"My woes may make a story as well as yours, Helen; and a long one too, if I tell all: but it must come out by degrees,—a series of sketches, rather than an history."
"Have you seen any body from Oakley, Rosalind?"
"Ah, Helen!" said Rosalind smiling, as she watched the bright colour mounting even to the brows of her friend; "your history, then, has had nothing in it to prevent your remembering Oakley?"
"My history, as you call it, Rosalind, has been made up of a series of mortifications: some of them have almost broken my heart, and my spirit too; but others have irritated me into a degree of courage and daring that might perhaps have surprised you; and every thing that has happened to me, has sent my thoughts back to my home and to my friends,—all my friends, Rosalind,—with a degree of clinging and dependent affection such as I never felt before."
"My poor Helen! But look up, dearest! and shed no tears if you can help it. We all seem to be placed in a very singular and unexpected position, my dear friend; but it is not tears that will help us out of it. This new man, this vicar, seems inclined to go such lengths with his fanatical hypocrisy, that I have good hopes your mother and Fanny will ere long get sick of him and his new lights, and then all will go right again. Depend upon it, all that has hitherto gone wrong, has been wholly owing to him. I certainly do not think that your poor father's will was made in the spirit of wisdom; but even that would have produced none of the effects it has done, had not this hateful man instilled, within ten minutes after the will was read, the poison of doubt and suspicion against Charles, into the mind of your mother. Do you not remember his voice and his look, Helen, when he entered the room where we were all three sitting with your mother? I am sure I shall never forget him! I saw, in an instant, that he intended to make your mother believe that Charles resented the will; and that, instead of coming himself, he had sent him to your mother to tell her of it. I hated him then; and every hour that has passed since has made me hate him more. But let us take hope, Helen, even from the excess of the evil. Your mother cannot long remain blind to his real character; and, when once she sees him as he is, she will again become the dear kind mother you have all so fondly loved."
"Could I hope this, Rosalind, for the future, there is nothing I could not endure patiently for the present,—at least nothing that could possibly happen while Charles is here; but I do not hope it."
There was a melancholy earnestness in Helen's voice, as she pronounced the last words, that sounded like a heavy prophecy of evil to come, in the ears of Rosalind. "Heaven help us, then!" she exclaimed. "If we are really to live under the influence and authority of the Vicar of Wrexhill, our fate will be dreadful. If your dear father had but been spared to us a few years longer,—if you and I were but one-and-twenty Helen,—how different would be the light in which I should view all that now alarms us; my fortune would be plenty for both of us, and I would take you with me to Ireland, and we would live with——"
"Oh Rosalind! how can you talk so idly? Do you think that any thing would make me leave my poor dear mother?"
"If you were to marry, for instance?"
"I should never do that without her consent; and that, you know, would hardly be leaving her."