My mother endeavored to sooth me by all the arguments in her power; and said that, doubtless Mansville, for his own credit’s sake, would be ready to make all the reparation that was in his power.
‘Alas!’ thought I, ‘what recompense can he make me for the injury he has inflicted on my peace of mind? Nothing can make amends for the pain of discovering that the only object upon which we have placed all our young heart’s warmest affections is base, treacherous, and unworthy of that passion; and I now as thoroughly despised Mansville as I had before loved him, for that he had thrown a blight upon my mind from which I could never thoroughly recover.’
We expected the return of my father and brother in about three or four days from the time they had left home, as they would have nothing to detain them after they had obtained the interview they sought with the Earl Mansville, as they were fully aware that if they protracted their presence, it would excite our utmost alarm. The fourth and fifth day, however, elapsed, and still they remained absent. Our apprehensions began to be excited in the utmost degree, and all the fearful forebodings that had before haunted my mind, returned with redoubled force.
In spite of all her efforts to appear to the contrary, the fears of my mother, were, if possible, more excited than my own, and conjecture was exhausted in vain, to endeavor to account for the procrastination of their return.
Another day elapsed in this manner, and yet we heard nothing of them, and then, indeed, our terrors were aroused to an almost insupportable pitch, and we no longer sought to disguise from each other the real state of our feelings upon the agonizing subject. I expressed to my mother all those forebodings I had before indulged in, and she could not but admit the too great probability of them. Now did she join with me in deeply regretting that my father and brother had not yielded to my advice, or that she should have made one to urge the propriety of the course they had taken. What step to pursue we were at a loss to conceive.
‘I cannot wait in this horrible state of suspense any longer,’ my mother ejaculated, when the seventh day dawned, and we heard no tidings of them; ‘I’ll instantly take G—m, and learn at once the cause of this mysterious delay, and whether or not anything has happened to them. This dreadful state of doubt and suspicion is worse than the most terrible certainty.’
She had scarcely given utterance to these words when a knock was heard at the outer door, and a letter was presented to my mother, which she knew immediately to be in the hand-writing of her husband. Trembling violently with apprehension, she broke the seal, but had not read more than two lines when, with a piercing scream, she fell senseless to the floor. I flew to her, raised her in my arms, and then, taking up the fatal letter, began to read the contents. The commencement of it was enough to smite my heart with horror; and it is marvellous how, under such trying circumstances, I retained possession for an instant of my faculties. My unfortunate father and brother were in gaol, accused of murder—of the murder of my deceiver, the Earl Mansville!
My frantic cries soon brought the servants of my father to the room, who immediately conveyed my mother to her chamber, while I was reduced to such a state by the shock which my feelings had sustained, that it was found necessary to call in medical advice to me, as well as the former. I remained in a state of almost utter unconsciousness for several days, during which period I continually raved of the murdered Mansville, and the awful charge which I would fain have believed my unhappy parent and brother were innocent of; but which, under peculiar circumstances, seemed, alas! but too probable.
My mother had been restored to comparative composure much earlier than might have been anticipated from the violence of the shock her feelings had received; and when I regained my senses, I found that she had started, the day following the one on which she had received the fatal letter, for G—m, to seek an interview with her wretched husband and son, and to obtain an explanation of the horrible circumstances. The person who attended me had the utmost difficulty in persuading me not to follow her; and it was only by the determined tone in which the medical man spoke, stating that the consequences of such a journey, in my then state of mind, might be productive of the most fatal results, that I was prevented from putting my wishes into effect.
Too soon, alas! the horrible particulars reached my ears, which I will proceed to relate as they were afterwards detailed by my father.