previous acquaintance with myself and compromise you " She pulled the check-string furiously, for the carriage had just started, and when the footman presented himself at the door, he found her holding the little creature in her arms, the light of anger sparkling in her eyes, and in her whole expres- sion. " Put out this dog," she said, almost furiously. The order was obeyed. The glasses were pulled up. The carriage rolled on. He had at least secured an influence with her. However she might think of him, she would think. She could not meet him again with indifference ; there must be a consciousness in her manner, treat him kow she would. She would act a part to- wards him, and whatever that part might be. it would avail him. Ferdinand Guiscard was like a confident player, who, with a purpose in view, at every turn in the game takes his advantage. His adversary was inexperienced, sensitive, quick-tempered, and a woman. CHAPTER ITL As some dreamer, Amid the wanderings of his troubled dream. All on a sudden finds himself incoiled In some strange guilt ; tho' how it was he knows not ; Nor even if his ; yet nathless shame and fear Are all around hint. J. KKNYON. THE carriage rolled on. Some miles had been travelled, and it seemed to her as if the words of Ferdinand had just been spoken, as though his face still darkened the window of her carriage. She did not require to think nor did she think she had a vain consciousness that Felix was dead, and that his death, in some way, compromised her husband; but all this AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 145 was indistinct to her, her one engrossing recollection was, that she had been insulted, her one absorbing feeling was of impo- tent rage. Rage, for she was half a child. Rage, which made her beat her hands against the sides of her carriage, and which would have found relief in physical pain. " That he should have dared .... have dared .... to sup- pose that I .... to suppose that any one . . . ." Her anger choked her. And she began to think of revenge of some retaliation for the unprovoked impertinence of some motive for his words. At one moment she would tell her husband but she had a woman's dread of bloodshed. The thought was momentary. And after all, what could she tell her husband ? Manner, which cannot be described, lends the point to an insult. She had been imprudent, and he had warned her. She would never see him again. There could be no neces- sity for that. She would forget his insolence, and time would wear the offence away. Then the memory of his manner presented itself poignantly and suddenly before her, and her purpose changed. She would go to him, demand the reason of his insult, to one pre- pared to welcome him with kindness to a young, a trusting, and, she owned, a pretty woman. He should apologize, apolo- fize upon bis knees for his brutality. His insolence, if he *fired any, should be overborne by her indignation. As all these thoughts were passing through her mind, she lad not noticed a certain indecision in the movements of her tarriage ; but now it stopped, and the sudden halt aroused her. She had just time to rise from her knees, for in her excitement she had thrown herself down in one corner of the carriage, and pressed her head against the seat, like an angry child, when the footboy opened the door, with an " If you please, ma'am, the dog follows us." The little creature sprang into the carriage. "You may drive on, William," said his mistress. "Take the dog to the stables to-night, and to-morrow morning, the first thing, ride over to Foxley, and take him back to his master." 7 146 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. And now, with little Barba in her arms, pressed to her heart, her thoughts flowed into another channel. She recalled, as connected with hirn, the bright days of the past, in vivid contrast with the present. It woke in her a pity for herself, and when the carriage stopped at her own door, she had long been engaged in brooding over, and magnifying, her own do- mestic sorrows. " Is Captain Warner come home ?" was her first question. "Yes, ma'am, and is gone to bed," was her maid's answer. " He bid me get breakfast for him by six o'clock to-morrow morning." Bella hurried up to her own dressing-room ; and, as she pass- ed a handsome mirror, which formed its chiefest ornament, it reflected back her form, radiant in beauty ; for excitement always heightened it ; and, pausing a moment, in spite of a choking in her throat, she gave vent to the feelings with which the sight inspired her, by a broken exclamation of "Might compromise ! he dared . . . !" At that moment her eye fell on her watch and chain, her husband's present on her marriage. She raised them to her lips and kissed the name engraven on the watch-case, then flung it down on the table. " Oh ! God," she said, snatching it up again, " I am very unhappy." She opened her bed-room door and walked in softly. Her husband was sleeping. She went round to him and laid her watch and chain upon the bed, and knelt down, with her hands clasped over them, and leaned her head against his pillow. She did not weep, but her head was aching violently. Suddenly, the recollection came athwart her, that it was thus that she had knelt by Felix's side when she first saw him on board the Sea Gull, and she started up as though a serpent stung her where she had laid her head. Her movement startled the captain. " Ha! little woman," he said, putting out his hand. " It is late is it not ? Have you had a pleasant evening ?" How tell him that it had been one of agony ? She left the room without an answer, and the captain fell asleep again. Later, she crept to her place beside him. Her last act was to snatch up the watch and trinkets she found lying on the coun- AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 147 JC terpane, and she fell asleep, her flushed cheek pillowed on tho hand that held 'them, as though there were safety from some unknown peril, if these gifts of her husband were but near. She fell asleep strange as it may seem to the naturally wakeful ; for there are persons easily exhausted by emotion ; and, when she awoke, it was because her cheek was kissed, and her husband, dressed, was standing over her. " Good bye, my little wife," he said, " I shall not see you to- morrow, it is the day of the poll ; but, the day after, I shall meet you and my mother at C , and come home with you from the Chairing." " Oh ! Leonard, stay a moment," she cried, starting up with an awakened remembrance of the griefs of yesterday. "I have something I want to ask you." " Be quick, then. I am in haste," he replied. " I will not detain you. It was to ask a question about Felix Captain Guiscard" she gasped, trying to collect her thoughts and to gain courage. " What of him ?" said the captain, tartly. " I thought you had forgotten him." "It was to ask you how you heard that he was dead ? at first, I mean." " Why do you ask ? Have you any doubts of it, my dear ?" said Captain Warner. " The official evidence is more convinc- ing than if I had told you he had died at Cabrera, on only my own authority." " Cabrera ! He died at Cabrera ?" " Cabrera. Yes. He died at Cabrera," said the captain. " Leonard," she said, rising up in her bed with that strange look he dreaded in her eyes, " you have deceived me. Was that right ? You know more than you have told me. You have deceived me, Leonard." " My love for you excuses me," began the captain, with a weak attempt at gallantry. " The subject was unwelcome to us both," he continued,*' and I considered I had done my best, when I gave you the fact upon the best authority. Why are you dissatisfied ? The man is dead. What has put him into 148 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. your head just now ? Have you been visited by bis ghost last night, little woman, in your dreams ?" " Hush ! Hush !" said Belle, her dark eyes fixed upon his face. " This is no time to trifle. Were you concerned in it ? How did you first hear that he was dead ?" " How could I be concerned in it ? You know, as well as I, that Cabrera is an island upon which the Spaniards landed the wreck of Dupont's army. It was reported to me when I went there, by Sir Charles Cotton's orders, to carry relief to the pri- soners on the island. I never saw him. It was a strange thing he should be there ; and the whole business, as I heard it, was so inexplicable and so fabulous, that I had great doubt if he were really dead, until that letter came from Annesley." " He had a brother, Col. Guiscard, whom I met " began Bella. " His brother !" interrupted Captain Warner. " Has that fel- low been trying to hold any communication with you ? I forbid you to see him. He is mad ; I shall have to shoot him, or else get him put into a lunatic asylum. The rascal set upon me when I was in Paris, a year ago, with the Allies. Remember what I say, Belle, and have nothing to do with him." He left the room, and she, turning on her pillow, hid her face in it, with deep-drawn sighs. Every now and then, as some recollection of her husband came to her, she would press her lips spasmodically upon her watch-case, or hold it shudder- ing from her, when dark thoughts arose, fraught with a name- less terror. It was late when she got up pale, languid, haggard, and little fit for the duties of the day, The first person she saw was the old lady, who came in, as she sat at breakfast, to glean some account of the party. " Very late, Mrs. Leonard. Much going out will not do, I see, for" you. I never allowed my engagements to interfere with the breakfast-hour of the household, and never with the comforts of the late Mr. Warner. But then I was brought up an English wife. I never had . any taete for the customs of foreigners ; they breakfast in bed, I believe. Who was there last evening ? AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 149 Bella tried to enumerate the company. " What did you say to Lord Loudoun ?" "I was not introduced to him," said Bella. " What did Sir John Pawley say to you ?" pursued the old lady. " Nothing. Nothing of any consequence." Bella would not tell her the nightingale stk>ry. " Mrs. Leonard," continued the old lady. " I want you to go with me to call upon Miss Armstrong. The carriage is to pick us up at the butcher's. By the way, I wonder you allow Goose- foot, contrary to my orders, to send you weighing meat with a neck of veal ?" " I really cannot go to-day. I caught cold, last night," said Bella. Mrs. W T arner was going to say something cross, about " ab- surd coddling" and " strengthening the constitution ;" but she changed the remark into " Who is that ?" as an open phaeton drove by the window. " Lady Harriet Rustmere," said the servant, announcing her. " I hope I see you in the enjoyment of your usual health, Mrs. Warner. My dear, excuse this early visit ; but an election excuses everything. I am full of business. You look pale, you naughty child. Caught a cold, eh ? I know how you got that cold last evening. I am going round to stir up some of our voters, and I want your presence and influence. It will give you an opportunity of seeing English character. Our people come out twice themselves at an election." " You must excuse, me, Lady Harriet. I have just declined to drive with Mrs. W r arner." " Pooh !" said Lady Harriet. " Mrs. Warner, I am an humble suitor to you on behalf of the good cause for the society of your daughter-in-law, and it is very disinterested in me to patronize her, for she cuts me out sadly with the gentlemen, Sir John Pawley particularly. I assure you, Mrs. Warner, that her conversation with Sir John Pawley last night amused us mightily. Such piquant questions !" " You are deeper than many persons give you credit for, Mrs. Leonard. A mask of simplicity often covers a great deal 150 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. with foreigners. When I was a young wife I had some respect for my husband's family 1 was English to be sure," said old Mrs. Warner, with a look of thunder. " I think I had better not go. I am really unwell," said Amabel, in a low voice, to Lady Harriet. " Nonsense, child," began the other ; but was interrupted by Bella's little footboy, in his stable jacket, who opened the door. Seeing company, he was going out again, but old Mi's. Warner called him. " What is it, William ?" " If you please, ma'am, I have been to Foxley," said the boy, giving his hair three pulls to the three ladies, " and the gentle- man is not staying there, but is over at C ; and he sends his compliments, and there is no answer." " Answer !" said Bella, indignantly, meeting her mother-in- law's stare. " Yes, ma'am, to the dog, from the French gentleman. But he sent word to know," continued the boy, anxious to do his commission thoroughly, " if master was to be out to-day, and what time you would be likely to be at home, ma'am." " Well, to be sure !" said Lady Harriet, rising, when the boy had left the room. " Now it is clear a beau is expected, I shall not press you to go." " Yes, Lady Harriet, pray pray let me go. I had rather do anything than meet that man to-day," was Bella's eager answer. " Mrs. Leonard," said the old lady, so soon as she could speak, " what errand did you send that boy upon to Foxley ?" " Col. Guiscard's little dog followed the carriage," she re- plied, looking the picture of confusion, " and I sent him back. I gave the boy no message. I wanted no answer." " It was a case of love at first sight," laughed Lady Harriet. " But," she added, in a lower voice, " I cannot but suspect that you had met before." AMABEL: A FAMILY HISTORT. 151 CHAPTER X. No demon, but a miserable man become savage and diseased from circumstances. S. MARGARET FULLER. " WHAT a dragon she is ! " cried Lady Harriet, when they were fairly rid of Mrs. Warner. " My wonder is that you put up with her." Lady Harriet was in an open phaeton, and it was bitter cold, though both ladies were cloaked and furred from heel to head. " The weather really is severe for March," said Lady Harriet. " Now tell me about Guiscard. Have you known him before, my dear ? " Bella denied she had, and made some remark about the con- tinuance of the cold weather. .Lady Harriet turned her attention to her horses, and her companion was left at leisure to reflect upon the accidents which threatened more than ever to mix her name with that of Col. Guiscard. They were barely out of the park gates when a horseman came in view. Lady Harriet saw him first, and cried, " Look, look, my dear. Is that your husband or your lover ? Warner or Guiscard ? " As she spoke, Colonel Ferdinand pulled up his horse beside the carriage, and honored Amabel with a familiar stare. She flushed with anger, shuddered, wrapped herself closer in her furs, and drew back into the corner of the carriage. Col. Guiscard kept his place, and addressed his conversation across her to her companion. Under the influence of his steady stare she grew more and more uncomfortable. As she turned over her situation in her mind, she suddenly became aware, that by thus keeping up a show of resentment, when so powerless to avenge her own wrongs, she was adding 152 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORT. to the triumph of her insolent tormentor. It was giving him to understand that he had an influence over her, and that his words and actions had the power to wound. When she understood this she roused herself, sat up in the phaeton, and looked deliberately, without change of coun- tenance, out of the carriage. She met his glances with a gaze of indifference, and made some trifling observation to Lady Harriet as though perfectly careless of the presence of Col. Guiscard. This change did not escape him, and for a moment he was at a loss to what he should attribute it. A little reflection, however, on the suddenness of the alteration revealed the truth to him. He had not given her credit for so much spirit, and now, as the huntsman exults in the swiftness and subtilty of his intended victim, or the warrior in battle, may Rejoice to feel A foeman worthy of his steel, this display of gallantry and spirit lent excitement to the game that he was playing to her ruin, and he began to feel a species of respect for her. " I am glad I can admire her," he said to himself, musingly, as he checked his horse whilst making these reflections and de- termining his line of conduct towards her. Resuming his place by her side, and continuing his conver- sation with Lady Harriet, he rode on, talking upon all kinds of subjects with a general knowledge and a fluency that proved him an adept in the art of conversation. Yet he talked mock- ingly ; his observations were seasoned with a dry, telling epi- grammatic raillery, the very thing to give success in a Parisian salon. He talked from the head, not from the heart; yet now and then in directing an observation to Amabel, he made her feel that something lay deeper in his heart to which she had the clue. Captain Warner had also a high reputation for conver- sational ability ; but when he laid himself out to be agreeable, it was his good-natured heartiness that secured his pleasing. His efforts to please were all from himself and in himself. Pro- vided only he was liked, he cared little for the itftelligence or AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 153 the character of mind of his companion. Col. Guiscard, oh the contrary, owed all his power of pleasing to the conscious- ness he gave to others that they were agreeable to himself. He exercised a magnetic influence, by means of which, in other minds, he reproduced his own. Amabel was astonished at the effect of his conversation. The more agreeable she was compelled to acknowledge him, the more resentment she felt. Her only thought was how she hated him, yet every moment was deepening an influence that she was not aware of; and increased the feeling of triumph at his heart, though it was no longer his policy to display that feeling to her. Suddenly the carriage stopped at a road-side public-house, where Lady Harriet wanted to cajole the landlord. " You need not get out here, my dear," she said ; " sit still." " Yes, Lady Harriet, I had rather," Bella replied, rising to follow her. She caught a sudden gleam from Ferdinand's dark eyes, such a gleam as shoots from the eye of the wild beast or the maniac, when they know their power is felt and that defenceless man is afraid of them. Bella met the glance with firmness, called up all her resolu- tion, drew her furs closer round her, and sank back into the carriage. Col. Guiscard came round to her; she looked boldly out upon the landscape, with her face turned towards him. It was a cold, calm, vacant look, which seemed to take him in without observing him.' " Do I owe you no explanation of my motives ?" he said, stooping towards her. " None," she replied, looking at him firmly. " The fact of your insolent behavior was enough. I have no concern nor interest in your motives." " But you cannot judge of my conduct without " " I have no curiosity to judge you." After a pause, " I was a brute last night," he said. She made no answer. " You are very unkind !" He tried to take her hand. Sho drew it from hiA steadily. Y* 154 AMABEL; A FAMILY BISTORT. " Sir," she said, " I am here, compelled to listen patiently, against my will, to any impertinence you may be pleased to address to me. Let that suffice. Do not presume to touch me !" " I am ready to acknowledge," he said, not appearing to notice her indignation, " that, last night, I wronged you." A little movement of her eyelids only, told how much she felt that he had wronged her. " I thought you careless and insen- sible. Not the woman I had pictured to myself as her whose cherished name was on my brother's lips till he died." " Oh ! tell me how he died !" " I dare not tell you how he died ; but I was with him. Hunger, disease, and mental suffering did their work. He wasted day by day ; but confidence in your love was his sup- port. His eye beamed always when he spoke of you. So young ! to be cut off by such cruel fate ! So young ! to be the victim of his love ! And he who loved so passionately whose very life was almost breathed away in words of love, to be so soon forgotten ! Forgive me if I judged unjustly. It was only by appearances I could judge." A pause followed. As soon as Bella could gain voice, she asked, " But why not tell me how he died ? Why did he leave me ?" " Do you believe that, of his own will, he left Valetta * Have you never heard . Do you believe that there has been no treachery to both of you ? Is this your love ? Can you believe all other men, and withhold trust from Felix only ?" " I do not mistrust. I only believe on evidence. Did not Felix leave me ? Does not deep mystery hang over his depar- ture ?" said Bella, with some spirit, in spite of her tears. " Poor child !" said Ferdinand. " It is better you should think so. I will not come with dreadful revelations to distract your married peace. Felix must still be the victim to hard thoughts ; his shall be in death the same fate that in life his O ' love would have accepted. He shall be sacrificed to the heart's peace of the woman he loved." " Why sacrificed ? Explain yourself. Col. Guiscard, I im- plore you to explain yourself. The truth cannot destroy my peace of mind." AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTOKY. 155 " I dare not put your generosity to such a proof," cried Col. Guiscard. " Yet, for my dead brother's sake, I will not, on my own responsibility, withhold this knowledge from you. But, were I to reveal the truth, it must recoil on Captain Warner. Are you prepared to sacrifice your husband to the dead Felix, and do justice to his memory ? Shall I tell you that which the man you ha^e married has purposely concealed from you? Shall I bid you curse your marriage-day ? Curse the fatal love- liness which tempted crime ? Shall I harrow all the womanly tenderness yet lingering in your heart, both for the man who married and the man who loved you ?' " Hush ! Hush !" cried Bella, starting up, and almost cover- ing his mouth with her hand. " Well, to be sure," said Lady Harriet, stepping into her carriage, attended by the landlord, bowing to her, behind. " Well, to be sure ! I can make some shrewd guesses, Colonel Guiscard. (To Bergholt, Thomas.) My dear, I recommend you Owley. He is a Blue voter, and has very good things. I advise you to step in, whenever you come over." " Lady Harriet," said Bella, clinging to her arm, " please take me home ; I am really too ill to go further." " Bless me I 1 ' said Lady Harriet, " she is pale. What have you been saying to her, Col. Guiscard ? Never mind. Keep out of her sight. Tell the coachman to drive fast to The Cedars. We should be there quicker, if the carriage could get through Water-lane. Ride on, colonel ; that will do. I can attend to Mrs. Warner." 156 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. CHAPTER XI. There are who, darkling and alone Could wish the weary night were gone ; * Though morning's dawn can only show The secret of their unknown woe. Who pray for sharpest throbs of pain To ease them of doubt's galling chain. " Only disperse the cloud," they cry, " And if our fato be death, give light and let us die." KEBLE. CHRISTIAN YEAR. A RIVER winds through the village near which The Cedars stands. A tortuous and sluggish river, with the rich meadow- lands of the valley on either side ; and, though navigable only for barges at the point we are describing, ten or twelve miles further on its course it opens out into a broad estuary, and ships of burden sail upon its waters up to its port, which stands not immediately upon the sea. The village itself, surrounding the fine church famed for its square tower, lies at the foot of the hill, crowned by the park of The Cedars. It consists princi- pally of one long street with a branch to the left, leading to the water-mill, an ugly, square construction, which has a dam across the river, and where, when the wheels are at work, the floodgate makes a miniature cascade. The river, at this point, was spanned till lately by a wooden foot-bridge, across which, about one o'clock upon the morning of the morrow, Amabel was passing with her husband's little boy. Already the child .had learned to love her. Little as he had seen of his step-mother, he had found out she was a pleasant play- mate; he knew she could tell funny stories ; he was sure of never being teased by her for childish attentions, and there was some- thing about her which made him always confident of sympathy and love. Katie Warner she had rarely seen. The old lady had put her at a strict school in the neighboring village, and her Christmas holidays had been passed at Brighton with a kinswoman of her mother's, a Miss Taylor. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 15*7 The boy, a pale and sickly child, with a high spirit, was bois- terously glad of his release from Mrs. Mathers. He ran back- wards and forwards like a dog before her, boasting of what he could do, and darfd to do, with what we might call an Irish dis- regard of the current value of words. He was suffered to do and say pretty much what he pleased without reproof or obser- vation, for the thoughts of his step-mother were pre-occupied, and there were cares that weighed upon her spirit which all his random prattle could not charm away. " I hear something splashing along Water-lane," she said at length, rousing herself, as they stood upon the little bridge, with the mill lock on their left, and the second lock of the river at some distance on their right hand. Johnny paused a moment, and, holdisg by his step-mother's skirts, tried to climb up by the railing. " Stand down, Johnny. Water-lane is deep. At this sea- son," she added, " I fancy few people come down there." " It's a bullock got in. He's got in there," said Johnny, jumping. "A great, big, fat bull. I'm not afraid of him. He'll run at you" " Let us go and see," said Bella. u Yes," cried the boy. " They drive them in here to rest on their way to London. They are sometimes very savage very savage in this field." " Stay here, then," said Bella, and hurried alone into the meadow. She parted the alders that overhung the lane," a torrent tributary of the river in winter a bed of stones in sum- mer-time. " It is no bullock, Johnny," she cried. " You may come. It is a man and horse struggling in the water." The horse was slipping upon the bed of slimy pebbles, and his rider was with difficulty holding him up. At the sound or her voice he turned towards her. Bella drew back suddenly. It was Col. Guiscard. "Oh ! see," shouted her little step-son. " They are letting out the water from the mill. He will get into the stream ; it will carry him away. He will go floating, floating through the bridge out into the great, wide, big sea yonder." 158 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. At tliis moment little Barba, who accompanied the Colonel, scrambled up the bank to where they stood. Col. Guiscard saw his danger. Bella saw it too. A few steps further, and his horse, swept off his feet by the rush of the seething mill-stream, would be dashed against the bridge, and drawn under it. " Col. Guiscard !" she shouted. " Turn your horse's head. Here is a landing-place," and parting the bushes, she showed him a bullock track between the alders. Reining his slipping, frightened horse with a powerful hand, he succeeded in turning his head towards her. The moment was critical. Bella looked on in terror. A moment more, and the snorting, dripping animal struck his fore-feet on the bank, and stood trembling and powerless, safe on terra firma. Col. Guiscard sprang off. " Now I can speak a few words with you alone." he cried, seizing her hand and pressing it warmly. " Forgive me ! for- give me, sweetest lady, whom I dared to wrong before I under- stood." " Let me go, sir," cried Amabel, struggling to get free. " Hear me," cried Ferdinand, on his knees before her. " I will not hear, sir. Get up," she said, in a voice of great irritation. " I came here to see you," said Ferdinand, slowly obeying her. " It is the last time. I am going back to France. Have you heard the news ?" " What ?" she cried, with her manner changed at once. " Is Felix come ? Is Felix living ?" "Felix," he said, "died long ago. The emperor has escaped from Elba." " Napoleon !" She clasped her hands, and for a moment both forgot their relative situations in one common enthusiasm. " Now hear me. It is the last time I can explain," began the Colonel. " I will not hear you," said Amabel. " You make me miser- able more miserable than I was before I knew you. I wished when we first met to have approached you as the brother of Felix, one dear to me yes, dear to me, in that relation. You AMABEL; A FAMILY BISTORT. 159 repulsed me you insulted me, and now you come to tell me, as you told me yesterday, when I could not resent it, that it was not at me alone you aimed your insults, but through me at my husband." " You have bitter thoughts of him," he said, " or you would not so pettishly repulse all explanation." She made no answer, but turned away. " Nay," said he, "before you go, hear this. That Felix left a dying message for you, which I cannot, will not, am bound not to deliver till the mystery of his departure the manner of his death has been revealed to you." She stopped, and looked at him. " Captain Warner can do this," he said. " Perhaps you have already questioned him ?" She made no answer. " Had you been told by him I might have spoken." She pressed her hands upon her brow. She had no power to decide. She only felt that the moment was rapidly passing away for her decision. That she was called upon to choose between her first love and her husband. That whilst on the one hand this was the last opportunity she might ever have to hear the last words and justification of Felix, on the other it was a fearful thing for a married woman deliberately to choose to hear in favor of a lover that which she knew beforehand was to implicate her husband. But Captain Warner had not been frank with her in the first instance. There was the greatest sting. Col. Guiscard stood and watched her. The struggle in her mind was his triumph. He had been aiming to produce it ever since he saw her. Whatever her decision in the case might be, it would avenge him of his adversary. Should her sense of allegiance, as a wife, yield to the desire to justify her early lover, he would build on this first step of conscious wrong the firm foundation of his future power. Even should duty prevail over love, he had his triumph he had stufied with thorns her marriage pillow. God knows, poor child, how she would have chosen. Which- ever way it had chanced, she would have repented her decision. 160 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. Probably some accidental circumstance would have settled it ; for, as a modern philosopher has observed, " The power of accident is strong, where the strength of design is weak." The time was passing. She had lost the power to think ; or, rather, her thoughts were wandering to happy days and sunny Malta, contrasting " what was now, with what had been." Leaning against one of the wooden posts which protected the little bridge from the intrusion of the cattle, with her arms close folded over her heaving bosom, Amabel Warner stood deciding her own destiny. Her eyes were turned towards the foaming, eddying waters of the river, and as she watched the swift flowing of the current, a vague feeling absorbed all her thoughts, that it would be happiness thus to pass away into an unknown future, and leave the past behind. Her choice ? " I cannot tell, God knoweth." She herself perhaps never knew. For the moments passed as swiftly as the waters ; when suddenly there was uttered at some distance a wild, terrified, piercing cry. In a moment her still form was reanimated by terror. The child, whom she had quite forgotten in the deep and agonizing interest of her conversation with Ferdinand, had been amusing himself with the dog. Perhaps Barba had indulged some canine feelings in a bark of bravado at the cattle ; at any rate he drew upon himself the attention of three or four young bullocks at the further end of the large field, and when Amabel was roused by Johnny's frightened scream, these, with their heads down and their tails raised, were in full career after the dog, which ran after the child, who was hastening with all the speed that terror lent his little legs, directly away from Col. Guiscard and herself, along the narrow barge path that led beside the river. With a scream more terrified, more agonized, more piercing than the child's, Amabel, in her turn, ran in pursuit of them. The dog turned off to the left, the bullocks after him, and they were soon half a quarter of a mile from Johnny, at the further end of the field ; but the child did not slacken his pace. In vain his step-mother called to him to stop. He ran on, still be- AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 161 lieving the dog and the oxen were behind him. There was a low fence and a ditch that separated this meadow from its neigh- bor. A hurdle had been put up where it crossed the path. The child, only anxious to put this barrier between himself and his imaginary pursuers, attempted to get round it on the river side. The green weeds on which he set his foot were treacherous. His little hands strove to grasp the hurdle ; it trembled, flew from him, and he was in the water. Amabel, who reached the spot a moment after, was about to plunge in after him, when she was seized and violently flung back by the strong arm of Col. Guiscard. Recovering herself, she saw him throw off his coat, and spring from the bank into the rapid, rushing water. The river at that point, though not wide, was very deep, and one of the boys from the Grammar School had, the year before, been lost there. The child had sunk, and came up, borne by the current, at some distance towards the other side of the river. The river was running very swiftly at the time, aggravated by the addi- tion of the rapid waters from the mill-stream, but Col. Guiscard was a first-rate swimmer, and struck out boldly, though en a cumbered with his boots and spurs. A second time the boy sank. When he rose again his preserver was near him. He caught him by the little dress, that floated like the bell of some large flower on the surface of the water. They were close to the lock gates, and nearer to the right bank of the river than the left. It was useless to attempt to swim with his burden back across the stream. Col. Guiscard, with great exertion, for the bank was very steep, landed safely on the other side. " Cross the field in a straight line," shouted Amabel across the water. " Take the lane behind the workhouse, and that will lead you to the back of our cottage." She herself, taking the longer way across the bridge, followed them. Over the fields and through the lane by which she had directed him, she ran, without regard to paths or fences, or anything, save % shaping a straight course. Her bonnet was flung back, her hair had been thrown down ; the people who met her looked at her in astonishment. But she did not heed them ; she had not breath to speak. She ran so 162 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. swiftly as to reach her own door at the same moment as Ferdi- nand, when, taking his insensible burden from his arms, she bore the boy up stairs, and laid him on her bed. CHAPTER XII. And here was plenty to be done, And she that could do it great and small, She was to do nothing at all. R. BROWNING. FLIOHT or THE DUCHESS. " WILL he live ?" cried Amabel to the apprentice of the village surgeon and apothecary. Pale lips ask daily the same question, and weeping eyes fas- tened upon the solemn face of the physician, anticipate the reply. As she spoke, she was kneeling by the bed applying warm flannels to the feet of the drowned child, and such other simple remedies as her experience suggested. She did not pause in her employment as she asked the question. It seemed as though she was afraid to lose some precious moment that might assist in his recovery. Just then the bed-room door opened, and Mrs. Buck, the housekeeper, came into the room. She took the flannel out of the hands of Amabel, and remarked, as she did so, " Leave all this, if you please, to me. I am responsible for the dear child to Mrs. Warner. I have sent a man and horse after my mis- tress, who is gone to Miss Armstrong's to pass the day. You had better leave all this to the young man ana me, and go down stairs, if you please, ma'am." " / leave the child ! / leave the child to you ? " cried Ama- bel, looking up suddenly. " You had better, ma'am. The child is not put under your care, but my mistress's." Mrs. Warner entered. " She will settle it," continued Buck. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 163 " Pray, ma'am, is it me, or young Mrs. Warner, that you wish, should attend upon the child ?" " Mrs. Leonard," said the old lady, her lips quivering with emotion. " Leave this room ; the rest of the house is clear." Amabel rose from her knees, and cast an indignant look around her. The housekeeper and the apprentice were con- sulting over their patient's bed. " Look as you will, Mrs. Leonard. Aye, look as proud as Lucifer, as bold as brass before me ; but I have heard such things of you to-day as ought to humble you into the very dust," said the old lady. " This is no place to quarrel, ma'am," said Amabel. " I at least respect a death-bed." This said, she left the room. She heard the bolts drawn after her; but she could not tear herself away. She knelt down at the door, hearkening to every sound. She heard the servants' voices there ; they were permitted to enter by the back staircase, whilst she was kept away. She heard the authoritative voice of Mrs. Buck, the solemn voice of the young man, the apothecary, the trembling voice of the poor grand- mother ; at last, a tiny, feeble voice, asking some incoherent question. She sprang to her feet with a joyful cry. Then, at last, she went down stairs ; her heart swelling with indignation against old Mrs. Warner, with contempt for the littleness which had exposed her before inferiors, and with deeply wounded pride. A servant, passing through the hall, gave her a letter, adding, " The gentleman desired me to say, ma'am, he should not leave C to-morrow, as he mentioned, but should put off his journey in hopes to hear from you." Bella took the letter. Her heart beat as she opened it ; but it was only an invitation from Lady Harriet to dine that day and sleep at Foxley, and go with their party to the Chairing at C . 'She stood with it in her hand before the fire, with many thoughts fast crowding on her mind, when a noise at the window drew her attention. It was Colonel Guiscard on horse- back. He had ridden close up to the house, and was tapping with his whip upon one of the window-panes. She threw open the window. " He lives !" she said. " He 164 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. lives ! The gratitude of my whole life will be too little to repay you, Col. Guiscard !" He leaned forward and took her hand. " Oh ! had you been but true to Felix longer had you de- layed this marriage all might have been well. Felix's wishes would have been fulfilled. My life's devotion must have secured your happiness. And even yet " A rough hand from within pulled Bella from the window. Ferdinand waved a farewell and rode off. Bella turned and confronted Mrs. Buck, sent down by Mrs. Warner. " My mistress desires you will keep to this room, ma'am, and not stir till she can see you, which will be after the doctor from C , that I have sent to fetch, has been and gone. The dear child has come to himself, and spoken a little ; but he had better not have spoken, for every word he said was worse to my mistress's heart than a dagger." Here Mrs. Buck's manner changed suddenly. Overcome by virtuous indignation, and, I may add also, with a deep regard for the peace and honor of the family, she exclaimed, vehemently, " Oh ! you wicked wicked foreign woman, you !" It is easy to imagine the effect this had on Amabel's excited, wounded feelings, on a temper equally uncurbed and proud. This from an inferior, in her own house, and she powerless to resent it ! Now, indeed, she felt utterly friendless, a foreigner, forlorn. She bit her lips till Mrs. Buck had swept out of the drawjng-room, and stood, looking after her, without any change of countenance. She would not, for the world, have let her see how much her words had moved her. To be alone, struggling alone, with an injustice, how hard it is ! How little the con- sciousness of innocence will bear one up, until, on principle, we have learned to rest satisfied with the testimony of a good con- science before God ! Her conscience, however, would have reproached her had. she consulted it, not in the way that Mrs. Buck imagined, but with a thousand instances of want of lov- ingness, of rebellion against the destiny assigned to her. As Buck closed the door, she flung herself upon a sofa. She tried to weep, but she could not. She buried her convulsed features in the? cushions and stamped her feet with rage, and AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 165 wrung her hands. By degrees, all this subsided into a sort of stupor. At last something roused her. She looked up ; it was snow- ing. The branches of the trees were becoming frosted ; the grass was just covered with a transparent lace-work of snow. She got up and looked out of the window. Suddenly, the words of the prodigal occurred to her. She repeated them several times, thinking of Captain Warner. She felt she should be safe and happy under his care. She dreaded her own weak- ness. She was wounded by her inferiors ; above all, she dreaded lest something he might hear from others might infuse a vile suspicion into his mind ; and she was resolute to tear from him the secret of Felix Guiscard's death, however unwilling he might prove to part with it. She was true to him ; she was still true. And oh ! how few supports were given to her faithfulness of heart amidst the trials of that hour. Why did he leave her so exposed ? Why did he leave her doubtful about Felix ? A little frankness, a little love would yet have saved her. She was resolved to arise and go to his protection. ****** The snow fell only in scattered flakes, as she went on foot along the avenue. She had wrapped herself in warm clothing and left the house without consulting Mrs. Warner. She was going to her husband, and to no one else was she responsible. Her intention was to go down to the village, and thence take the post-chaise to C ; but, as she mounted the brow of the hill, she saw it coming homewards, full of drunken electors, a drunken post-boy on the box, and the tired horses covered with sweat and foam. She paused and looked around her. She must walk to C . She had no thought of turning back, and I believe her excitement would, without fatigue, have car- ried her there. Her last memory of her cottage home was as it lay half a quarter of a mile upon her right, its gable ends projecting through the shrubbery ; its tiled roofs white with snow. As she was turning away to continue her walk through the. increasing darkness, her ear caught the sound of wheels upon 166 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. the gravel. It was the doctor from C , who had driven in through the other entrance. She had not been aware of his arrival, and now stopped him, as he approached the gate, to inquire for his patient. " Doing well," was the substance of his answer. " A damp night," he added, " Mrs. Warner. The fogs of your valley induce ague. Let me advise your returning to the house ; you may contract catarrh." " Are you going to C ?" " I shall be there in fifty minutes. Have you any com- mands f" " I believe I shall ask you for a seat in your gig. I want to go to the Committee-rooms, to meet my husband. The village chaise is engaged, and the night is too riotous for me to go alone." " I will make a point of seeing Captain Warner, and of as- suring him the little boy is out of danger." Strange, that wrapped up in the details of her own position, that reason for seeking him had not occurred to her. She seized it at once, however. " No," she replied, " I will drive over to C with you. My husband will not be easy till he has heard how it occurred." Seated beside the doctor, wrapped in her cloak and absorbed in her own thoughts, which, tending to no conclusion, served only to fatigue her mind, she drove up to the principal Inn in C , then occupied by the Blue Committee. There was a good deal of excitement and some crowd before the door. As soon as the doctor could force his horse amongst the people, she sprang out, and, passing through a mob of electors, entered the Crown Inn, and asked the first waiter she met for Captain Warner. " Captain Warner, madam, is gone, I believe, to dine at Mr. O'Byme's with a large party." " Gone !" she said aloud. She was smitten to the heart by the thought that at the moment when she so much needed his support, he had been attracted by her rival. . "I will go and make sure," said the waiter. " What name shall I say, ma'am ?" AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 167 She waited a moment, and then Mr. Rustmere came out of a side room. " What ! you here, Mrs. Warner ?" "I want to see my husband." " He is over at O'Byrne's. Can I do anything for you ? You can't get at him to-night. It is a large party." " You can order me a post-chaise," she replied, " for I must see him." " There is not a chaise to be had this evening," said the waiter. " They are all taken up by the electors." " I have my gig here, and am going home," said Mr. Rust- mere. " You must come home with me. To-morrow morning I will drive you over. You will meet your husband at the Chairing. He will sleep at O'Byrne's." " I had rather not," she said. " But there is no alternative," said Mr. Rustmere. " You cannot pass the night alone in an inn in town." CHAPTER XIII. With cruel weight these trifles press A temper sore with tenderness, When aches the void within. COLCBIDOK. As they drove, next morning, into C , the crowd was great and vociferous. At the narrow end of the High street, several mob orators, mounted upon chairs, were haranguing, either upon the election itself or the escape from Elba. As the Rust- mere carriage came in sight the livery was recognised, a large party of Yellow boys raised three groans for all aris- tocrats, and a tumult rose accordingly. Stones were thrown; coarse jests assailed the ears of Amabel ; the coachman, fear- ing for himself, his horses, and his carriage, lost all presence of mind, and appeared anxious to turn, off into the yard of the 168 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. ^ * J? Yellow inn the Red Lion. The horses grew restive. The license of an election day that day on which the rnob asserts and exercises its rights of sovereignty, treats its masters as its servants, and lays bare, for the space of a few hours, all the passions, the rankling sense of injuries, the prejudices and hatreds that find their vent, at other times, only in low pot- houses did not otfer any protection to ladies when the party- badges that they wore had been disregarded, and the party- watchwords that they used had no influence to calm the popu- lar rage. An English rnob aroused must, indeed, be terrible to a woman and a foreigner. Lady Harriet, a person of much nerve, kept calm ; but Amabel became thoroughly frightened. She lost her presence of mind ; she screamed and struggled to undo the door of the carriage, hoping, probably, in the extremity of her terror, to escape on foot, unnoticed, through the crowd, the more terrible, because brutally jocular. She succeeded, in spite of her companion's eiforts, in making her escape, and found herself almost immediately seized by Ferdinand Guiscard. The Abbe C was with him, and the attention of the crowd being, by her movement, directed towards them, they were recognised at once with a groan of reprobation. Every vile epithet which national feeling had, for years, given to Bona- parte, was howled after them. Amabel had put herself in a worse position than if she had kept her seat in the Rustmere carriage. Followed, jostled, insulted with coarse words, and narrowly escaping being pelted with election missiles, the trio made their way into the Red Lion. Amabel was shown into H private parlor, whither the Colonel and the Abbe followed her. It was long before she could compose herself, or summon courage to look out upon the crowd that filled the street below. A few doors above the Red Lion, and opposite to the Crown Hotel, where sat the Blue Committee, was the great Blue book- seller's and stationer's. Here Lady Harriet sat, the centre of a party of gentlemen. It was the head-quarters of the Blues, and a staging had been erected for the ladies' accommodation. Thither Miss O'Byrne rode up on horseback, and Captain War- ner, smiling, talking, and triumphant, was at her side. His wife AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 169 sat watching him. He crossed the street, turned into the court- yard of the Crown, and went into the Committee-room. A few minutes after, Mr. Rustmere, sent by Lady Harriet, came across the street, and entered the Red Lion. The crowd set up an ironical huzza when it saw the Blue leader passing over to the head-quarters of the Yellow party. He came up- stairs to Amabel ; gravely, but politely, offered her his arm, and told her she had better join Lady Harriet and her own party. He bowed to Col. Guiscard, and declined his escort for Mrs. Warner, stating that he was well known by the crowd, and perfectly capable of protecting her. As she passed across the street, she saw a servant-boy of Mrs. Warner's amongst the ostlers at the inn-door, and from him she learned the child was better ; that Mrs. Warner continued at the cottage, and had, even in a few hours, made alterations in the establishment which seemed to indicate an intention to take everything into her own hands. When Mr. Rustmere delivered her over to his wife, Lady Harriet seemed provoked at her imprudence ; and the county ladies, gay, triumphant, and radiant in Blue ribbons, seemed to shrink from the bewildered, frightened foreigner, who wore no party badge. Preparations for the Chairing went on. A passage was made through the crowd for the procession ; blue flags of every shade were gaily waving ; the city bells were ringing ; bands of music were tuning. The Blue platform was brought forth, borne upon the shoulders of a dozen stalwart husband- men, covered with Blue favors, on Avhich, standing before an arm- chair, blue damask decked with silver, the new member, in full yeomanry uniform, was to be paraded bowing through the town, surrounded by his committee on horseback, and his prin- cipal supporters. Just as the procession was forming, Captain Warner came out of the inn, entered the stationer's house, and came out upon the staging. His wife rose, seized both his hands, and drew him into an inner chamber. " Oh ! Leonard, I have so much to tell you," she began. " Well, my love, tell me another time," he answered. " Is not this great news ?" 8 1<0 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. " You do not know what has happened," she continued. " What has happened ?" he replied. " Is anything amiss ? My mother "he looked round him with alarm. " Why is she not with you ?" " She is well enough. But little Johnny has been nearly drowned, and it was my fault. He is better now." " Good heavens ! How did it occur ?" cried the captain, beginning to work himself into a fuss, in the midst of which, as his wife was soothing him and explaining the accident, he was summoned to the Committee-room. " Thank God," he cried, " it was no worse. Kiss the child- ren for me. Belle, my little wife, I am here to say good-bye. I'll write to you from London. This landing of Boney's has given me a ship. I have a letter from the Admiralty in my pocket, ordering me, without delay, to Spithead, to take com- mand of the Magician. I shall be off the moment that this thing is at an end. My post-chaise is getting ready." " Oh ! Leonard, do not leave me !" She clung to him. " Nonsense ! Nonsense !" he replied, half-laughing at her tears. " Cheer up, little woman, I shall not be long away. You shall hear from me. I may stop a day or so in town." " Captain Warner, you are wanted, if you please, sir," said a waiter. " There, there, my time is up." " Oh ! Leonard, what is to become of me ?" " I must go, my little woman," cried the captain. " If I ain delayed at Portsmouth, I will write for you to join me ; but I hope to be off at once for the Mediterranean. I leave a credit for you at the bank. Good bye ! Good bye !" he repeated, each time with a kiss. " Give my duty to my mother. Kiss the children. Good bye ! Good bye !" She saw him mount his horse and bow to Miss O'Byrne. He looked up with a smile to catch her eye. He was full of excite- ment ; glad to be employed. He was gone ! And Amabel was left ; left a stranger amongst strangers. The seafarer, wrecked and destitute upon a hostile shore ! She could not rejoin the gay party on the staging. Lady Harriet came into the room and tried to comfort her. FAMILY HISTORY. 171 She urged her to forget her grief, anfci* ^ them to Foxley. This invitation was very acceptable "" thought, a hope, a plan of escape possessed her. She already resolved not to go back to Mrs. Warner. Her hus- band being ordered to the Mediterranean, there was a chance of return to her own happy Maltese home. She would write for his permission to live, during his term of service, with Dr. Glascock or her uncle. From the former she had, a few days before, received a letter, the first he had written to her since her marriage. She had not shown it to her husband, partly because he had always been pre-occupied with the business of the election, partly because it contained several remarks very far from complimentary, upon her marriage. " Should you ever be in want of protection or a home," it said, "remember Malta. The time may come when, in the general wreck, you sink your pride." She wrote old Mrs. Warner a civil note with a bad pen, desiring her to forward her clothes and maid to Foxley. That done, she resigned herself to Lady Harriet. But, at the time, she was not aware that the invitation had been extended to Col. Ferdinand and the Abbe, as, after the events of the morn- ing, their stay at C -- , amidst all the excitement of a coming war and the license of an election, was not considered likely to be safe or very agreeable. So Amabel returned to Foxley. As soon as she could escape to her own chamber, she threw off her cloak and bonnet, and seating herself at a table, began a letter to her husband. The tender tears had dried that she had shed for his departure. During her drive to Foxley, she had been meditating upon her position and her wrongs. She says herself of this letter, that it was " stiff, cold, and harsh. I tried to strip my remonstrance of all passion. I succeeded in making it bare of feeling too." She told her husband that she would not, during his absence, submit to Mrs. Warner ; that every house must have its own sole head, and that she was a stranger in her own establish- ment. That her married life had been anything but a happy one ; that she pined for her home in Malta ; that her uncle or Dr. Glascock would still receive her. She told him, too, that 172 AMABEL A FAMILY his conduct had bee^^r f rom frank with reference to the death and dis^p^a'hce o f Captain Guiscard ; and desired him, rather fefSn conjured him, ere the moment when his explanation would satisfy her doubts had passed away, to tell her all. She even hinted at his preference for Miss O'Byrne, adding that she knew his choice of herself had not been wisely made, and that he, as well as herself, was sensible that, for the good of both, it had been best that they had never been united. This letter she put into the post that night, and directed it to his London lodging. This done, she went down stairs, and found there Col. Guiscard and the Abbe. The colonel, that evening, paid her much attention ; and, softened towards him by his bravery, and emboldened by a sense of comparative independence, she allowed him to approach her. He was calm, courteous, polished, and respectful. He avoided all exciting topics. She talked to him of Brittany, and there was something in the tones of his voice that reminded her of his brother. It was the first time she had ever felt the relationship. The next day passed. It was Thursday. A great fete was to be given by the Rustmeres the next evening, and Amabel assisted Lady Harriet in making preparations. On the morrow, she watched with eagerness the post-bag, which, at breakfast, was handed to Mr. Rustmere. There was no letter for her, and her heart sank within her. The making of jellies, the preparation of lemonade and sugar-baskets went on ; for, in those days, such fanciful cookery was done at home in country places. It was not yet the era of Strasburg pies, habitual champagne, or the discovery of Lake Wenham. Amabel was skinning almonds when she received a summons to the drawing room. A drawing-room, stripped bare of fur- niture and carpets, the doorways muslined, and its nakedness masked only, like that of our first parents, with green leaves, is a solemn and a cheerless sight on the morning of a festivity ; nor was it made less awful to poor Amabel by the appearance of Mrs. "\Varner. Dressed in her black pelisse, and frowning under her black bonnet, she stood in the centre of the bare floor with a letter in her hand. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 173 " Pray, sit down, Mrs. Warner," said her daughter-in-law, proceeding to drag forward the hard end of a rout bench. " I shall not sit down in this house, Mrs. Leonard," was the answer. Each party stood a moment waiting the commencement of the other, when suddenly Mrs. Warner opened upon her daugh- ter-in-law a broadside of the bitterest reproaches. Amabel was struck with astonishment by hearing how circumstantially every one of her acts and words had been reported, and how cruel had been the construction put upon them by her mother-in-law. At first she was made angry ; then the terrible distress of the old lady at the scandal brought upon her house moved her. With tears, and prayers, and asseverations of innocence, she tried to make an impression on her. But the respectability of Mrs. Warner was inflexible. She seemed to think the occasion for talk given to the neighborhood a sin unpardonable. Ajpa- bel found that the only basis for anything like a reconciliation would be her surrender at discretion ; the relinquishment of her separate establishment ; her residence henceforth under the old lady's roof, and complete subjection to her will in all things ; her instant removal from Foxley ; her renunciation of all society during her husband's absence, and of all wish for change, of all predilection for anything French, either in taste or manners. These conditions were based upon a sentence she had received that morning in a letter from her son, which she showed to Amabel. " I am quite unconscious of ever having given her cause of complaint against me. The tone in which she writes is most extraordinary. About that early lover of hers, I have told her all I know, though she prefers not to believe me. I shall answer her from. Portsmouth; but, meanwhile, be pleased to tell her that I entirely disapprove of her joining me at Malta. I think, with you, she has had enough of foreign association, and should wish her to give up our own residence at the cottage, and remain with you while I am away. My outfit and my table are expensive, and, during my absence, by giving up our separate establishment, we may save a little money." These words hurt Amabel more than all that had come be- 174 AMABEL; A FAMILY BISTORT. fore. It was too much that her letter should be treated cava- lierly by her husband, its answer so carelessly postponed, that she should be considered as a whimsical young girl, whose fancies must be overruled for her own good, her hopes all dashed, her doubts not even answered, her indignant remon- strances pooh-poohed, her feelings disregarded ! This last drop crowned the cup of all her fancied wrongs and sorrows. She made no allowance for the haste, the worry, the character of the writer. She lost her self-command. She burst into a torrent of reproach to Mrs. Warner, who left Foxley, shaking off the dust of her feet against it and its inhabitants, and bitterly distressed, it must be added, at the result of her visit on the prospects and happiness of her son. " I have one way left me for escape," were the last words she heard from Amabel, as she departed, " and, come what may, I will never never live with you !" CHAPTER XIV. And to be wroth with one we lore Doth work like madness on the brain. COLERIDGE. CHRISTABEL. " DID you ever," says my father, in that account of his experi- ence which he has added to our narrative " Did you ever see a strong man bowed to earth by a tornado of misfortune ? Recall the agony you may have witnessed, as you peruse this portion of our story, or else thank God you never looked upon such sorrow. Men are sooner struck down, I think, than women. One can see at once on them the scathing change made by calamity ; women seem to wither slowly as affliction becomes sobered into a settled sorrow." My father says that, on the morning of this Friday, he went, by appointment, to join Captain Warner, at the lodgings in Warwick street, which he had always occupied when a single AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 175 man in town. My father had received his lieutenant's com- mission, and was appointed to the Magician. He was to break- fast with his captain and accompany him down to Spithead, where the frigate was lying at anchor. When he went into the room, he found his captain dressed, holding his watch and an open letter in his hand. My father says his look of agony was such as is sometimes seen upon the faces of the dead in battle. " Eat your breakfast," he said, almost fiercely, pointing to the untouched food upon the table ; " that is, if you want any and come along." " The coach does not start till ten, sir," said my father. " It does, sir," said Captain Warner. My father sat down to table. " Theodosius," said Captain Warner, " how far are you dis- posed to serve me ?" " In anything, sir. Try me." His mother was own cousin to Captain Warner. " I mean," said the other, hurriedly, " would you follow me, were I to desert the ship ? She is to sail with the first wind that will carry her down Channel. I must settle, before I join her, an account of life and death. Will you stand by me ?" My father started up. " Yes, sir," he cried, flattered by the service required of him. It was evident he was asked to be the second of his captain. "I ask you," Captain Warner went on, "because you are my kinsman because I should be losing time were I to attempt to seek another friend." " Never fear, sir," cried my father, " we'll catch up, sir, with the Magician." " Do not count on that, sir," sternly replied Captain Warner. " You may be broke and I be shot by a court-martial." Then the two men in silence left the chamber. A word from Captain Warner settled their destination. My father found they were going into the Eastern counties. The splendid coaches of that day, if they suited with your time, were surer in their speed than posting. As they stood waiting in the yard of the Bull Inn, Aldgate, Captain Warner, without speaking, 176 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. put a letter into my father's hand. The letter was one he had received that morning, sent up express by Mrs. Warner, My father says it left no doubt upon his mind of the infidelity, or, at least, the culpable imprudence of Mrs. Leonard Warner. The facts old Mrs. Warner knew are known more fully to the reader ; the deductions and exaggerations she engrafted on them he may conceive. The captain saw a man he knew mounting the box, and took his place inside. He concealed his face as much as possible during the whole journey. When they got out at C , my father, for the first time, obtained a full view of him, and found the day had made him look years older. The long, light hair, which generally was brushed back stiffly from his brow, seemed to have grown suddenly lank ; already he looked thiu. " Horses !" he shouted to the waiter at the Crown Inn. " Horses and a chaise to Foxley." " I beg your pardon, captain ; but I fear we can't," said that functionary. " Everything we has is took up already as it were to Foxley. They have been undistinguished in their invita- tions, sir. It is, sir, you know, sir, Lady Harriet Rustmere's great Blue Ball." " Who is that ? Is that you, captain ?" said the landlord, coming out of a side room. " Glad to see you. Want horses to Foxley, do you say ? I think your lady has engaged my last," referring to a long ledger. " Our very last pair, this after- noon, and a chaise from the Red Lion. What was it, William ? Something queer, I'm thinking." " Only, sir, that Mrs. Captain Warner wanted a chaise and horses on to London, to pick her up to-night at twelve o'clock at the London-road gate of the Park at Foxley. ^1 sent her word there was nothing she could have but an old yellow chariot at the Red Lion, and our boy could not go with her no further than Witham. I wanted to know if the chariot would do, and the boy thought it might, as Mrs. Warner tellflfl him they wouldn't be over two, and not a party." Poor Amabel ! Her ignorance of the laws of English post- ing had led her to furnish this information to her messenger, a boy who rode that afternoon to C on a cook's errand for AMA.BEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 177 lemons. She thought of taking her maid with her in her flight, but had not made up her mind, nor had she told her. " Where is that carriage f ' said Captain Warner. " Getting ready, sir. Will you have it ?" My father replied " Yes ;" for Captain Warner could not answer. Belle, with a fixed purpose of escape deep in her heart, showed herself that night in the Rustmeres' ball-room. Her wrongs appeared to justify an extreme measure upon her part. Her mind was made up not to live with her mother-in-law, in the absence of her husband. During the last three days she had been maturing a plan of escape, to take effect provided she received no favorable response to the letter of entreaty she had addressed to Captain Warner. She was resolved to go to Malta, and place herself under the protection of her friends. She knew that Doctor Glascock would receive her, and she thought she might dictate terms by his advice which would secure her emancipation from old Mrs. Warner. But, having assumed this position of independence, it seemed to her but right that she should know the ground on which she stood. As she could get no explanation from her husband with refer- ence to the death of Felix Guiscard, she determined to demand that which Ferdinand had promised her. She knew that his reluctance to enlighten her had been a feint. She knew, also, that, having listened to what he had to say, he would conceive himself possessed of a certain power over her ; and she had begun to fear him. It occurred to her that by a sudden flight from Foxley she might elude him, and, in a moment of child- ish frenzy, ordered a post-chaise from C to pick her up, at midnight, at the eastern gate of Foxley. She said not a word to any person of her purpose, fearing to leave some clue which might put her in his power. Her preparations had been made, her few ctfcthes packed, and it only remained to hear the history, the message, the dying words of Felix. For this she now entered the conservatory, leaning on the arm of Col. Guiscard. " I am come here to listen to you," she said. " You have a 8* 178 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. message and a narrative to give me. You may not have ano- ther opportunity. I will receive them now." *" Are you prepared ?" " Perfectly." She sat down on a sofa, put there for the guests, and he sat down beside her. Whatever emotions may have agitated her while he spoke, she made no observations. Many dancers dur- ing the next two hours came into the conservatory, and heard him earnestly addressing her, and went away to make unkind remarks on the flirtation going on between the French colonel and Mrs. Warner. COLONEL GUISCARD'S NARRATIVE. " When the army of Dupont was surrendered at Baylen," continued the colonel, after relating how Felix had been kidnapped on board the Dodo, in 1809, in Malta harbor,* " the regiments then on their way for its reinforcement were, by the same engagement, delivered over to the Spaniards. The corps in which I served was hurried on to join the prisoners taken by the Spanish ships at Cadiz, after the defeat of Trafal- gar. These wretches had been removed, before we joined them, from the horrible prison-ships of Cadiz to the He de Leon. Thence we were sent, after a few months, to the desert Island of Cabrera. We left our Spanish prison under a belief that the Spaniards, at last mindful of the faith of treaties, were about to permit us to return to our own land. At Palma, the chief town of Majorca, after a suspense of forty days, we first learned our destination. " Did you ever hear of Cabrera? of the horrors of Cabrera where Spanish cruelty to us, betrayed yet never vanquished, gained us, at least, compassion from every Englishman, save one, who visited our charnel-house ? Cabrera ! Where the most tried courage sank beneath the hopeless horrors of our It wa natural he should believe, and that hii brother should believe this outrage the work of Captain Warner. As all that passed on that occasion has been circum- stantially related in the seventh chapter of the First Part of this volume, wisdom will justify me in not here rap^stin? it. AMABEL; A FAMILY BISTORT. 179 situation ; for the soldier who in the hour of excitement braves even reverses, sinks when starvation and disease become his only enemies, and his faculties have no other employment than daily warding off the slow approaches of these stealthy terrors. " We came to Cabrera six thousand men. Scarcely a third of our number, after a residence of three years upon the island, left its arid shores. Upon a pile of barren mountain ridges, of steep rocks, six thousand men were landed, almost without clothes. Soon many of our party were entirely denuded. No habitations were to be found, save the ruined walls of an old Moorish castle, nor had we the means of building more than wretched huts of branches, brought, with immense labor, from a distant corner of the island, where, in the clefts of the most rugged rocks, grew a few stunted trees. We had but a bare sufficiency of water to sustain life, and even of this there was only a precarious supply. Our provisions were sent every four days from Majorca, but were sometimes delayed by weather or by wilful malice, when hundreds died of famine. " What think you of the day's nourishment which Spanish cruelty doled out to us six ounces of bread and a handful of dried beans ? Remember, too, that we were nearly destitute of clothing ; that previous suffering had shaken the most vigor- ous ; and, at a time when moral strength alone could supply the decay of physical powers, our wretched masses lost the last stimulant of courage, the hope of an ultimate return to their own land. " Our troops, with incredible labor for we were deprived of tools built huts of boughs, and founded a sort of colony, not only near the landing-place, but on the southern shore of the island. The officers at first took up their residence at the castle. "The privations we had suffered, our present misery, the fearful power of the sun by day, the sudden chills of night, and, worst of all, our total ignorance of the probable duration of our sufferings, broke up the most robust constitutions, and gave rise to a thousand shapes of disease. Ophthalmia, dysen- tery, scurvy, quartan fever, ravaged our ranks, yet might have been averted had we had it in our power to procure a little 180 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. wine or fresh vegetables. Some were carried off in a few hours, and their companions envied them. Some lingered out their term in silent suffering, and when strength was entirely expended, sank down and rose no more. Dead bodies were to be found everywhere. They were picked up in solitary places, like worn out carrion driven apart to die. At length, upon the shores of the bay to the south-west, beside the only accessible spring of fresh water in the island, we obtained leave to erect a few frail tents, and paid them honor by the name of hospital. " I was one of the first of the miserable wretches received there. They carried me to one of the tents that stood highest on the hillside. Once, when my senses were troubled by deli- rium, it seemed to me I heard a familiar voice a voice of home. The delirium lasted but a moment. They were carrying a pri- soner to a neighboring tent already crowded with the dying, a prisoner who had been brought in the bread boat from Palma. " I might have been three days in the hospital, when one night a fearful storm broke over the island. Torrents descend- ed the steep sides of the surrounding mountains, the waters in their course bearing down enormous stones. They came down like a deluge. The floods went on increasing, and the waters every moment accelerated their course. We heard their noise as we lay powerless extended on our straw. The roar of the waterfall canie nearer and nearer, as the floods bore down before them all that opposed their course. Loud as the wind howled, louder was the thunder. Above it rose now and then a pierc- ing shriek as of death agony. " We lay and listened. It seemed as though the waves of the ocean were rising in fury, threatening to submerge the island. Thus passed the night, and with the dawn of morning came a momentary calm. One shriek borne past me by the tempest, had awakened in my mind the remembrance of the passing delirium of the day before. Full of vague apprehen- sions, and strengthened by the excitement of my fears, I managed to drag myself upon ray hands to the tent door. " It stood alone ! A saving rock had broken the force of the torrent that had descended from the mountains. Everything else had been borne away by the fury of the waters. Tents AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 181 and straw, the dying and tbe sick, had all been swept away. Many lay dead at the foot of the hill, down which they had been rolled, like stones, by the rush of waters. Many lay with their limbs broken, their bodies covered with nrud and sand. " Over one body, apparently lifeless, and half buried in the waters of the now rising tide, a little dog I had not known there was a domesticated creature on the island, save the one ass of our poor soldiers a little white dog kept his watch, and had succeeded in dragging the face he licked tenderly out of the water. His mournful bark called attention to the spot. Some of the soldiers hastened down, and raised the body. There was life remaining, for we heard a groan. '* They lifted it, and bore it up the hill, the dog following. An instinct prompted me to drag myself forward. I recog- nised the features. It was Felix, my younger brother, to whom I had held a father's place, whose welfare had ever been dearer to me than my own. " His lower limbs had been paralysed (we all suffered from paralysis), the wound in his breast had opened, nothing of life seemed to be retained "^ve his powers of acute suffering. He knew me at once. Brotherly anxiety restored my strength. The surgeon came ; we bent over this body of living death, every care we could bestow was lavished on him. He was laid upon my straw, and I became his nurse, but in the whole island there was not found one linen rag with which to bind his wounds. The only medicines^ possessed by our surgeons, and administered to all the sick, were quinine and sulphuric acid. " I watched him day and night. He was my only brother the child confided to my care my only domestic affection. Your name, even in his agony, hung on his lips. Long before he could coherently relate his story, I knew the character and person of the woman he adored. At last summoning all his strength, he told me of the loss of his ship, of his sickness at Malta, of your tenderness, and of his love ; of the proposed exchange of prisoners, of his abduction in the night-time by his rival. How he was carried, bound and gagged, on board Captain Warner's ship, which had already put to sea. How 182 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. during the night a Maltese cattle-boat came alongside, and he was transferred into her. How, after his robbery and narrow escape from murder, the boat shaped its course for the coast of Africa. On the way, falling in with a Spanish vessel he was put on board of her and carried to Majorca, where exposure, distress of mind, recent illness, and the acute suffering of his bonds, which were never relaxed by the wretches to whom the malice of his English enemy confided him, brought on paraly- sis. At Palma, in this condition, he was shipped on board our bread-boat, and thrown upon our rock to die. " A brother's hand was there to soothe his sufferings, or at least to endeavor to mitigate them. I might have saved him, but for the relentless cruelty of his enemy. " Your little dog was his sole treasure ; he had saved its life through a thousand dangers, yet our starving comrades looked at it with wolfish eyes. Misfortune had isolated the prisoners, nothing united the sympathies of our miserable society but the arrival of our provision boat- One day it did not come. I can see our famished soldiers watching for it from the moun- tain top from the break of dawn. In fine weather we could see the entrance of the port of Palma, but not a sail clouded the horizon. Neither that day nor the next. " One hundred and fifty of our number died in those two days of hunger. " Some died in the ravings of delirium, some shrank from us into corners and into caves to die. The rats and mice upon the island had been eaten, recourse was had to grass and roots ; amongst the latter we fancied we had discovered a species of potato, and it was greedily devoured before, by its effects, it was discovered to be poison. "On the third day it was proposed to kill the ass, the soldiers' only object of affection, the original inhabitant of the island. Our dying soldiers would not have permitted the sacrifice had it not been enforced by all the authority of their officers. " Except myself. 1 was away. I had scaled the tops of the highest hills. I had gone where only the brooding sea bird ventured, or the shy goat of Cabrera could climb. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 183 " Some might say the deed was selfish, but my brother's life seemed to hang upon that of your little Barba ; the soldiers had resolved on sacrificing the animal, and at Felix's earnest request I took him away in the night. I was pursued pursued with all the energy of famine. But, one by one, my pursuers dropped off. Two fell through weakness, and perished in the mountains. At last, but two were left, swift- footed, and as sure as swift, for they were Corsicans. I hid myself in a cleft of the steep rugged limestone. Under the shadow of fantastic rocks I continued to creep upward. But this course was slow ; they gained on me, for I was weak, and were at last so close that the noise of their panting reached my ear. Suddenly, when but a few feet from where I lay concealed, they seemed at fault. One pointed upwards to a lichen-covered rock, and seemed to find in it a resemblance to some part of my apparel. The other objected that I was probably more near. They parted. And when but a hundred yards asunder, the one who thought me near caught the gleam of the white coat of your little Barba. With a quick cry, to call his comrade back, he sprang towards me. I had a pistol in my hand. My pistols were almost the only fire-arrns we had smuggled on the island. I fired. The ball took effect ; he gave a sudden bound, and fell backward over the escarpment of a rock behind him. The other heard the shot, and saw the fall, without catching sight of me. As I expected, he gave up the pursuit and hastened towards the body of his comrade. I pushed upward, and soon found refuge in one of the stalactital caves not uncommonly found in the islands of the Mediterranean. Here I continued many hours in concealment and in safety, when at last from my eyrie, which had an out-look northward, I caught sight of a sail. It came nearer and nearer. It attracted every eye in the island. It was the provision boat from Palma. Our necessities were so great that ere we cursed man, we thanked God. It had been delayed only by the local jealousies and squabbles of the Spanish officers. I hurried to the shore to be amongst the first to claim my portion. In general the officers and non- commissioned officers formed messes of seven, and by this 184 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. arrangement the starving pittance was made to go further than when each man ate his portion by himself alone, the less provident soldiery devouring their four days' rations as soon as they were put into their hand. " As the little brigantine approached, the excitement of the haggard crowd grew terrible. Every tack she made which seemed to take her off her course, occasioned the utmost agitation. The sick and dying had been brought down to the sea-shore by their debilitated comrades, and were encouraged to fix their eyes on her approach, that they might live till food arrived. Many cast themselves into the sea, while she was yet far distant, and swam out towards her, hoping that some fragment of food might be thrown them. At length she was run up as usual almost upon the shore, but instead of the twenty men whom custom permitted to board her, a mixed multitude, careless of life, was in a moment on her decks, upon her sides, and over her bulwarks. For the first time since our arrival in the island, the authority of their officers was unable to restrain the famished crowd, and to obtain order and regularity in the distribution of the provisions. Hunger even laid aside its reverence for the bread. At other times, the smallest fragments that had been broken off in landing were picked up with respectful care, and placed upon the loaves to which they belonged. On this occasion the food was torn in pieces with a selfish recklessness of waste. Hap- pily they had sent us a double allowance of provisions. " Besides the cavern, with its running waters pursuing their clear limpid course over bright golden sands, of which Don Raphael, Prince of the chevaliers cTindustrie, gave Gil Bias the description, there are, as I have said, other grottos in Cabrera, and I had had the good fortune to light upon one unknown, apparently, to any of our comrades. "Felix, who had no claims on the camaraderie of the officers, who, officer himself, yet not of our corps, nor of our service, felt himself in an isolated position, listened eagerly to a proposition that I made of carrying him by night upon my shoulders into the hills, to hide ourselves in this cavern, near which there was a small pure spring unknown to the other AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 185 prisoners, and indeed inaccessible to them for purposes of supply. The affair of the dog had not contributed to make us popular, and Felix trembled for its life should any second detention deprive our famished ranks of their supply of food. __" For ten days we continued to occupy our grotto. Its humidity was unfavourable to the health of Felix. There was a carpet of close turf near its entrance, on which he used to sit and gaze on the fine sea view, only bounded by the horizon. Here his talk was all of you. Here it was I learned to know you the Peri of his Paradise ; his ministering angel. Half child, half woman, he described you. Woman in mind, child in your powers of enjoyment. A woman in sensibility, with a child's power of trustful loving ; with a strange wise sincerity of thought, and simple truthfulness of action. A grace more striking in your mind than in your person, though that was oh ! how fair ! He never felt you could misdoubt him, and strong as circumstances might appear against his truth, he felt your love was stronger. Weak as he was, his mind never dwelt upon the possibility of a final separation. He would live and enjoy heaven. A heaven of love, a heaven of happiness, heaven with you. You had called him back to life, and that life was devoted to you. The remembrance of distress, privation, weakness, all would pass away when he again sat at your feet, or held your warm soft hand. He swore by the name of all he counted holy to be true to you. It needed no oath from your lips to make him trust you. >. " He confided to me your claims upon our patrimony in the last conversation that we held. He spoke for the first time of his death upon the island as a possible eventuality, and gave me a solemn message to you should he die, and I survive him. What that message was, I owe it to the stern remembrance you have shown of your position as a wife, in opposition to any zeal or anxiety you might have shown for my brother's justification, not to reveal unless you require me. " They may be called his dying words. For, as he uttered them, death was approaching him. We were sitting on a rocky point above our grotto, watching the approach of a 186 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. vessel of war. As she came near, she showed the English ensign. Soon all was confusion and excitement in the island. The vessel approached our landing-place. What news might she not have on board ! She let go her anchor some two hundred yards from the little beach, and in a moment the sea was alive with our men swimming off to her. "My God ! what an impression their wasted appearance must have made upon our enemies ! They were at first disposed to show great kindness to our miserable hordes. The captain received some of our officers in his cabin. The men gathered round our soldiers, inquiring by signs into their wants, and with rough hearty gestures expressing commiseration. The desire to relieve our sufferings was so great that the captain gave permission to his men to subscribe, if they pleased', three days' rations for our use, and made a distribution amongst the naked of all the spare slops in the vessel. I had not been on the shore when the ship came to an anchor, but now, seeing what was going on, and in the hope of food, I descended from the steep hills in the centre of the island, and made my way towards the little town of huts which our people had built upon the landing-place. " As I went down, the thought presented itself, that I would lay my brother's case before this benevolent English officer, who, perhaps, might take him off the island, and at the worst restore him to his Maltese prison. My brother had imagined, as the brig approached, that she might be the Sea Gull, in which case her commander would be probably that captain whose fortune it had been, the year before, to take him prisoner. As I drew near to the beach, however, I learned that the vessel was not the Sea Gull, but the Dodo, com- manded by Captain Warner. " You may censure me for my weakness, but so terrible were our necessities, and, through long suffering, my spirit was BO broken I had begun, too, to draw such confidence from the benevolence of this captain that I resolved to make ray appeal even to himself, against himself, surrounded as he was by his enemies and his officers. " I made my way through the crowd to where he stood (for AMABEL; A FAMILY BISTORT. 187 he had landed), and approached him. ' Captain,' I said, ' I am here to demand justice ; justice against yourself, in the presence of these officers ; justice on behalf of my brother, Felix Guiscard.' " The captain understood a little French, though some one of the bystanders translated the words for him, and some conversation ensued between the French prisoner who had acted as interpreter, himself, and his chief officer. The cap- tain's face assumed a frown. ' No, Monsieur,'' he said to me in bad French, " I can do nothing for him. Votre frere a casse sa parole ;' turning his back on me, and proceeding to pay attention to some complaints made by another officer. I retired. My heart in silence devoured this cruel insult. This, then, was the brutal rival who had kidnapped my poor brother. This the man who, when the opportunity for gene- rosity was presented, failed to rise to the height of a partial reparation. I was hustled from his presence by his myrmi- dons. I walked apart in the midst of a strange plenty. I forgot even to snatch food for Felix in the bitterness of my thoughts, in my burning desire to be revenged. There was rejoicing on the island. Our soldiers, recovering their gaiety, endeavored to do its honors to their English visitors. They opened the strange theatre, constructed, in a sort of pit, by the ingenuity of some dozen of our prisoners, where comedies were semi-weekly acted during our long tragedy. " I walked apart ; and taking advantage of the preoccupa- tion of my comrades, I went up to tfie little ruined fort, deserted in the excitement, and succeeded in abstracting a blank leaf from the Breviary of the Spanish priest, who, under the mask of a religious zeal, played the spy upon the island. On this I wrote my defiance of the cruelty of the British com- mander. I told him that, as heaven would judge hereafter, so man should judge him here. That before heaven and the Holy Cross I vowed that, if ever I escaped from Cabrera, I would bring his baseness home to him in his own land. That henceforth my life was consecrated to his exposure. " By the time I had finished this document, the English party was reembarked. They had been on shore some hours r 188 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. It was already afternoon. Two of our officers, one a Colonel, one a Captain of artillery, were to be taken off with them. They were Spanish and not English prisoners. Humanity had stretched the point of justice in t/ieir favor, while Felix, law- fully an English prisoner, lay dying like a dog upon the arid rocks of this accursed island. " Our soldiers, in the hope of occasionally bringing down a sea-bird, had (for firearms were very few) constructed bows and arrows, barbed with pointed flint. I borrowed one of these, tied my defiance to the arrow, and with both bow and arrow in my mouth, plunged into the water. " I neared the vessel. She was getting under weigh ; the officer of the deck warned off my approach with meaning gestures and opprobrious words. I held on my course till I was near enough for my arrow to light on board the vessel. I threw myself on my back in a moment I had fixed it in the bow. Perhaps a devilish suggestion crossed my mind, that my revenge for all our sufferings would be glorious and com- plete, should my arrow with its missive brain him where he stood. But the sea was rising. The brig gave a lurch from me, and he stood on the poop unharmed. At the same instant the sharp cracking sound of a pistol ball, close to my ear, came past me. I dived, and rose untouched. No doubt he would gladly have buried in the deep, the man who to his dying day will bear testimony to the infamy, which in the end was yet to win him a fortune and a bride. " When I reappeared upon the surface, I found the Dodo at some distance to leeward, and struck out towards the shore. As I did so the brig backed her sails and rounded to. 1 could not at first perceive any object for this manoeuvre, but it soon appeared that she was lying to, to pick up one of her own boats, which I perceived creeping out of a cove in another part of the island. I swam ashore ; took some food for my brother ; I had no need that day of food and reascended the rocks towards our grotto. " As I approached, I saw evidences that other persons had been lately there. At the foot of a little rock in which I had ,put rude steps, I picked up a clasp-knife, with a dagger blade AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 189 of curious construction. On examining it afterwards I found the initial letters, F. G., scratched upon the case. I had heard Felix describe having had such a knife, and J doubted not that this had been part of the property of which he was robbed, on the night when he was put on board the Maltese speronara. No arms were permitted ; and such a knife as this no man possessed upon the island. " I mounted to the spot where Felix had been left. Oh . God why harrow you with this recital ? The turf was trampled, and the loose stones that lay about disturbed. Felix lay where I had left him ; murdered. His dog stood howl- ing above him on a rock. The body was warm, but life extinct. " No man would listen to my convictions. As I have said, we were not the favorites of our. comrades. The solemn ear- nestness of the Breton character has little in common with the French. We had denied our dog to feed the famishing ; these English had brought food, and promised to return with further succor. In our situation the blessing the most felt, was a suf- ficient meal. They blessed the hand that gave it. They paid no heed to my suspicions. Some thought that Felix had com- mitted suicide ; some hinted / had killed him. All were so inured to death under circumstances of the utmost horror, that they gave little attention to this mystery. I only found myself and my retreat more shunned than ever. The death of the Corsican was remembered against me, though as I was an offi- cer, under the circumstances of insubordination in which that death took place, it could not fail to have been justified had any investigation been made. Neither was the death of Felix ever looked into. I scraped a grave for him in a cleft of the rock. I promised (for Felix had a pious soul) many masses for his repose. His dog lay on his grave, and howled his requiem. " There was one corner of the island, to which fishermen from Majorca sometimes resorted in a storm. It was a shel- tered cove, in which they hoped to escape observation during their forced stay. It had occurred, and it occurred again dur- ing the time our miserable troops continued on the island, that AMABBL; A FAMILY HISTORY. French ingenuity, sharpened by long suffering, proved too much for these Spanish fishermen. " I watched^a party of this kind, driven upon the island, con- ceal their boat one stormy evening. By stratagems, with an account of which I need not trouble you, I got possession of their fishing smack, and started alone without a chart, a com- pass, or a sufficient supply of food, to make for the coast of Catalonia. Fortune favored my rash enterprise. On reaching the coast I was afraid to land till hailed in French by troops of our own, near Tarragona. I served through the Peninsular campaign. I joined the army of the North, at its rendezvous at Strasburg. I made the campaign of Russia ; was detained in an hospital in Poland some months after recrossing the fron- tier of that country ; joined the army again before Dresden ; and followed the fortunes of the Emperor, during the remainder of his career. When the allied armies entered Paris I was there. Not many days after, I met an English naval officer in the gar- den of the TuilerieS) in whom I recognised my foe. Seizing upon him in the face of all the people, I mounted on a chair, and began an address to them. He was pushed and execrated ; he might have been torn in pieces, but for a man who made his way through the crowd. He was a Captain of artillery, and declared himself the same man Captain Warner had taken off the island. Throwing his arms around my enemy, the captain of artillery proclaimed him his preserver, and was going on in his turn to address the astonished crowd upon the subject of his landing at Cabrera, when the arrival of a party of Prussian soldiers dispersed us all with violence. I was borne apart from Captain Warner, and the captain of artillery carried him away. "Since then, I have been in search of you to Malta. I tra- velled home through Italy, where I met with Lady Harriet and Mr. Rustmere. I arranged my affairs in Brittany, where my presence was demanded, and have since come to England. " You know the rest. I will not expand this narrative by invective. Your own heart be my judge." " And the last words of Felix ? Tell me all," she said, " you will not again have the opportunity." AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 191 " If it be your purpose, as I have reason to believe," he replied, " to leave this house to-night, to join or to desert your husband, you cannot think I shall suffer you to depart without protection. I shall watch over you ... be near you .... "And by what right," she asked, with flashing eyes, "do you presume to force on me your protection ?" " By the right that Felix gave me to adore you ! His dying words, his last request were personal to me. He had property in Brittany " " Proceed." " Which had belonged to your forefathers, and he was very anxious to bequeath it to you. But at Cabrera we had no means of drawing up a legal instrument. He was urgent upon me, should I survive, to execute his wishes ; and charged me, should I reach our country, to seek you out, and comfort you. I must represent him, he added. He would not wil- lingly deprive me of any part of our father's inheritance ; he trusted I should gain your love. I was to urge all the influ- ence of his wishes on my behalf, and he hoped that I in time ... I say in time . . . should marry you. The moment I could leave the war, I hastened to Malta. I expected to find you there .... grieving still perhaps for our lost Felix. I found you married ! . . . gone ! Married to the murderer of Felix ! To the man whose death was my hope. Could I throw the little patrimony of my brother into the hands of his destroyer ? Was Captain Warner to reap everything by the annihilation of his victim ? Yet could I honorably dispose of this estate without your consent . . . your cooperation ?" On a sudden his tone changed. " Amabel ! Bride of my brother's soul !" he cried (the Bretons are all superstitious and imaginative), " I have not seen you without loving you. I have not seen you without knowing you are wretched. The perfidy of that one man has blasted all ; your virgin love, your matron happiness. You can be free ! By the laws of this country one act, one word .... one seeminy act dissolves this union. Will you be mine ?" " Do you understand me ?" he said, pausing as he seized her hand in passionate supplication, for he was frightened by the 192 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. gaze she strained suddenly into the darkness of the night out- side of the conservatory. Her large dark eyes growing, like those of the startled antelope, larger and darker in her fear. It came ! a sudden thrust against the glass, a sudden over- throw of the geraniums. The crash of glass, and of the fulling flower-pots, a commotion outside of the conservatory. He caught the glare of another pair of eyes on the other side of the glass, and saw a white face pressed against it, suddenly withdrawn. This took but one moment, but in it Amabel had recognised her husband's face and had torn herself away. Col. Guiscard seized her by her drapery. " Understand ? Understand you ?" she said chokingly, " I understand you ! loose me, sir, loose me. I disbelieve your slanderous tale ! For ever out of my sight !" She flew past him. Guests thronged from the ball-room into the conservatory, and found him standing alone, amidst the fallen leaves and shattered earthenware. Would you like to know how Amabel was dressed that night ? I asked my father, who following in the wake of Cap- tain Warner, was outside the glass at that moment, and had a hurried glance before she fled. He did not see her face ; he had a mere confused and passing glimpse of the scene. He says, her dress, as she sprang past, was something white and flowing, whilst something blue and waving seemed to crown her hair. It was a delicate dress of embroidered India mus- lin, and a species of blue gauze nube, which, in the Maltese fal- detla fashion, she had wound round her dark hair. Years afterwards I headed a party of young cousins, who rummaged up this finery in an old oak chest upstairs. I put on the gored and yellowish-white India muslin petticoat, all shrunken, limp, and rough-dried. Holding up the skirts well round me, that I might dance and run, and with the blue scarf twisted round my waist, I dashed into the dining-room, and spread consternation by my appearance amongst the grown-up party. Several there could recognise the garments, and the remem- brance of the awful night when they were last worn by their mistress, checked in their very throats the roars of laughter AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 193 that had at the first moment of our irruption greeted our mas- querade. We could not know the cause, but we became aware at once that our frolic was a failure. It seemed to me when grandpapa recovered voice, and we slunk away by a simultaneous understanding to our quarters, that " dressing up," our grand amusement, was to be confined henceforward to the attics or the nursery. " Grandmamma, have I done wrong ?" I sobbed as she came upstairs, and took off my blue scarf and embroidered dress sadly and quietly. " No, my dear child," she answered, " but to-morrow, I will give you a large chest, and fill it with things fit for you ; after which you must never take anything from these trunks, but play with what I put aside for you." The promise was kept, but amongst the treasures we aban- doned, we missed many perquisites. The embroidered muslin petticoat, and scarf, I have never seen again, nor a large collec- tion of black bonnets, once the property of the elder Mrs. Warner. CHAPTER XV. X Barnave avail retrouv6 na vertu dans fa sensibilit^, mais la vertu qui vient tard et comme 1'intelligence qui vient apr6s coup, elle ne sert qu' a nous faire mesnrer la pro- fondeur de nos fautes. LAMA.HTINE. HISTOIRE DBS GIROSDINS. As Amabel rushed through the hall, she met her husband coming in through the garden entrance by the conservatory. She recognised him and stopped ; stretched out her arms to him, and was about to throw herself upon his breast, exclaim- ing, " Have you come ? Oh ! Leonard !" But he, seizing her left arm by its wrist, hurried her up the staircase. " Which is your room ?" he said between his teeth. "This. Oh! Leonard!" 9 194 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. He drew her into it, and pulled furiously at the bell-cord, tearing it off, and flinging it on the floor. She stood bewildered in the centre of the room, holding her wrist, which had been hurt by his rough treatment. Once only she made a sort of movement towards him, clasped her hands and began again, " Oh ! -Leonard !" He silenced her by a fierce word. The maid came up. " You will say downstairs that Mrs. Warner is unwell. You will take care that no one comes up here to-night ; she is too ill to be disturbed." The woman looked at her mistress ; and went downstairs to report in the servants' hall the progress of the quarrel. "Oh ! Leonard," said his wife, trying again to cling to him. " I am so glad you have come. Take me away with you. Save me. Forgive me. Take pity on me, Leonard." He thrust her off, and taking the key from the lock, opened the door. " If you have any remaining respect for your reputation," he said, " you will make no noise this night, nor attempt to release yourself from this room. There will be eyes upon you." So saying he passed out and locked the door. The moment he was gone her presence of mind came back to her. She fell upon her knees before the door. She implored him to come back. " One moment only one moment . . one little moment, dear, dear, dearest Leonard !" There was no voice, nor any that answered her. Only con- fused sounds of gaiety in the ball-room below. Pressing her head against her hands, and listening intently, she had remained an hour probably, without the power of connecting thought, when she heard quick, heavy steps com- ing up the oaken stairs. She hoped that it was Leonard coming up to release her, to tell her that his anger was all past, to hear her heart poured out in comforting confession, and to take her to his arms ; and she rose up from where she knelt and stood aside, making space for the sudden opening of the door. But the steps passed by her chamber. She listened and heard voices. Men were in the AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 195 gallery. One of them wore spurs. He was an officer from the garrison of C Castle. The other voice was young, and rich, and sweet. It was the first time she had heard it, and the time arrived when it became to her one of those dear familiar voices, whose echoes make a plaintive music in the heart, when we recall them as we wander in night watches, seeking our lost, best loved, most loving ones, amongst those shadows that peo- ple with pale forms the land of dreams. Their talk was now distinct, yet low, of fighting, murder, and of sudden death. They spoke of a meeting on the morrow, and she knew it was between Col. Guiscard and her husband. They arranged the preliminaries, they spoke of it as inevitable. From things they said, she learned that the Colonel had met her husband in the hall as he went down stairs, and offered him satisfaction. Satisfaction ! The word implied a wrong, as the pale listener, with scalding tears of rage, and with hot shame upon her cheeks, felt, and the seconds both acknowledged. And they discussed her too. The military man said, " Hang it, the sex is always at the bottom of men's difficulties and troubles." The other voice said sadly, " That the life of Captain Warner was of value to his country, pity it should thus be put to hazard for a good-for-nothing woman." The military man then asked, " if Captain Warner had been an unkind or inattentive husband ?" And the voice answered, " No. That he had married his wife for love, and was devotedly attached to her." And then they said how much much better it had been had he married some young English wife, instead of making an eccentric choice amongst foreign women. She heard them going down stairs, and as the sound of their steps diminished as they went, it seemed as if the dumb, deaf spirit that possessed her heart had passed away. It passed as she fell down upon her knees, hid her fair young face once more in her hands, and, lifting up her voice as she realized her grief, from the depths of her young heart arose a low but most exceeding bitter cry. Who can picture to himself the feelings with which the 196 AMABEL; A FAMILT HISTORY. aching heart of our first mother heard the closing of the gates of her loved garden ? Yet Eve had still her Adam the pro- mise of the Father was in her heart ; and, looking back with tearful eyes, she beheld comfort. One of the brightest of the heavenly host had passed the flaming portals. The angel of hope, folding his shining wings, trod in her painful path, his soft smile sank into her heart, and, lifting up her voice with that of Adam, they praised and magnified the holy name of God. The hardest part of the punishment of the mother of all living Amabel Warner knew she had to bear. Her sins would be visited beyond the limits of her life upon a future generation. As one after another of her early hopes rushed past her, in the tumult of her thoughts upon that dreadful night, floating like drift wood to the dreary land where memory flings the wrecks of things we have forgotten, she knew for the first time in her married life how abundant had been the materials given her for happiness, how hopeless was the wreck, and how com- plete the ruin. And was her fault to kill him ? Was her disgrace to be blotted out only in his blood ? " Oh ! Leonard," she cried in agony of spirit, " believe me, I do hate him. Indeed, I hate him. I never did anything but hate him. L see his art. I know his purposes. I disbe- lieve it all !" Love has its highest exercise when it can rest its faith in doubtful circumstances upon the character it knows, rather than upon the circumstances themselves. Through her mind passed the remembrance of the childish plans so lately formed. Had they been carried out, .... but they would not have been carried out, the threat of Col. Guis- card's protection on her journey, had awakened and alarmed her, .... but had he not discovered her design, had her hus- band not come back, had she not been locked into her chamber, she would have been at that hour, as we have said, travelling alone, clandestinely, by night, to the southern coast, there to take passage in the first ship that sailed for the Mediterranean, where AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 197 throwing herself on the protection of her early friends in Malta, she hoped to have dictated terms either of separation or of reconciliation to her husband; exacting as the price of her return, the redress of all her grievances, and entire emancipa- tion from the control of Mrs. Warner. At the height of her folly, her feelings had been suddenly reversed by the prospect of danger to her husband, by the thought that he once loved her, but that, till too late, she had never set a sufficient value on his love ; and now, instead of her deserting him triumphantly, as it were, and under the pro- tection of the friends who loved her best, dictating the terms of her return, he was about to cast her off for ever, disgraced, degraded, ruined, and undone. Some old lines that had fallen in her way, in the course of her last year's miscellaneous reading, haunted her memory. Ruin ensues, reproach, and endless shame, And one false step for ever blasts her name, In vain with tears her loss she may deplore, In vain look back to what she was before, She sets like stars that fall to rise no more. Troubles of the imagination vanished. She only felt the actualities of her position. She knew, and knew too late, that it had been in her power to be happy. Her heart was turned against him who had troubled the prospects of her life. Had Felix then himself appeared before her, he would have found himself her dread, and almost her aversion. Her anxiety for the fate of Capt. Warner had awakened all her interest in his character, and with it love. Woe- to those who cannot see their fault until the con- sequences of their own sin leave them no hope of escape. Memory and conscience are the parents of remorse. One by one, the remembrance of every scene of her married life passed through her memory, and inexorable conscience pointed the same moral to each. " I might I ought it was in my power to have been happy." No thoughts of an earlier period disturbed her recollections of her later life. As I have seen in that strange, wild, heath 198 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. country, where she subsequently resided, the heathery hills melt into mist in certain conditions of the atmosphere, leaving the foreground of the landscape clear, bright, distinct, and more extended than before, so the days of her girlhood passed beyond her sight ; the links of imagination that still bound her to the past snapped suddenly asunder ; and thence- forth the tale of her early love, her early years, became as indifferent to her as the sorrows or the pleasures of her infancy. She felt that she had long ceased to love Felix, and that the late emotions she had experienced, through the arts of Col. Guiscard, were mere galvanic stirrings of the corpse of love. One by one her memory renewed the scenes of her married life ; again she felt herself alone, oppressed and desolate in her mother's family. Again she felt the brightening influences of Captain Warner's presence. She saw his looks of admiration in the I ball-room, upon that most exciting night when he renewed his addresses to her. Again he was driving her out in the fresh air, on the first day of her release after her long illness ; his genial temperament and careful love were more reviving than the breath of summer. She saw him, when her husband, the favorite of society, and felt that with the value that he set on social qualifications she must have deeply disappointed him. She had been at no pains to con- ceal her incapacity for the duties he most valued, and her dis- taste for the neighboring society. Her dislike to old Mrs. Warner had induced her to withdraw more and more from the invaded sphere of her own duties ; instead of justifying her husband's choice amongst his associates, she had despised their good opinion. Her heart now told her how deeply she must have hurt herself in the estimation of a husband sus- ceptible to a fault to outward impressions ; and a spasm of jealousy passed through her heart as she recalled his attentions to Miss O'Byrne. " How manly, how handsome he is !" said her heart. " How gay, how bright, how easily contented !" She learned upon that night that love is to be won by adapting ourselves to the nature we desire to impress. Some women eloquently reclaim the love denied to them. They AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 199 parade their devotion and their unrequited virtues, and the world wonders at the insensibility of the brute 'upon whose heart the warmth and justice of such passionate appeals pro- duce no impression. And the reason is that all this eloquence is not in sympathy with his nature. One hour of looking beautiful, one act insinuating devotion, one tribute won from public opinion to a husband's taste, would, in the case of such a man as Captain Warner, have done more than volumes of appeal to confirm a wavering affection. I do not say that this should be. Perhaps all men ought to be of a poetic temperament, all endowed with the sensibilities of our own sex, in addition to the masculine qualities for which we love them. But, we must take them as they come, and submit to be valued by our husband's standard, even though this rule excludes some of our noblest qualities, and demands the cultivation of gifts which nature has sparingly bestowed. I wonder how much Captain Warner would have been touched by the letters of F K , addressed to himself, or those of the Duchesse de Praslin? Though ho was quite the sort of man to yield them a kind of chivalrous admiration when they appeared in the public journals. And must he die? This was the refrain of her thoughts. And must lie die ? The moment that the tumult of her spirit lulled, conscience presented her that thought. If he should die ? In agony of supplication she prayed at intervals, through the long night, that her husband might be spared to her, that the clouds and thick darkness that now shrouded their married life might be rolled back ; that they might yet be happy. She meant, be happy on the morrow. And the watchful angel, who carried up the prayer and laid it in the golden censer before the sapphire throne, forbore to trouble her expectation. He knew that sudden grief rarely sees into the future. He knew that the utmost certainty of future alleviation will never ease one throb of present acute suffering. By three o'clock, the last carriages drove off. The tired inmates of the house came languidly one by one up the oak stairs to bed. She heard each footstep, and marked each closing door. 200 AMABEL; A FAMILY BISTORT. But there was one step she listened for, which did not come. Col. Guiscard, however, had passed into his chamber, and that thought reassured her. She dreaded to make any disturbance in the house for fear of her husband's displeasure, but, at all risks to herself, she was resolved to prevent the duel. Ah ! how many times that night did her active imagination picture him in some unheard of peril ! The duel was taking place, and she, rushing into his arms, received in her own breast the bullet of his adversary, and died his saving angel. Or, startled by loud cries of fire from below, with superhuman strength she burst the door. She found him. She was aiding him, guiding him, saving him. The strong man had lost his strength, and to the power of her love was like a little child. Death glared on them in many shapes, with glowing fiery eyes. Licking his red lips with his forked tongue, he stretched it out one moment to devour them. The next a burning beam fell on their path. A mangled fate was at their option. The fire neared them. There was no escape. A sense of suffocation oppressed them for one moment. Then all suffering was over, and a sort of languid happiness pervaded her whole being, as she felt herself folded in her husband's arms, and looked up dying in his face, to read there his forgiveness and his love. At last she heard him coming slowly up the staircase. She heard his hand laid lightly on the lock. She scarcely breathed. The moment was coming, .... had come, when she was to be allowed to approach him with explanation and entreaty, and she trembled. Her mind had vividly before it the thought, that instead of love, honor, and obedience, she had brought pub- lic scandal into his house, and she recalled with shame and pity the agony of expression she had last seen upon the face of old Mrs. Warner. But the hand was lifted, and the step moved on. Then, in her agony, she flung her strength against the door, and called him. The softer thoughts that had been stirring in his heart when he had fancied her asleep, and longed to look upon her face once more, passed away at this exhibition of her violence ; perhaps he took even a sullen pleasure in the impotence of her passion, and he went on his way along the corridor, unmoved AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 201 by the loud weeping which she had now no inclination to restrain. When this somewhat subsided, she walked, in her excite- ment, round and round her prison, with her arms close pressed over her throbbing heart. She walked to the window, through which the mocking moon was pouring floods of its cold, calm, pale light upon her floor. She flung up the sash softly, and sprang, without difficulty, upon the balcony formed by the roof of the great colonnade. Her idea had been to descend by some of the tin spouting, but this a glance told her was impossible. She ran backwards and forwards on the bal- cony. She intended, could she get down, to ring the bell of the hall door, to rouse the house, to make her appeal to Mr. Rustmere ; at any possible peril to herself, to put a stop to the projected duel. She tried one or two of the other windows that looked out upon the balcony. They belonged to the large spare chamber, and were fast. Only the three guest chambers were in that part of the building. This one was empty ; besides which there was her own room and that of Col. Guiscard. Oh ! Heaven ! there was the gleam of a light in his room through the closed blinds. She fancied she saw within a moving shadow. Her terror misled her when she was sure sho heard him stepping out, roused by the noise of her footsteps on the balcony. Anything everything was better than that he should find her there. At the further end of the colonnade, along the wall of the house, there was a painted trellis, with roses, and the flowering pomegranate, and the light clustering clematis (barely budding at this season) trained up against it to the second floor. In her terror, she climbed over the low balustrade of the balcony, and trusted her weight to its support. Her delicate hands were lacerated by the thorns and nails as she descended, stepping carefully from diamond to diamond in the trellis-work, but she took no heed of bodily pain. When more than half way down she heard a crack. The fastenings of the trellis-work were parting a foot or so above her. She hurried, threw her weight less carefully. Her foot became entangled ; she strug- gled to disengage it; the light wood-work, already cracked, 9* 202 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. gave way, and she fell to the ground having twisted her ankle. It was not a very severe fall, the shock being broken by the soft mould of the garden, and only her face struck upon the gravel. But the pain of her ankle was intense, and nothing but a determined courage of endurance, wakened by her fears of Col. Guiscard, prevented her loud screams. She heard a dog bark in the stables. She was conscious of effort and of agony ; and then she fainted. She fainted, lying alone in the cold, calm, spring moonlight, with her poor disfigured face lying cut upon the gravel, and the wrecks of the buds and flowers she had blighted, showered around her upon the cold, damp ground. CHAPTER XVI. That was wrong perhaps, but then Such things be and will again ! Women cannot judge for men MRS. BROWNING. BERTHA IN THE LANE Lovers who have parted In hate, whose mining depths so intervene That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted. BYRON. CHILDE HAROLD. FOR nearly two hours she lay on the cold breast of that great mother, into whose womb each man must enter a second time to be born into eternity. In the most trying hours of her after years, when clouds and thick darkness narrowed the hori- zon of her life, till present misery appeared her only portion, she never weakly wished that, in this hour, a premature death had cut short all her sorrows. Our church, she felt, has wisely put into our lips, without distinction, her thanksgiving for'our "creation and preservation," amongst "the blessings of this life." Existence is a blessing so long as we can animate its pulses by the double hope of praising God in weakness, and of aiding, even by a mere patient endurance of our lot, the cause of sad and suffering humanity. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 203 When she opened her faint eyes, they met at their first glance the morning sun, just rising over the low line of Suffolk hills, dim in the eastward. For half a moment she lay watch- ing its red and rayless disk as it rose, majestically slow, over the horizon. The recovery of consciousness is always the same process as that of the first consciousness of infancy. A com- placent contemplation of external objects precedes in both cases the power of reflection. After watching the sun for a few moments, she remembered all that had occurred. She recollected that she was there to prevent the sacrifice of her husband, and that the hour of the meeting might have passed while she lay insensible upon the ground. Notwithstanding the great pain she suffered, not only in her ankle, but in all her limbs, she managed to struggle to her feet, and leaning against one of the pillars of the colonnade, she looked around her. The sun had risen upon the earth ; but there was no sign that any of the earth's inhabitants had risen too. As she looked round, however, a garden gate was opened near the stables, and a boy in his smock made his appearance with a milk-pail. He was going in a contrary direction, and would not have noticed the white figure leaning for support against the white pillar, had not Amabel found strength and voice to call him loudly. " Is any person stirring ?" she asked him. " They're gettin' a carriage ready at the stables," was the an- swer ; " and some of the gentlemen is up. I see four on 'em goin' out a quarter an 'our ago by the back door." " Do you know where they went ?" cried Amabel. " No, I doan't," said the boy. " I thought they was a goin' down by the West Meadow. They went that way, all four." " Oh ! pull that bell pull it hard," cried Amabel. " Yet, no stay," she added, remembering that it was loss of time, in such a crisis, to wake up Mr. Rustmere. " Run after them, my boy. If you overtake them before they fight, you shall have a piece of gold. Tell Captain Warner, I implore him not to fight that he is under a mistake that I will explain every- thing. Beg him to come to me." The boy set out at full speed, animated by the double pros- 204 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. pect of an excitement and a guinea. Amabel, unable to remain waiting in suspense the result of her embassy, resolved to be a witness of what passed. She dragged herself across the lawn, each painful step brushing the rime frost from the grass, towards a small eminence commanding a panoramic view of the neighborhood, on which was built a sort of circular summer- house or temple, called by its originator a belvedere. When she had reached this spot and cast her eyes around, she saw, nearly a quarter of a mile below, in the West Meadow, the group she was in search of. To the right, her little messenger was running very fast, and making signals ; but it was evi- dent he would not reach the spot till all was over. The ground was measured, and the parties with their weapons were in the act of taking aim. They were too far off to be distinguished from one another ; but she saw the flash and heard the shot. Forgetting her own wounds, she started to run down the hill ; but her ankle gave way under her, and she was compelled to sit down on the damp grass and await the issue. Oh ! how she prayed in very agony of supplication, as if prayer could even then reverse the decree that had gone forth, and had been executed, that our Father in Heaven would spare her husband ! At length one man disengaged himself from the group, and making a straight course for the house, came directly towards her. As he approached the Belvedere, the sun glanced on the gold lace of his undress uniform, and she saw it was her hus- band. She waved her hands to him. She called to him. I don't think that at first all this attracted his attention, otherwise he might have turned aside to avoid her. As it was, he almost came upon her unawares, and stopped breathless. " Leonard !" She made an effort to rise and throw herself upon his breast, but it was unsuccessful. She fell at his feet. Fear, and thank- fulness, and pain, and agitation choked her voice, but she gasped out : " I thank God you are safe. I prayed you might be safe." " That's his blood," said Captain Warner, fiercely agitated. AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. 205 " That is his blood," displaying his hands, " and mine," hold- ing out his left arm. " You may be proud of your work. You have been the death of one man and the dishonor of another. Do you hear me, Madam ?" he continued, taking hold of her ; " do you know that you have been my ruin ? Do you know that I am a deserter from my ship from my post in time of danger ? Do you know," he continued, raising his voice, " that I shall be tried for this by a court-martial, and be shot, Madam ?" " Listen, Leonard. Forgive me if you can," she faintly fal- tered. He pushed her back. " Leonard !" she clasped her arms tight round his knees her white arms glancing bare in the bright morning sunlight " hear me, not for my own sake, Leonard, but for our child ! The child that I shall bear you, dearest Leonard !" He broke from her with an oath. " By the heaven that's above us," he exclaimed, " name no child of yours to me. I'll not acknowledge it. No court of justice upon earth could force me to acknowledge it. I dis- own it I disown you. Swear ! swear 1" he cried, growing more and more excited, as unconsciously, perhaps, he presented the pistol he held in his right hand at her head, " swear that if I spare you and myself the scandal of a public separation, you will never proclaim you are my wife that you will hide yourself far, far away, where no one knows my misery. Swear that your child shall never bear the name of Warner. Swear quickly. Swear " " Oh God ! Oh Leonard !" She bowed her poor young head, and fainted at his feet. Then for the first time he remarked her dress, and saw the bleeding wounds upon her face and hands. The Captain's heart melted at the sight of physical suffering in a woman. Her present condition, as she lay, pale, broken, helpless, on the earth, seemed a sort of earnest in his eyes of her future fate. He vowed in his heart to place her so far above want as to be beyond temptation. He took up her light girlish form in his strong arms. Once more her heart beat against his heart. This once more her 206 AMABEL; A FAMILY HISTORY. husband's arms were shielding her from evil. He carried her up to the Belvedere as tenderly and as carefully as if she had still been the bride of his love. Laying her down upon the floor, he pillowed her drooping head upon his wounded arm, and then remarked how thin and insufficient was her dress, and how thickly hung the damp drops in her hair, and drapery. His camlet cloak was on his arm needed, indeed, to conceal his uniform in travelling. Without concealment, he would fearfully increase the risk of evidence against him, should he be called to answer for his life on a court-martial. But he wrapped it tenderly around her, laid its folds so as to secure her from the cold, and its cape to be her pillow, and then before he left her they were alone before he left, and gave her up for ever, he Have you never crept at midnight to the bedside of your dearest one, when the sun has gone down on wrath between you, and pride, policy, or temper have denied her the manifes- tation of returning tenderness, have you never crept, I ask, to her bedside as she slept, and with soft kisses eased your heart of its bitterness, since all the time she could not know how wakeful and how watchful and undying was your love ? Even so, though Captain Warner hated himself half an hour later for the impulse, he bent over her young face as she lay unconscious, and with his warm lips pressed upon her pale and icy ones, gave h'er one long, last, agonized embrace before he left her. CHAPTER XVH. Elle n'aime pins ricn ; elle ne veut plus rien aimer. Son enfance a passe comme vont passer ces belles fleurs ; sa jeunesse s'est evanouie comme s'en ira bientot le par- fum du lis la fleur des rois de France. Plus rien n'est reste dans le coeur de cette femme qne les regrets du pass6. En meme temps, la croyance n'est pas encore venue ; la pauvre malade n'a pas pu se resigner a prier Dieu en toute hunulite d'esprit et de c