During the deepest midnight, the unseen light is still incessantly approaching, though man remains insensible of its progress till the glorious dawn of morning; and thus the march of coming events hurries daily on unnoticed and unknown. Never before had it appeared, to the impatient mind of Agnes, that the sands of her hour-glass fell so slowly and silently. In her heart there was scarcely sufficient depth of soil for grief to strike a very permanent root, as her superficial feelings were calculated only to produce a mushroom crop of petty discontents and selfish grievances. Sharp and acute as the pang of her disappointed vanity had been, it seemed destined not to be very lasting, as Marion, on returning one day from a long walk, almost smiled to find Lady Towercliffe seated in their small parlour, and diligently pouring a torrent of lively gossip into the ears of Agnes, who felt little disposed at first to become interested in all the ill-assorted marriages people might choose to make, or to care who had died, or were likely to be born: but gradually her mind had been opened to the consideration of whether Miss Brown were a suitable match for Mr. Grey—whether £500 a year might possibly be enough to maintain Captain Jackson of the 10th and Lady Maria Meredith, whose individual expenditure on dress amounted to £400 per annum each, and whether it would be best for Lieutenant Stanley and Miss Maynard to marry and settle in Australia, or to continue single and remain at home.
Agnes had no possible chance of seeing the parties, or of influencing their decision. She would probably never hear more of them, nor had she been previously aware of their existence, yet the magic of Lady Towercliffe's eloquence gradually led her on to argue the merits of each case, as if she had been the arbiter of their fate, till at length, being insensibly roused from her stupor of melancholy indulgence, the visit was concluded by Agnes joyfully consenting to dine at Lady Towercliffe's next day, to meet a party of friends.
After having feared that her sister never would smile again, Marion now, with glad surprise, heard Agnes once more actually laugh, and she could not but wonder that Lady Towercliffe, by putting her through a course of gossip, and administering to a "mind diseased" a strong mixture of love affairs, quarrels, sicknesses, and bankruptcies, had acted on the spirits of Agnes as a counter-irritation, so that, in the contemplation of other people's miseries, she attained a spurious resignation beneath her own. As sorrow is the rust of the soul, everything that traverses the surface, has a tendency to scour it away, and the scattered links of Agnes' happiness seemed brightening now again, as if they might at last be reunited into as glittering a chain as before, while her cheek resumed its wonted hue and her tongue its wonted volubility. After the first great affliction of life, it is said that the sufferer never is again the same, "that the heart can know no second spring;" but now there seemed every probability that, though the drooping pinions of her ambition had been lowered, Agnes might soon put a patch on her worn-out spirits, and be only too much restored to her former self. When the carriage next day arrived, which was to convey her to Lady Towercliffe's, Marion, ever ready to enjoy any happiness reflected from the eyes of others, bid her good night with a sensation of real pleasure at this unexpected revival.
There are strange coincidences in every day life, and the small dinner party at Lady Towercliffe's accidentally contained the two last persons on earth who would have wished to meet. When Lord Towercliffe received Agnes with friendly cordiality at the door, he had not yet relinquished her hand before he suddenly felt his own grasped with a convulsive start, and when he hastily looked up, the countenance of his newly arrived guest had grown pale as that of a spectre, her eyes were closed, and he felt her hand become as cold and heavy as lead. Too well-bred to notice her strange emotion, which there was an evident effort to conceal, he naturally ascribed it to the remembrance of recent family affliction, when now, for the first time, entering society again, and he silently led Agnes to a seat beside Lady Charlotte Malcolm and Miss Howard Smytheson.
Agnes did not once look round the room, but she heard the low, deep tones of a voice with which she had too long been familiar, though now it must for ever be to her the voice of a stranger. Captain De Crespigny had been, some time previously, dividing his fascinations between the only two young ladies in the room, and he continued still, with the same light laugh as before, to exhibit his rare gift of conversational humor and vivacity, after giving a slight bow to Agnes, which she did not even see. A mist was before her sight—a ringing in her ears—her very heart seemed benumbed—and her only desire being to avoid notice, while her parched lips refused to articulate, she silently fixed her large eyes on Lady Caroline Malcolm, assuming an aspect of attention, and inwardly thankful that there was something in the room at which she could look, while circumstances had thus so painfully and so very unexpectedly "awoke the nerve where agony was born."
The world, usually one great "School for Scandal," had not yet circulated the story of Captain De Crespigny's inconstancy, and Agnes' disappointment; therefore, dreading above all things the contemptuous pity bestowed on a case like hers, she now exerted herself, from the fear of ridicule more than even of censure. The strongest emotions of existence are concealed in the great drama of life; and though Agnes felt herself grow blind when dinner was announced, yet she afterwards retained a confused recollection of having walked down stairs, leaning on the arm of an officer whom she had never seen before, discussing the hue of a ribbon, or the probability of a war, while her whole heart, mind, and spirit, were torn with contending emotions.
Strange is the ignorance in which people may live respecting the real thoughts and feelings of those with whom they are at the moment in actual contact! Agnes possessed an energy and pride of spirit which supported her now, while with flushed cheeks, and eyes brightened by agitation, her volubility became like a delirium. What she said to the stranger might be sense or nonsense, she neither cared nor knew, while her own laugh sounded unnatural in her ears; but still her companion listened and smiled, looking even more admiration than he felt, and while Agnes rattled on with apparent recklessness, he was inwardly conjecturing whether this could possibly be the beautiful Miss Dunbar who had endeavord to "entrap" his brother officer De Crespigny, artfully attempting what she had not been artful enough to achieve.
When the endless dinner was ended at last, and the ladies rose to withdraw, Agnes could willingly have fled from the house for solitude; but Lady Towercliffe, to beguile the interval, importunately begged for music, and persecuted her to sing. It was weeks since Agnes had attempted a note, but, anxious to avoid notice, she tried to remember the songs best known to her. Each as it rose to memory, seemed filled with remembrances in which she dared not indulge. Who but the unhappy can tell the power of music in recalling vanished years and vanished joys! One song Captain De Crespigny had formerly accompanied, another he had admired, a third he had copied out for her. All their sentiments of love and constancy he had with ready flattery applied to herself, and each had been played or sung only for him.
Hopes and feelings now for ever extinct, crowded into her memory; a cold, curdling anguish gathered round her heart; the notes died away inaudibly, and Agnes at length, leaning her forehead on the music-desk, burst into an irresistible flood of tears, while her eyes rested at these words,—
"Long hours have passed on