Susan, who with her husband had imagined that the disclosure which had taken place would have had a beneficial effect, hastened to the sick chamber, and soon persuaded our hero to make her a confidant of his doubts and fears. “There is but one who can satisfy you on that point, my dear William,” replied she; “for although I feel convinced that I can answer for her, it is not exactly a case of proxy—McElvina will be here directly, and then I will obtain his permission to disclose the whole to Emily, and you will have the answer from her own lips.”
In the course of the forenoon, Emily was made acquainted with the eventful history of our hero’s birth and parentage—of her no longer being an heiress—of his ardent love for her, and of the fears that he entertained upon the subject.
“I am only sorry for one thing,” replied Emily, “that he did not ask me to marry him when I thought that I was an heiress—now, if I accept him, I am afraid it may be thought—oh, if you knew how I have loved him—how I have thought of him when far away,” cried the sobbing girl, “you would not—no one would think me capable of interested motives.—I am so glad the property is his,” continued Emily, looking and smiling through her tears.
“Why, my dear Emily, if you begin to make difficulties, we shall be worse than ever. There never was a more fortunate occurrence than this attachment between you and Seymour. It reconciles all difficulties, puts an end to all Chancery suits, and will shower general happiness, when some at least must have been made miserable. Come with me—William is very feverish this morning: you only can do him good.”
Mrs McElvina led the agitated girl into the sick chamber, and whispering to Seymour that Emily knew all, and that all was well, was so very imprudent as to allow her feelings to overcome her sense of chaperonism, and left them together.
I am aware that I now have a fair opportunity of inserting a most interesting conversation, full of ohs and ahs, dears and sweets, etcetera, which would be much relished by all misses of seventeen, or thereabouts; but as I do not write novels for them, and the young couple have no secrets to which the reader is not already a party, I shall leave them to imagine the explanation, with all its concomitant retrospections and anticipations, softened with tears and sweetened with kisses; and, as the plot now thickens, change the scene to the dressing-room of Rainscourt, who had now just risen, at his usual hour, viz., between two and three in the afternoon. His French valet is in attendance shaving him, and dressing his hair, and communicating what little intelligence he has been enabled to collect for his master’s amusement.
“Monsieur has not seen the young officer who was wounded?”
“No; I wonder why they brought him up here. What sort of a person is he?”
“C’est un joli garçon, Monsieur, avec l’air bien distingué.—I carried in the water this morning when his wound was dressed, for I had the curiosity to see him—C’est un diable de blessure—and the young officer has a very singular mark on his right shoulder, like—comment l’appelez-vous?—pied du corbeau.”
Rainscourt started under the operation of the razor: he remembered the mark of the grandchild, so minutely described by the vicar.