We have said enough to show that Nelly's sorrow was not causeless, and that she had good reason to regret the days of even their hardest fortune.
“Had we been but contented as we were!” cried she; “had we resisted ambitions for which we were unfitted, and turned away from 'paths in life' too steep and too arduous for our strength, we might have been happy now! Who can say, too, what development of mind and intelligence should not have come of this life of daily effort and exertion? Frank would have grown manly, patient, and self-relying; Kate would have been, as she ever was, the light of our home, making us sharers in all those gifts of her own bright and happy nature; while even I might have risen to worthier efforts of skill than those poor failures I have now to blush for.”
Such were the regrets which filled her heart, as she sat many an hour in solitude, grieving over the past, and yet afraid to face the future.
CHAPTER XVIII. AN ACT OF SETTLEMENT.
Were we disposed to heroics, we might compare Mrs. Ricketts's sensations, on entering the grounds of the villa, to the feelings experienced by the ancient Gauls when, from the heights of the Alps, they gazed down on the fertile plains of Italy. If less colored by the glorious hues of conquering ambition, they were not the less practical. She saw that, with her habitual good fortune, she had piloted the Rickettses' barque into a safe and pleasant anchorage, where she might at her leisure refit and lay in stores for future voyaging. Already she knew poor Dalton, as she herself said, from “cover to cover,”—she had sounded all the shallows and shoals of his nature, and read his vanity, his vainglorious importance, and his selfish pride, as though they were printed on his forehead. Were Nelly to be like Kate, the victory, she thought, could not be very difficult. “Let her have but one predominant passion, and be it love of admiration, avarice, a taste for dress, for scandal, or for grand society, it matters not, I'll soon make her my own.”
“This will do, Martha!” whispered she, in Miss Ricketts's ear, as they drove up the approach.
“I think so,” was the low-uttered reply.
“Tell Scroope to be cautious,—very cautious,” whispered she once more; and then turned to Dalton, to expatiate on the beauty of the grounds, and the exquisite taste displayed in their arrangement.
“It has cost me a mint of money,” said Dalton, giving way irresistibly to his instinct of boastfulness. “Many of those trees you see there came from Spain and Portugal; and not only the trees, but the earth that's round them.”