"Yes," replied Marion. "In going through life, I feel myself reading a book by the best of all authors. Many of the incidents, as we advance, surprise and disappoint us; but, knowing that the whole is on a plan which could not be improved, we feel certain that all shall turn out right and best in the end."
"It is a conviction such as you describe, Marion, which allays the torturing and almost feverish anxiety I should otherwise suffer respecting those around whom my warmest affections are kindled," observed Mr. Granville. "Religion is indeed the best of all anodynes for pain of every kind; otherwise, who can tell how greatly I should have suffered in our sorrowful uncertainty respecting Clara's recovery, and in leaving you, my Marion, to whom I am now bound by every tie that can unite heart to heart. I will not,—I cannot say, farewell; but let us live in hope of better days to come."
Mr. Granville at length took leave; and, as he hurried for the last time across the common, Marion leaned against the window, and followed him with her eyes till he vanished out of sight; while Sir Arthur's countenance shewed that his kind heart was full of anxiety and sorrow; for he had seen many vicissitudes in human life and human attachment, therefore he trembled for the possibility of sorrow hereafter, to one whom he loved with all the unbounded warmth of his nature.
Marion closed her eyes that night with the pleasing conviction, that the world contained not a happier being than herself. She felt conscious how much Mr. Granville had elevated her mind by his conversation, what a treasure of interesting thoughts and pleasing hopes he had left her; and, while following him in imagination through every mile of his journey, and sadly counting the many days that must intervene till they could meet again, she resolutely turned her mind towards all the pursuits and occupations calculated to render her worthy of Richard Granville, when he returned to claim her as the partner and companion of his future existence.
"Discerning mortal! do thou serve the will
Of time's Eternal Master, and that peace
Which the world wants, shall be to thee confirm'd."
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Captain De Crespigny had heard, with frantic alarm, of the fearful danger from which Marion was so wonderfully delivered; and then, for the first time, he discovered the whole depth and reality of his love. The gracefulness of every thought which she expressed, and the bright beauty of that look with which it was accompanied, had made an indelible impression on his heart, so that now, when he saw her so unexpectedly snatched from the jaws of death, no words could do justice to his emotion. He hurried that very evening to ascertain the reality of her escape, and to say what he could on the occasion; while the tremulousness of his voice, and the quivering of his lip, gave a degree of depth and reality to his few incoherent sentences, which all his well-turned speeches in former times had failed to convey. Marion thanked him warmly for his friendly sympathy, and spoke to him with all the intimacy of relationship and old acquaintance; but when she turned to Mr. Granville, Captain De Crespigny then observed the flutter of her voice, the deep tone of tenderness, and the look full of confidence and full of interest, with which she spoke to him, and to him only; while there was a degree of tact and delicacy in her manner of testifying the wide disparity of her feelings, which left him nothing of which to complain. Careless of the dry and sarcastic air with which Agnes watched his mortification, Captain De Crespigny did not even take the trouble to conceal it; but soon after strode out of the room, and walked with hurried and agitated steps up and down in the garden, whistling, but not from want of thought. When thus alone and unobserved, a thousand angry and indignant feelings made him writhe with mental suffering, to think that he, who had been so deeply, so fatally loved by others, who had never sued in vain, and never truly had loved before, should endure now the agonies of unrequited affection, should be slighted, avoided, and forgotten, for a man he hated, as he had always hated Richard Granville.
"He cannot love her as I do!" thought Captain De Crespigny, vehemently clenching his hands, and throwing himself on a seat. "What does he know of that magical feeling! a passionless being from boyhood, master of all his own feelings and impulses, incapable of the wild, ungovernable ardor, which carries me forward, in the face of all obstacles, to win her! He has indeed acted manfully on this occasion, but shall the accident of his success destroy my hopes of happiness! No! it must not,—shall not be! Dunbar will never consent to their marriage, and he must prevent his sister from thus throwing herself away. She shall yet be mine! The only girl who was ever insensible to my preference! I cannot live without her, and if there be means in the wide world to thwart Richard Granville, I must find them!"