IN CONTINUATION.
I mounted the horse that waited for me at the door, and galloped off; but with the darkness of the night I returned, and all night I wandered about the environs of Inismore: to the last I watched the light of Glorvina’s window. When it was extinguished, it seemed as though I parted from her again. A gray dawn was already breaking to the mists of obscurity. Some poor peasants were already going to the labours of the day. It was requisite I should go. Yet when I ascended the mountain of Inismore I involuntarily turned, and beheld those dear ruins which I had first entered under the influence of such powerful, such prophetic emotion. What a train of recollections rushed on my mind, what a climax did they form! I turned away my eyes, sick, sick at heart, and pursued my solitary journey. Within twelve miles of M———— house, as I reached an eminence, I again paused to look back, and caught a last view of the mountain of Inismore. It seemed to float like a vapour on the horizon. I took a last farewell of this almost loved mountain. Once it had risen on my gaze like the pharos to my haven of enjoyment; for never, until this sad moment, had I beheld it but with transport.
On my arrival here I found a letter from my father, simply stating that by the time it reached me he would probably be on his way to Ireland, accompanied by my intended bride, and her father, concluding thus: “In beholding you honourably and happily established, thus secure in a liberal, a noble independence, the throb of incessant solicitude you have hitherto awakened will at last be stilled, and your prudent compliance in this instance will bury in eternal oblivion the sufferings, the anxieties which, with all your native virtue and native talent, your imprudence has hitherto caused to the heart of an affectionate and indulgent father.”
This letter, which even a few days back would have driven me to distraction, I now read with the apathy of a stoic. It is to me a matter of indifference how I am disposed of. I have no wish, no will of my own.
To the return of that mortal torpor from which a late fatally cherished sentiment had roused me, is now added the pang of my life’s severest disappointment, like the dying wretch who is only roused from total insensibility, by the quivering pains which, at intervals of fluttering life, shoot through his languid frame.