Remorse, sorrow, tenderness, and love, all swept over his countenance, and gave pathos to his voice. I rose and sprang to his arms, that opened to receive me, and I clung to his neck, and wept upon his bosom, till it seemed that my life would dissolve itself in tears. Oh! it seemed that I had leaped over a yawning abyss to reach him, that I had found him just as I was losing him for ever. I was once more in the banqueting-house of joy, and "his banner over me was love."
"Never again, my husband, never close your heart against me. I have no other home, no other refuge, no other world, than your arms."
"You have forgiven me too soon, my Gabriella. You should impose upon me some penalty equal to the offence, if such indeed there be. Oh! most willingly would I cut off the hand so tenderly clasped in yours and cast it into the flames, if by so doing I could destroy the fiend who tempts me to suspect fidelity, worthy of eternal trust. You think I give myself up without a struggle to the demon passion, in whose grasp you have seen me writhing; but you know not, dream not, how I wrestle with it in secret, and what prayers I send up to God for deliverance. It seems impossible now that I should ever doubt, ever wrong you again, and yet I dare not promise. Oh! I dare not promise; for when the whirlwind of passion rises, I know not what I do."
Had I not been conscious that I was concealing something from him, that while he was restoring to me his confidence, I was deceiving him, I should have been perfectly happy in this hour of reconciliation. But as he again and again clasped me to his bosom, and lavished upon me the tenderest caresses, I involuntarily shrunk from the pressure, lest he should feel the note, which seemed to flutter, so quick and loud my heart beat against it.
"We are neither of us fit for the fashionable world, my Gabriella," said he; "we have hearts and souls fitted for a purer, holier atmosphere than the one we now breathe. If we had some 'bright little isle of our own,' where we were safe from jarring contact with ruder natures, remote from the social disturbances which interrupt the harmony of life, where we could live for love and God, then, my Gabriella, I would not envy the angels around the throne. No scene like this to-night would ever mar the heaven of our wedded bliss."
Ernest did not know himself. Even in Crusoe's desert isle, if the print of human footsteps were discovered on the sand, and had he flown to the uttermost parts of the earth, the phantom created by his own diseased imagination would have pursued him like the giant form that haunted from pole to pole the unhappy Frankenstein. Man cannot escape from his own passions; and in solitude their waves beat against his bosom, like the eternal dashing of the tide, scarcely perceived amidst the active sounds of day, but roaring and thundering in the deep stillness of the midnight hour.
"We were happy here before Margaret came," I answered; "happy as it was possible for mortals to be. How strange that she should have come unasked, remain unurged, without dreaming of the possibility of her being otherwise than a welcome guest!"
"There should be laws to prevent households from such intrusions," said Ernest, with warmth. "I consider such persons as great offenders against the peace of society as the midnight robber or the lurking assassin. Margaret Melville cares for nothing but her own gratification. A contemptible love of fun and frolic is the ruling passion of her life. How false, how artificial is that system where there is no redress for encroachments of this kind! Were I to act honestly and as I ought, I should say to her at once, 'leave us,—your presence is intolerable,—there is no more affinity between us than between glass and brass.' But what would my mother say? What would the world say? What would you say, my own dear wife, who desire her departure even as I do myself?"
"I should be very much shocked, of course. If she had the least sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling, she would read all this in your countenance and manners. I often fear she will perceive in mine, the repulsion I cannot help experiencing. For your mother's sake I wish to be kind to Margaret."
"Do you know, Gabriella, she once wished me to think of her as a wife? That was before her character was formed, however,—when its wild, untamable elements revelled in the morning freedom of girlhood, and reason and judgment were not expected to exert their restraining influence. Think of such an union, my flower-girl, my Mimosa. Do I deserve quite so severe a punishment?"