"Yet it seems strange that I have no right to indulge in these memories of an era in my existence gone forever! How few and fleeting were those moments of unshadowed sunlight; the brightest twin memories which my soul can recall, were given to me under such different auspices. Of the first sweet hour, I have just promised my soul never again to think—upon the gloomy waters of my existence, no lilies are blossoming now—the last withered flowers have been torn from their roots, and swept idly down the current to perish, leaving only a faint perfume in my heart, which is but an added pain.
"Now I know that its very bliss was a delusion of my fancy, like the words, I believed to have heard, wrung from Harrington's breast during that fearful tempest, when we stood upon the deck of the ill-fated vessel, and death seemed so near us. Could I have died then, died with his arms enfolding me, his manly heart against my own, the measure of my existence had been complete—it began beneath the sunlight of his smile, it would have ended with the last life-pulse within his noble bosom.
"Now I will lay this book aside nor shall my hand again turn its pages, until I have taught myself something of the quiet I have so long striven to attain. If in the sight of Heaven I have sinned, cannot my sufferings atone for it?—the evil, if evil there has been, was involuntary; the penitence has been deep and earnest; surely the angels watching over me will not let it be without avail.
"Great heavens! will this heart never have rest—will years do nothing for me? Ralph is now a man; Lina, one of the most lovely creatures I ever saw. These two children, whose infant kisses seem, even now, upon my lips, have sprung up into sudden youth, and seem ready to escape my love. Yesterday, Lina came to me with a world of innocent blushes, and hung about my chair, as if longing to whisper some secret into my ear, yet without the courage to speak. I wondered what the child wanted, but would not force her confidence.
"I thank God, oh! I thank my God that I am alive. The terrible shock of that night is still through my frame. I have been so close to death, that the vitality at my heart seems unreal. Last night I was hurled into the depths of the river, that is even now rushing onward to the ocean so near to my window, that the eternal sweep of its waters haunt me like a threat of death.
"He saved me—or rather they—for Ben Benson was in the midst of the storm, resolute, like the other. I must have been dead for a time, for, when my memory came back, it seemed as if I had forgotten all these miserable years of married life, and was upon that heaving raft again, with his arms around me, and whispering those low, passionate words in my ear. Why did that dream come back then? Was it to lay my heart open, and reveal to me how little prayer and time have done to wrest this first and last love from my heart?"
CHAPTER LVII.
ZILLAH.
As General Harrington hurried through his wife's journal, his eyes grew bright and cold, like steel when the sun strikes it; his lips, always so soft and sensual in their expression, became rigid with passion, and clung together hardened by the silent rage that burned in the depths of his heart. Had Mabel proved herself vicious or unprincipled in the book so cruelly purloined, he might have forgiven it; but here the struggle to love him had been so great, that it wounded his self-love in every fibre. The struggle to love him—General Harrington, the invincible, the adored of so many hearts! "He would soon be an old man, and then the friendship, which was all her heart could ever give, would content him. He an old man—he who had solemnly determined never to know what age or infirmity was." The insult was too much. His outraged vanity hardened into absolute malice. For the first time he positively hated the man who could be loved better than himself. He forgot the self-sacrifice, the wealth given up to his use—the sublime devotion which had made James Harrington a guardian angel to Mabel's son. He forgot everything save that the noble girl he had married for her wealth—wealth even on her wedding-day half squandered at the gaming table, by an unfaithful guardian, had give the preference of her taste—he cared little for a deeper feeling—to one younger than himself, and that one the man to whom his first wife's wealth had descended in one vast property.