“Dear Arabella,—The promise I made you at the inn, at Fiumalba, I have up to this time kept faithfully; I now ask you to release me from it. My wife’s happiness (in which my own is bound up), perhaps her life even, depends upon your doing so; she has just passed the crisis of a brain fever, her bodily weakness is lamentable to witness, and the mental depression naturally arising from it leads her to take a morbid and desponding view of her own chances of recovery: in such a position, anything that will conduce to raise her spirits and tranquillise her mind will effect more than twenty doctors. Some mischief-maker has caused her to obtain a garbled account of a certain occurrence, to which I will not farther refer; nothing but the whole truth will suffice to set her mind at rest. Arabella! I deeply regret this necessity, but it cannot be avoided, and I trust to you to act towards me as I would act by you if the situation were reversed.
“I remain always,
“Your true and sincere friend,
“Harry Coverdale.”
For two or three days after that on which the foregoing conversation between Coverdale and his wife took place, Alice continued much in the same condition, the idea that she should die, and that after her death Harry would espouse Arabella Crofton, and be much happier than she had been able to make him, appeared never absent from her mind; her appetite decreased, her sleep became broken and fitful, and Mr. Gouger’s face grew longer, and his head shook more and more like that of Lord Burleigh in the Critic, every time he visited her.
One morning, on Coverdale’s return from the neighbouring town, whither he had ridden to procure some delicacy wherewith to try and tempt Alice’s capricious appetite; he was equally surprised and pleased on entering her room to perceive a brightness in her eye and a colour in her cheek, such as he had feared never to see there again.
“Why, Alice darling, this fine morning has inspired you—you are looking more like yourself than I have seen you this many a long day!” he exclaimed, as he seated himself by the easy-chair which Alice had gained sufficient strength to use as a substitute for her couch.
Regarding him with a smile and blush, which tinged her late, cheeks with the most delicate rose-colour, she replied—
“You have grown very clever in reading people’s faces of late, Harry dear; but you are quite right in fancying something has inspired me—at least, if feeling very happy is what you mean by inspiration. But oh! how foolish I have been! how wrong, how unjust I was ever to doubt you! Harry dearest, can you forgive me for not feeling certain that you had always acted as nobly and generously before I knew you as you have done since? If you could tell how I hate and despise myself for my silly, illiberal suspicions! But you must wonder all this time what has set me raving in this strange way. What do you think of my having had a letter from—yes! actually from Miss Crofton, telling me—here, read it yourself, I am certain every word of it is true; and oh! how I pity her for being obliged to write it, and, indeed, for the whole affair, poor thing!”
As Alice spoke she drew a letter from the pocket of her dress, and gave it to her husband; it ran as follows:—