“What is the text?” inquired Augustine, while Mabel bent forward to listen.
“The loftiness of man shall be bowed down and the haughtiness of man shall be laid low, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.”
Again there was solemn, deathlike silence! Perhaps, as Mabel and her uncle sat watching the last edge of the sun’s disc disappear, and the sky gradually darken into night, the self-reliant genius, the high-spirited girl, were secretly applying to themselves the sublime words of the prophet of Judah.
While twilight still lingered, a thought struck Mabel. She remembered that she had brought with her an envelope ready directed to her sister, with a sheet of blank paper enclosed, for her fancy had been pleased with the idea of dating a letter from “the clouds.” Making a table of her seat in the car, Mabel knelt down, and with a pencil wrote a sad and touching farewell to the parent and sister so tenderly loved. Many names were kindly remembered in that note, for the proud spirit of Mabel was softened and subdued by the pressure of trial, and no one was then recalled to her mind but with a feeling of kindness. To her step-mother Mabel sent a long message. She confessed her fault with frank regret, and asked the pardon of Mrs. Aumerle, not only for the last act of open disobedience which was now so fearfully punished, but for a long course of petty provocations, for sullen looks, and proud retorts, and bitter words spoken against her; Mabel entreated forgiveness for all. Her tears dropped fast upon the sheet—the first tears which she had shed on that day, but she dashed them hastily from her eyes. Mabel then folded the note and kissed it, as if believing that the paper might bear to her home the impress of that last token of love; then she dropped her letter over the side of the car, watching it as it descended, and picturing to herself the grief and tenderness with which it would be received, and read, and treasured up as a mournful memorial of her of whose fate it might be the only record.
Dashleigh had watched the action of his young companion, and now drew from his vest a small but very elegant pocket-book, which bore on one side an embossed gold shield, on which his name was engraved, surmounted by his coronet. This was the first gift of affection which the young nobleman had received from his affianced bride. It had been his constant companion since the hour when he had received it from her hand. Dashleigh opened the book, and gazed for some moments on the inscription written on the fly-leaf, though the thickening darkness would have rendered it difficult to decipher, had he not known every syllable by heart. The earl then, rather by feeling than sight, traced two words on one of the blank pages, reclasped the book, and gave it to Mabel with an expressive movement of the hand. Sadly and silently she dropped into the dark abyss the love token of the unhappy Annabella.
More than an hour elapsed before the silence again was broken. The thin air of these upper regions had become intensely cold, and Mabel shivered in her spring attire. The balloon was drifting steadily on before the night breeze, as was marked by its dark globe appearing to blot out one constellation after another from the sky as it swept on, the sole object that broke the immense expanse of the star-lit heavens.
“I think,” observed Mabel with a heavy sigh, “that all in my father’s house must now be met together for evening prayers.” She paused, as fancy brought before her eye the warm lighted room, the curtains drawn, the lamp-light falling on so many dear familiar faces! Mabel thought how her father’s voice would tremble as he uttered his fervent supplications for those in such awful peril, and how Ida would try to smother her bursting sobs, that she might not unnerve him by the sound of her distress. “They will be praying for us,” continued Mabel; “should we not pray together—even here?”
“None have more need of prayer,” murmured the earl; Augustine’s head was bowed in assent.
“God is with us—even in this awful, awful height where no human being can approach us,” faltered Mabel.
“Augustine Aumerle,” said Lord Dashleigh, “do you lead our evening devotion.”