CHAPTER IX.
Tells of trouble in love, and trouble after marriage. Miss Jenny is persuaded by Mrs. Lupton to abandon her affection for Colin.
LET us now resume the thread of our story, and begin with that communication from Miss Calvert to Colin, previously adverted to as the cause of much pain to him. It ran as follows:—
“Since Mr. Clink quitted our now forsaken-looking house at ————, my mother has had much to say to me,—oh, too much that it is impossible to tell again, and that I am most unhappy in ever having heard. I know not why it is I should have been destined to so much trouble, for I never wilfully harmed one human creature even by a word, nor ever injured the meanest thing that had a life to enjoy, and which the Creator had made for its own enjoyment. Perhaps it is the will of Heaven that this grief should come upon me to try what virtue of resignation to its will I may possess. And if so, then indeed have I been sorely tried, most acutely probed and searched. During your absence, it seems to have become more fixedly my mother's intention that I shall never be happy. She has expressed her urgent desire that I would beg of you to forget me, and now you are away, make no endeavour ever to see me even once again. I never slept a wink, but cried, and prayed for you, my dearest Colin, all night upon my pillow. I am very ill now, and can scarcely do anything but weep. However, I will make my heart as strong as I can, for I foresee it has a terrible task to undergo. Were I of that religion which permits such things, I would now go into a convent, where no one should ever know my thoughts but Heaven; where I could ask on my knees, day and night, for forgiveness for those thoughts that I have not power to prevent; and where no eye that now knows me, should ever again see how pitiable and heart-broken a creature is even so soon made of the once happy, though now too wretched, but still devotedly affectionate—