"Forgive us," answered Lois, her face mantling with earnest blushes, "if we feel constrained to deny ourselves the pleasure we have derived from your society. As long as we believed you the friend of religion, though not her acknowledged votary, our hearts acknowledged a sympathy with yours, and indulged a hope that you would ere long go goal for goal with us for the same immortal prize. But an infidel, Mr. More! Oh! my soul!" continued she, clasping her hands fervently together, and looking upward, "come not thou into his secret!"
"An infidel!" cried Henry, "and do you believe me such, and condemn me as such, unheard, without granting me an opportunity of vindication?"
"We would not have admitted the belief from an authority less respectable. The intelligence came from one who had been an inmate of your family, and expressed for you the warmest friendship. We were told that you ridicule our faith, make the Bible a scorn and mockery, and expose us as individuals to contempt and derision."
"It must have been that serpent of a Miss Hart!" exclaimed Henry, trembling with passion; "that scorpion, that fiend in woman's form, whose path may be traced by the slime and the poison she leaves behind! The lips which could brand you, Lois, as a hypocrite, would not leave my name unblackened. My sister received her into her household, and her domestic happiness came near being the wreck of her malignant arts—I could give you any proof you may ask of her falsehood and turpitude."
"I ask none," cried Lois, with an irradiated countenance, "I believe your assurance, and rejoice in it. I cannot describe the pain, the grief I felt that one so kind to others, could be so cruel to himself."
Lois, in the godly simplicity of her heart, knew not of the warmth with which she spoke, or of the vivid expression that lighted up her eyes. Henry thought if ever there was a moment when he could dare to address her as a being born to love, and to be loved with human tenderness, it was the present. He began with faltering lips, but in the intensity of his feelings he soon forgot everything, but the object for which he was pleading, with an ardour and a vehemence that made the unsophisticated Lois tremble. She trembled and wept Her heart melted before his impassioned declaration, but she feared to yield immediately to its dictates.
Their course of life had hitherto been so different, their early associations, their pursuits and habits—she dreaded lest he should mistake the fervour of his attachment for her, for the warmth of religious sentiment, and that the temptations of the world would resume their influence over his heart. "Let us still be friends," said she, smiling through her tears, "till time has more fully unfolded our characters to each other. We are as yet but acquaintances of a day, as it were, and if we hope to pass an eternity together, we should pause a little before we become fellow-travellers in our pilgrimage. The love of a Christian," continued she, a holy enthusiasm illuminating her face, "cannot be limited to the transient union of this world—it soars far, far beyond it, illimitable as space, and everlasting as the soul's existence." Henry felt, while listening to this burst of hallowed feeling, that to possess the love of Lois Carroll here, without a hope of reunion beyond the grave, would be a dark and cheerless destiny, compared to the glorious hopes that now animated his being.
It was about two years after this, Miss Hart took passage in the stage, and started for the habitation of some obscure relative who lived in a distant town. She had gone from family to family, indulging her odious propensity, flattering the present, and slandering the absent, till, her character becoming fully known, all doors were closed against her, and she was compelled to seek a home, among kindred she was ashamed to acknowledge. "Whose beautiful country-seats are those?" asked a fellow-passenger, pointing to two elegant mansions, that stood side by side as if claiming consanguinity with each other. "The first belongs to Captain Wentworth, and the other to Mr. Henry More, his brother-in-law," answered Miss Hart, putting her head from the window, as they passed—"you must have heard of them." "No," said the stranger; "is there anything remarkable connected with them?" "Nothing," replied she, with one of her significant shrugs, "only the captain is one of your dark Spanish Knights, who lock up their wives, and fight everybody who looks at them; and his lady likes every other gentleman better than her husband—and they could not agree, and the whole city were talking about them, so he took her into the country, and makes her fast and pray, and do penance for her sins. The other gentleman, Mr. More, married a low, ignorant girl, who had never been accustomed to good society; so, being ashamed to introduce her among his friends, he immured himself in the country also. They say he is so wretched in his choice, he has turned a fanatic, and there is some danger of his losing his reason." At this moment one of the horses took fright, and springing from the road, the stage was upset, with a terrible crash. Miss Hart, whose head was projecting from the window, was the only one who was seriously injured. She was dreadfully bruised and mangled, and carried insensible into Captain Wentworth's house. The stranger, whose curiosity was excited by the description he had just heard, and seeing the inhabitants of both dwellings were gathering together in consequence of the accident, assisted in carrying her, and lingered as long as he could find a reasonable excuse for doing so. "I believe that young woman's jaw is broken," said he, when he rejoined his fellow-passengers; "and it is a judgment upon her—I know there is not a word of truth in what she has been saying. If ever domestic happiness, as well as benevolence, dwelt on earth, I verily believe it is in those two families."
It was long before Miss Hart recovered her consciousness, and when she did, and endeavoured to speak, she felt such an excruciating pain in her jaw, as prevented her utterance. It seemed a remarkable instance of the retribution of Providence, that she should be afflicted in the very part which she had made an instrument of so much evil to others. Her jawbone was indeed broken, and there she lay, writhing in agony, incapable of speech, indebted to the beings she hated because she had injured, for the cares that prolonged her miserable existence. She could not speak, but she could see and hear, and her senses seemed sharpened by the bondage of her tongue. Mrs. Wentworth, and Lois too, hovered round her, with gentle steps and pitying looks, and the tenderest alleviations; and for this she might have been prepared. But when, through the shades of evening, she heard the deep voice of the once haughty and ungovernable Captain Wentworth, breathing forth humble and heartfelt prayers, while his wife knelt meek and lowly by his side, when she heard the gay and gallant Henry More, reading with reverence God's holy word, and joining with Lois in hymns to the Redeemer's praise, she rolled her eyes in wild amazement, and her dark spirit was troubled within her. "There seems a reality in this," thought she. "The worldling become the saint, and the lion transformed into the lamb! How happy they look, while I—poor, wretched, mangled creature that I am!" Paroxysms of agony followed these reflections, for which there seemed no mitigation.
She lingered for a long time speechless and in great suffering, but at length recovered with a frightful distortion in the lower part of the face. When she first beheld herself in a mirror, the shock was so great as to produce delirium, and when that subsided, a gloom and despair succeeded, from which they vainly endeavoured to rouse her by the soothings of sympathy and the consolations of religion. She felt that, like Cain, she must carry about an indelible brand upon her face, and cried like him, in bitterness of spirit, "My punishment is greater than I can bear." It was intolerable to her to look upon the fair, serene countenances of Mrs. Wentworth and Lois, and to see too the eyes of their husbands follow them with such love and delight, and then to draw the contrast between them and her own disfigured beauty and desolate lot. She expressed a wish to be sent to her relatives, and the wish was not opposed. She received from them a grudging welcome, for they had felt her sting, and feared that serpent tongue of slander, whose ancestral venom is derived from the arch reptile that lurked in the bowers of Eden.