Mrs Mowbray, as soon as she had parted with Adeline for the last time, had dismissed all her old servants, the witnesses of her sorrows and disgrace, and retired to her estate in Cumberland,—an estate where Adeline had first seen the light, and where Mrs Mowbray had first experienced the transport of a mother. This spot was therefore ill calculated to banish Adeline from her mother's thoughts, and to continue her seclusion from her affections.
On the contrary, her image haunted Mrs Mowbray:—whithersoever she went, she still saw her in an attitude of supplication; she still heard the plaintive accents of her voice;—and often did she exclaim, 'My child, my child! wretch that I am! must I never see thee more!'
These ideas increased to so painful a degree, that, finding her solitude insupportable, she invited an orphan relation in narrow circumstances to take up her abode with her.
This young woman, whose ruling passion was avarice, and whose greatest talent was cunning, resolved to spare no pains to keep the situation which she had gained, even to the exclusion of Adeline, should Mrs Mowbray be weak enough to receive her again. She therefore intercepted all the letters which were in or like Adeline's hand-writing; and having learnt to imitate Mrs Mowbray's, she enclosed them in a blank cover to Adeline, who, thinking the direction was written in her mother's hand, desisted, as the artful girl expected she would do, from what appeared to her a hopeless application.
And she exulted in her contrivance;—when Mrs Mowbray, on seeing in a magazine that Glenmurray was dead, (full a year after his decease,) bursting into a passion of tears, protested that she would instantly invite Adeline to her house.
'Yes,' cried she, 'I can do so without infringement of my oath.—She is disgraced in the eye of the world by her connexion with Glenmurray, and she is wretched in love; nay, more so, perhaps, than I have been; and I can, I will invite her to lose the remembrance of her misfortunes in my love!'
Thus did her ardent wish to be re-united to Adeline deceive her conscience; for by the phrase 'wretched in love,' she meant, forsaken by the object of her attachment,—and that Adeline had not been: therefore her oath remained in full force against her. But where could she seek Adeline? Dr Norberry could, perhaps, give her this information; and to him she resolved to write—though he had cast her from his acquaintance: 'but her pride,' as she said, 'fell with her fortunes;' and she scrupled not to humble herself before the zealous friend of her daughter. But this letter would never have reached him, had not her treacherous relation been ill at the time when it was written.
Dr Norberry had recovered the illness of which Adeline supposed him to have died: but as her letter to him, to which she received no answer, alluded to the money transaction between her and Mrs Norberry; and as she commented on the insulting expressions in Mrs Norberry's note, that lady thought proper to suppress the second letter as well as the first; and when the doctor, on his recovery, earnestly demanded to know whether any intelligence had been received of Miss Mowbray, Mrs Norberry, with pretended reluctance, told him that she had written to him in great distress, while he was delirious, to borrow money; that she had sent her ten pounds, which Adeline had returned, reproaching her for her parsimony, and saying that she had found a friend who would not suffer her to want.
'But did you tell her that you thought me in great danger?'
'I did.'