Rosamond began to tremble violently as she gazed up in the stranger's face. Why was she committed to her charge? Was she forsaken by him whom awakening memory brought before her as an injured and perhaps avenging husband?
"Where is he?" cried she, in a voice so low, the woman bent her ear to her lips, to hear.
"The doctor?" replied she. "Oh, he will soon be here. He said if you waked, no one must come near you, and you must not be allowed to speak one word. It might cost you your life."
Rosamond tried to gasp out her husband's name, but her parched lips were incapable of further articulation. Her eyes closed from exhaustion, and the nurse, supposing she slept, drew the curtains closer, and moved on tiptoe to the window. At length the door slowly opened, and the footstep of a man entered the room. Rosamond knew it was not her husband's step, and such a cold feeling fell on her heart, she thought it the precursor of death. She heard a whispered conversation which set every nerve throbbing with agony. Then the curtains were withdrawn, and she felt a stranger's hand counting the pulsations of her chilled veins. "I am forsaken," thought she, "even in my dying hour. Oh God! it is just." Again the chamber was still, and she must have fallen into a deep slumber, for when she again opened her eyes, she saw a lamp glimmering through the curtains, and the shadow of her nurse reflected in them, seated at a table, reading. She was reading aloud, though in a low voice, as if fearful of disturbing the slumbers she was watching. Rosamond caught the sound, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God." She repeated it to herself, and it gave her an awful sensation. The commanding claims of her Maker upon her affections, for the first time rose before her in all their height, depth, power, and majesty. "A jealous God!" How tremendous, how appalling the idea. If she, a poor worm of the dust, was so severe and uncompromising in her demands upon a fellow being, what terrible exactions might a neglected Deity make from the creature he had formed for his glory? She remembered the command from which that fearful sentence was extracted. She had broken it, trampled it under her feet. She had bowed down in adoration to an earthly idol, and robbed her God, her jealous God, of the homage due to his august name. The light that poured in upon her conscience was like the blazing of a torch through a dark mine. She had felt before the madness of her bosom passion, she now felt its sin and its sacrilege. "I am forsaken," again repeated she to herself, "but I had first forsaken thee, O my God! Thou art drawing me home unto thee." Tears gathering thick and fast, fell down her pale cheeks, till the pillow they pressed was wet as with rain-drops. She wept long, and without one effort to restrain the gushing forth of her melting heart, when exhausted nature once more sought relief in sleep. Her first consciousness, on awakening, was of a soft hand laid gently on her brow, a warm breath stealing over her cheek, and a trembling lip gently pressed upon her own. Had she awakened in the abodes of the blest, in the midst of the hierarchy of heaven, she could hardly have experienced a deeper rapture than that which flooded her breast. Slowly, as if fearing to banish by the act the image drawn on her now glowing heart, she lifted her eyes, and met the eyes of her husband looking down upon her, no longer stern and upbraiding, but softened into woman's tenderness. The next moment he was kneeling by the bedside, his face buried in the covering, which shook from the strong emotion it concealed.
When Rosamond learned that Cecil, instead of having left her to her bitter consequences of her rashness, in just and unappeasable resentment, had never left her in her unconsciousness, and since her restoration to reason had hovered near the threshold of her chamber day and night, forbidden to enter, lest his presence should produce an agitation fatal to a frame apparently trembling on the brink of the grave, she again reproached herself for believing he could have been capable of such unrelenting cruelty. When she was assured too that Eugenia was safe under the protection of an early friend, whom she had most unexpectedly encountered, and only waited a passport from the physician, to come to her bedside, her soul swelled with gratitude that found no language but prayer.
"I have sinned against Heaven and thee, my husband!" exclaimed Rosamond, from the depth of a penitent and chastened spirit—"I am no more worthy to be called thy wife."
"We have both erred, my beloved Rosamond; we have lived too much for the world and ourselves, regardless of higher and holier relations. Never, till I feared to lose thee for ever, did I feel the drawings of that mighty chain which links us inseparably to Him who created us. Let us both commence life anew—awakened to our responsibilities as Christians, and, profiting by the sad experience of the past, let us lay the foundations of our happiness too deep and broad for the storms of passion to overthrow. Let us build it on the Rock of Ages."
And who was the friend whom Eugenia had so providentially discovered? When she left the dwelling of Cecil Dormer, to seek the lady who wished for an instructress for her daughters, one of the first persons who crossed her path was the terrific Mrs. Grundy. This woman, whose hatred for her seemed implacable as the injuries she had inflicted were deep, seeing her alone and in evident disorder of mind, began to revile and threaten her. A stranger, observing the terror and loathing with which a young and attractive-looking girl shrunk from a coarse and masculine woman, paused and offered his protection. The remarkable resemblance which Eugenia bore to her ill-fated mother led to a discovery as unexpected as it was interesting. The melancholy stranger was no other than her own father, who believed his wife and child had perished in their flight, having heard of the destruction of the boat in which they fled. Thus mysteriously had Providence transmuted into a blessing, what seemed the greatest misfortune of her life.
The history of Mr. St. Clair and his unfortunate wife, which he subsequently related to Cecil and Rosamond, was fraught with the most intense interest. Like Rosamond, he had cherished a bosom serpent, remorseless as death, "cruel as the grave;" but he had not, like her, found, before it was too late, an antidote for its deadly venom.