Not to prolong the description of this and similar painful scenes, be it sufficient to state that, after the lapse of a few days, when Colin was again introduced to her, Mrs. Lupton had fully recovered her self-possession, and perfectly comprehended certain arrangements which Mr. Lupton had mentioned to her touching that young man whom he intended to make his heir, and whose parentage was no longer to her a mystery. In these arrangements she quietly acquiesced, not because she felt any interest in them, or would allow herself in any manner to acknowledge that she could in the least be identified with the young man whom Mr. Lupton had now introduced to the house; but simply because her husband had proposed and desired them. At the same time, while his every wish was hers, personally she felt that degree of indifference, respecting any arrangements he might make, not unusual with individuals who have been long hopeless of all happiness, so far as the present life is concerned, and who, consequently, contemplate the world to come as their only place of refuge and of rest, while the present, with all its pleasures, its anxieties, and its affairs, proportionably sinks in their estimation, as scarcely worthy even of a moment's serious consideration.
Whether this feeling was unconsciously accelerated by the closeness of an event which shortly after happened, and which—happily, perhaps, it may be deemed—put an end to all Mrs. Lupton's earthly sorrows, I will not pretend to divine; yet it has occasionally been asserted that the nearness of death (although at the time unknown) will often produce those exhibitions of sentiment and feeling, as regards the things of this world, which are never so fully made under any other circumstances. It is not for the writer of this history to speculate on such a subject; with facts alone has he to do: and, therefore, the reader must here be informed that, now Mrs. Lupton's proper faculties had returned, she strenuously opposed—notwithstanding what we have previously recorded as having escaped from her lips—the marriage of her young friend, Miss Calvert, with Colin. On that one question only did she evince the least interest in anything connected with him; but no sooner was she made aware that he was the object of that affection which had caused Miss Calvert so much trouble, than she retired to her room, and, without delay, addressed to her the following communication, dated from the Hall:—
“Believe me, my dearest Jenny, when I express to you the pain I feel in writing to you on such an occasion as the present, and in obtruding my sentiments upon you respecting a subject of such deep interest to your own heart, that upon the next step you take in it may probably depend your happiness or misery during the whole of your after-life. But as I am not happy, and have felt too grievously the impossibility of being made so any more in this world, it will not be difficult for you to credit my motives in wishing you to think, only think, how, by an ill-considered proceeding, you may do that in one moment which a whole after-life of pain can never remedy, and from which nothing but the grave can afford you a refuge. The young gentleman who has been introduced to you is not exactly what he has been represented—Mr. Lupton's friend. He is something more. Would that he were my son, for your dear sake! Then, my dearest girl, should I wish him no higher happiness than the possession of so good and true a creature, nor you any better love and care than I should delight in exercising towards you. It is unfit that I should tell you more than this; though possibly your own good sense may enable you to supply the deficiency. If you can give up this disastrous affection, let me implore you to do so. I fear it cannot end in any happiness. Why I say so, I scarcely know; but I feel that fear most deeply. Perhaps my own wretchedness makes me doubt whether there be such a state as happiness really to be met with, in any shape, in the world. But whatever the cause, let me again and again, as you regard the last words of a true friend, beseech you never to consent to such a match as would make you mistress of this unhappy and mournful house. I know everything, and warn you advisedly.
“Ever and for ever
“Your affectionate
“Elizabeth Lupton.”
By a singular coincidence, the same post which placed the above in Miss Calvert's hands, also conveyed to her two others:—one from Colin, and the other from her brother Roger. Colin's was opened the first.—It contained all those passionate appeals and protestations which, from a person so circumstanced, might naturally have been expected. Judging from this epistle, Colin was in a state of desperation, scarcely to be sufficiently described; although he concluded by expressing his determination never to relinquish his suit, though all the powers of earth conspired to oppose him, or even Jane herself should be induced by her supposed friends to resist his addresses. But while he possessed the consciousness of her eternal affection, it was utterly impossible for him by any means to do otherwise than persist through all trials until fortune should be compelled at length to crown his hopes.
This spirited production at first inspired poor half-heart-broken Jane with momentary hope; the more especially so as she found, too, on opening her brother Roger's letter, that he also advised her by no means to sacrifice her own happiness—if her happiness really did depend upon the event of this attachment—merely out of compliance, however otherwise desirable, with the wishes of those who could take no share from off her bosom of the load which their own agency had once placed there. Roger reminded her, that while others rejoiced, she might have to suffer; and that for his own part he never wished to see the day when his sister might possibly pine away her solitary hours in grief, which it was likely would hurry her to the grave, instead of being the happy wife of a young man whom she loved, and who, as far as he could observe, very well merited her attachment. At the same time, he declared in the most positive terms, that the real objection urged by her parents and friends against Colin, was not, in his opinion, a valid one. That it did not in the remotest degree touch the character or qualifications of the youth himself, and ought never to have been by any means so pertinaciously insisted on.
These remarks in some degree counteracted the bitterness of those which had made her weep over her friend Mrs. Lupton's letter, although they served in some degree to assist her in drawing that correct conclusion as to the true cause of objection, which now was rendered sufficiently evident to her mind. Yes, now she conjectured it:—her lover was not Mrs. Lup-ton's son, but he was more to Mr. Lupton than a friend. Besides, these matters had not been altogether unknown to her family during some years past; and, therefore, a certainty almost seemed to exist that her father and mother saw in the parentage of Colin the bar to their future union.
How long Jane grieved over this discovery and these letters, I need not say, but grieve she did, until some that had known her slightly knew her not again; and those who had known her best became most deeply certain, that if this was suffered to continue, a light heart was for ever exchanged for a sad one, and the creature whose very presence had diffused happiness, was converted into one of those melancholy beings over whose mind an everlasting cloud seems to have settled; whose looks instantaneously demand our pity, we scarce know why, and whose very bodily existence appears to become spectral and unearthly, while yet they sit at our table, or muse statue-like with melancholy by our hearth. Then it was that the obstinate began to soften, the strict to relax, the determined to think that continued opposition to the ways of the heart is too cruel to be always maintained. Everybody loved poor Jane, and everybody grieved to see her grief. So at length they proceeded from the direct exertion of counter influences upon her, to the tacitly understood holding out of hope, and the sometimes expressed possibility that matters might yet be ultimately arranged to her satisfaction.