The next three years passed quietly away; but my parents observed with pain that Lady Helen's visits to Seymour Park became more and more frequent, though Lord Seymour had married a young wife before his daughter's return, who was jealous to excess of Lady Helen's influence over her lord, and that she had evidently lost much of her enjoyment of their society. The truth was, that though Lady Helen did not envy the happiness of my parents, it was not always that she could bear to witness it; because it recalled painfully to her mind the period of her life when she was equally happy; and she had no longer that sympathy with my mother which is the foundation and the cement of friendly intercourse; so true is it, that equality of prosperity, like equality of situation, is necessary to give stability to friendship. My mother, though she felt this, was too delicate openly to repine.
My intercourse with her, and the benefit which I derived from her instructions, remained the same, for I was always allowed to accompany Lady Helen to Seymour Park.
But, alas! the tide of sympathy towards my poor mother, which had been checked in Lady Helen's bosom by happiness, now flowed again with increased fulness, when she was summoned to console her under a sorrow kindred with her own.
My father had been saved from the dangers of war, to perish at home by a violent death. He was thrown from his horse, struck his head against a stone, and died upon the spot.
Lady Helen having removed her to her own house, devoted her whole attention to the offices of a comforter. In proportion as my poor mother's sense of happiness had been keen, her sense of privation was overwhelming.
But, so curiously, so mercifully are we fashioned, that we are sometimes able to derive medicine for our suffering from its very excess.
My mother was, as you well know, a woman of high aspirings, and loved to be pre-eminent in all things. She was proud of her conjugal love; she was proud of the dangers which she had dared under its influence, and of the sufferings to which she rose superior, to prove the tender excess of that love; she was proud, also, of her good fortune, in having her husband's life so long preserved to her, and she gloried in his devoted and faithful affection. But now of this idolized husband she was bereaved in a moment, and without any alleviating circumstances.
Soothing, though painful, are the tears which we shed for those who fall in battle; and sweet, "like music in the dead of night," heard after distressing dreams, or while we are kept waking by mournful realities, falls the sound of a nation's regret on the ear of those who weep over a departed hero.
But my father died ingloriously, and YET my mother felt pride derived from that very source, for it made her, in her own estimation, pre-eminent in trial; for how hard was it, after having shared her husband's dangers, and the struggles of war, to see him perish at home, the victim of an ignoble accident!
"Had he died in the field of glory, I might have found," she cried, "some solace in his renown; and I was prepared to see him fall, when others fell around him. But to perish thus! oh! never was woman's trial so severe!"