"My reputation must be irreparably injured in the world's eye by such association!" continued Agnes, rapidly. "All is agony and horror! While Dixon yet spoke, I hated myself and everything around. Shame and mortification overpowered me! All became shadowy, confused, and wavering in my thoughts. That night I was seized with fever and delirium. A sick-nurse was placed to attend on me; and I am thankful to find that Mrs. O'Donoghoe, with her party, instantly left the house. I am ashamed to think what folly my ravings must have disclosed! The worst horror of fever is, that it betrays all to others! I hovered on the very brink of the grave! Oh! that I had been as fully prepared to enter another world as I was to leave this! How happy are those whose trials and mortifications are buried in the silent grave, and whose pulse is no longer like mine—the knell of a living death! Life is, indeed, an awful gift, with its deceitful hopes and consuming sorrows!"
"Yes, if we will not be satisfied with the happiness provided for us by God himself; if we will persist in laying out a plan of life for ourselves, and in being wretched when the infinite wisdom of our Creator sees fit to alter it. Even now, Agnes, you may, if you choose, have peace and cheerfulness. How much better it is, to lose all your lovers, than to marry a bad husband! Let us live for each other; let us improve our minds; let us console the many who are worse off than ourselves; let us encourage one another in all the difficulties of life; and, whatever is wanting to us now, we can look the more thankfully forward to those regions of eternal joy, for which our sorrows here are all sent on purpose to prepare us. Dear Agnes, for my sake you must not despond."
"I ought not, Marion, while you are my sister! I hate the world and every thing in it, but who would not love you," replied Agnes, in a voice of dark and stormy grief, while no tear was on her cheek. "My heart seems dry as summer dust! My body is a dreary sepulchre to my mind, all dark, cold, and desolate. There is nothing in life worth living for!"
Though little of Agnes' depression was really caused by Sir Arthur's death, yet her grief became now as deep as crape and bombazine could make it. She had not the generosity to struggle against her mortified feelings, or to spare those of Marion, but from day to day her wayward mind seemed to cherish the chagrin which inch by inch consumed her. No gentle self-renunciation appeared in her sorrow, but she seemed to fancy that in all the world there was no tear except of her shedding,—no sigh but of her breathing,—and she forgot to observe how Marion had banished all her own anxieties and cares while listening to the egotism of grief in another, thus bearing the whole burden of both. Agnes gradually delivered herself up to a state of peevish, listless, apathetic despondency. If she attempted to read, her eyes looked only on a wilderness of words without meaning; she had no taste for work, not a correspondent in the world, and never had cared for a newspaper; therefore unable to fix her attention on any employment, she proceeded with sullen, mechanical indifference, through the ordinary routine of life, without energy and without interest.
Agnes' mind was like a crushed butterfly, disfigured and valueless; all its buoyant hopes and fantastic flights for ever at an end. She knew not that sunshine of the heart, often divinely given amidst the darkest hours of life, when inward peace, amidst external sorrow, might be compared to a cheerful, quiet room, while a torrent and tempest are raging unheeded around. Agnes mistakenly believed that the only possible aggravation to her melancholy would arise, if her thoughts were turned to religion, since hitherto she had seen in it nothing but the gloomy terrors of futurity. She never had cultivated any taste for reading that infallible balm to the depressed, and least of all would she have thought of appealing to the Holy Scriptures for relief from the cankering irritation of her proud but broken spirit, and nothing had ever annoyed her more, than when Marion, one day, from the fulness of her own heart, observed with soothing gentleness, that they should be too grateful for the blessings bestowed, to repine for those which were withheld, especially as affliction was generally the surest way to amend the heart.
"Yes! but in mending you may break it," replied Agnes, discontentedly. "My existence here is a living death, with nothing to care for, nothing to hope for, nothing to do, meditating continually on my feelings, hating life, and yet dreading death."
"But," replied Marion, laying her hand on the Bible, "here, Agnes, I find enough to care for, enough to hope for, and more than enough to do. No mortal being has all his wishes granted, and why should we expect to be an exception? The world and its affections have deprived us of peace, and this is the only guiding-star which can lead us to find it again. If we were to study a portion of this volume together every day——"
"Marion! I am surely melancholy enough already, without becoming methodistical!" interrupted Agnes, impatiently. "I wept when I was born; and every day since shews me I had cause to do so! If I ever do get up my spirits again, I may perhaps read the Bible more carefully, but, not while I feel so low and depressed."
"You remind me, Agnes, of Lady Towercliffe saying last year, that she felt much too ill to see a doctor, but would send for one if she became better. We find ourselves lonely and benighted now; but here is a bright path of glory pointed out, and strength offered us to pursue it."
"Well, Marion! if you must soar to the clouds, pray leave me to grovel on the earth!" replied Agnes, peevishly. "You are so fond of reading now, that, like Petrarch, your head will be pillowed on a book when you die; but can you not talk of something more cheerful to me? Those mournful subjects are fit only for a deathbed, or a tract. When people talk to me of religion, I always feel like the felons at Newgate in the condemned pew, with their coffins gaping at their elbow! What makes you always talk so dismally about resignation now, Marion?"