The next day Lord Charles was to leave us; but I saw that his departure was more welcome to my husband than to my mother and myself. In the morning he had requested Pendarves to walk with him round the grounds, and they returned, I observed, with disturbed countenances.
Lord Charles then called, and sat some time with my mother. What passed between them I do not know; but their parting was even affectionate, and his with me was distinguished from all our other partings by a degree of emotion for which I could not account.
"How I shall miss you!" said I, softened by his dejection.
"Thank you! I can bear better to leave you now:" and springing into his carriage he drove off and I felt forlorn; for I felt that I had lost a friend: and I also felt that I wanted one who, like him, had some check over my husband.
What more shall I say of this painful period of my life, for which, however, painful as it was, I would gladly have exchanged that which soon followed? One day was a transcript of the other. Pendarves, ever good-natured and kind while he was at home, seemed to think that he was thereby justified in leaving me continually; but as I was not of that opinion, to use a French phrase, je dépérissois à vue d'œil; and though I affected to be cheerful, my mother saw that my feelings were undermining my existence. But not even to her would I complain of my husband and she respected my silence too much to wish me to break it. However she was with me,—she, I felt, never would forsake me, or love me less; and while I had her, I was far from being completely miserable. Alas! what was she not to me? friend, counsellor, comforter!
But the decree was gone forth, and even her I was doomed to resign!
Not long after Lord Charles had quitted us, I perceived a visible alteration in my mother's appearance. I saw that she ate little, that she was very soon fatigued, and that her fine spirits were gone. I had no doubt but that she fretted for my anxieties. I therefore laboured the more to convince her that I was not as uneasy as she thought me.
But how vainly did I try to veil my heart from her penetrating glance! if there be such a thing as the art of divination, it is possessed by the eagle eye of interested affection, and that was hers.
My mother saw all my secret struggles; she pitied, she resented their cause; and I have sometimes feared that she sunk under them.
One morning, Pendarves on his return from Oswald Lodge came in with a very animated countenance, and told us a new description of amusement was introduced there, namely, archery, and he must beg me to go with him the next day, and learn to be an archer. "Lady Martindale," cried he, "already shoots like Diana herself."