The pen that has traced these events is too feeble to portray the state into which this change of scenery and decorations threw the Vicar of Wrexhill. It would have been a great mercy for him if he had altogether lost his senses; but no symptom of this sort appeared, beyond a short paroxysm, during which he called upon Heaven to witness his promise of going to law with Mr. Mowbray for the purpose of setting aside his mother's will.
After the first buzz produced by this second lecture had subsided, Sir Gilbert Harrington arose and addressed the company with equal good taste and good feeling. A few minutes' conversation with his young friend Mr. Mowbray, he said, authorized him to assure the Vicar of Wrexhill that whatever private property he could lay claim to (a wag here whispered, "Sermons, surplices, and the like") should be packed up and sent to the Vicarage, or any other place he would name, with the utmost attention and care. He added very succinctly, and without a single syllable unnecessarily irritating, that circumstances connected with the situation of the ladies of the family rendered it necessary that the reverend gentleman should not continue in the house; a necessity which, it might be hoped, would be the less inconvenient from the circumstance of his former residence being so near.
While his old friend was uttering this extremely judicious harangue, Charles escaped by a side door from the room, and bounding up the stairs to Rosalind's dressing-room, where (though as yet he had hardly spoken to her) he pretty well knew she was sitting with his sister Fanny, he burst open the door, rushed in, and fell on his knees before her, clasping her most daringly in his arms, and almost devouring her hands with kisses.
Fanny stood perfectly aghast at this scene. During the few days that Charles had been at home she had truly grieved to see the decided coldness and estrangement that was between Rosalind and him; and what could have produced this sudden change she was totally unable to guess.
Not one of the family party had entertained the slightest doubt that the will, which Mr. Cartwright had more than once alluded to, was such as to render his late wife's children wholly dependent upon him; and this painful expectation had been already fully confirmed: but even if it had proved otherwise, Fanny knew no reason why this should so change the conduct of Charles towards Miss Torrington.
Not so, however, the young lady herself. The vehement caresses of Mowbray explained the whole matter to her as fully and as clearly as the will itself could have done; and if she did bend forward her head till her dark tresses almost covered his—and if under that thick veil she impressed a wild and rapid kiss of joy upon his forehead, most people would forgive her if they knew how well she had all the while guessed at his misery, and how often her young heart had ached to think of it.
This impropriety, however, such as it was, was really the only one committed on the occasion. Sir Gilbert was an excellent man of business, as was likewise the tall gentleman his attorney; so seals were put upon all plate-chests, jewel-cases, and the like, except such as were proved satisfactorily by Mr. Stephen Corbold to have been purchased since the marriage of the widow Mowbray and Mr. Cartwright. All such were given over to the packing-cases of the serious attorney and the serious butler, and at half-past nine p.m. the Vicar of Wrexhill stepped into his recently-purchased (but not paid-for) travelling carriage, and turned his back on the Park—once more Mowbray Park—for ever.
But little remains to be said that may not easily be guessed at by the accomplished novel-reader:—and for such, of course, these pages are prepared.
Little Mary Richards speedily became Lady Hilton; and Fanny Mowbray, during a visit of some months at her Scotch castle, learned to think of her religious sufferings with sufficient composure to enable her once more to look forward as well as around her, with hope and enjoyment. And who is there that can doubt that the lovely Fanny Mowbray, with recovered senses and fifty thousand pounds, even though she did for ever abandon her poetic pursuits, met, at no very advanced age, with a husband worthy of her?