A short time before Ida would have rebelled against a decision so much at variance with her inclinations,—would have remonstrated, or at least have murmured; but she had received too severe a lesson for its impression to be speedily effaced, and reproaching herself for the sigh which alone betrayed her disappointment, she hastened up-stairs to prepare a little parcel of necessaries to be taken to Mabel.
As Ida was putting up, with other articles, the Bible which she knew that her sister would especially welcome, she was unexpectedly joined by Mrs. Aumerle.
“You may leave that business to me,” said the lady, with more real kindness of intention than tenderness of manner; “your father says that it would be hard not to let you make one of the party, so you had better get ready for the journey at once.”
Joyful at the permission, Ida hastened to make her little preparations; and Mrs. Aumerle, as she packed Mabel’s parcel, informed her step-daughter of the arrangements which she had herself made for the convenience of all. A messenger had been promptly despatched to the nearest neighbour who kept a carriage, to ask the loan of the conveyance to carry the travellers to the nearest railway station. Nothing that could insure the comfort of the vicar was forgotten when his carpet-bag was packed by the hands of his careful wife; Ida received sundry injunctions to watch over the health of her father, and the good housewife took care that the travellers should not fast on the way.
When the carriage drove away from the door of the vicarage, with its eager, anxious occupants, Mrs. Aumerle, following it to the gate, watched it from thence till it disappeared in a turn of the road. And thus the woman of sense soliloquised on events, past, present, and future:—
“How much trouble and misery has been caused by one act of selfish folly! Because Augustine—too great a genius, I suppose, to judge like a sensible man—fancies to roam through the clouds, and take with him a wilful, disobedient child, while a petulant girl eggs on her husband to follow so absurd an example, a whole family must be plunged into terror, grief, and alarm! I felt convinced from the first that all would end happily enough. Augustine has easily guided the balloon; it has floated quietly down at its leisure to some quiet meadow in Devon; and but for the poor earl’s shaken nerves, the whole affair to those most concerned has been nothing but a party of pleasure! It is we who have had to suffer for the senseless folly of others. There’s Ida has been looking like a spectre; and my dear, excellent husband is first almost crushed with sorrow, and then hurried off, at half-an-hour’s notice, to escort that half frantic countess to a husband who will probably refuse to see her! Well, well, I believe that of all senses common sense is the most uncommon!” and with a soothing conviction that a portion, at least, of the rare gift had been bestowed upon herself, Mrs. Aumerle quietly returned to her usual avocations.
It was fortunate for Mabel that the morrow’s post brought to her stepmother’s hands the letter which the young girl had dropped from the balloon. Ida had left a request, that notes addressed to her might in her absence be opened by Mrs. Aumerle, and thus it was that that lady first became aware of some of the perils through which the travellers had passed. Mabel’s letter had been picked up in a field and posted by the farmer who had found it, and the touching lines of love and penitence which she had penned in the near prospect of a terrible death, softened in a very great degree the feelings of her step-mother towards her.
“She has had her share of suffering after all,” observed the lady, “and we must not be severe upon the poor child. She has had punishment enough for her fault, so I’m content to ‘let bygones be bygones.’”