But Mona, suddenly recalled to recollection by that action and those words, started up, and drew her hand quickly from him, gazing upon him with a look of anger and indignation. "Treats me harshly:" she said; "It is false! He is kindness itself; and he is right too! What had I to do meddling with his purposes or his will? I have been sorry for you, young gentleman, and compassion has led me to do a foolish thing, but I will take care so to offend no more;" and thus speaking, she left him, and hurriedly sought her husband below.
She found him in a lower room, gazing forth as he had done above, but the expression of his countenance was more sad and less fierce than before. Mona advanced towards him, but he heeded her not; she laid her hand upon his arm, but he did not turn his head. She was a creature of noble impulses, however, and where her heart prompted she would not be repelled. The tears, indeed, sprang to her eyes and ran over her cheeks, but still she cast herself on her husband's bosom, saying, "I have done wrong, Franklin; I should not have interfered where you thought fit to act. I was sorry for the young man, and I thought that he might have friends and relations, and perhaps a wife, that loved him as I love you, and I wished you to send him back to his happy home on that account. But I was wrong to speak of it at all, and still more wrong to speak of it before him. Forgive me, Franklin; I will not offend again."
Franklin Gray pressed her to his heart, and kissed the tears off her cheek; and--although the seed of suspicion and doubt, once sown in a soil so congenial to it as his mind, can never, perhaps, be wholly eradicated, take what pains we will--yet he was anxious to feel as he had felt, somewhat ashamed of having given way to such bitterness towards her who was associated with all the better spirits of his heart's dark tabernacle, and grieved to see the grief of one who had brought the only real sweet sunshine on his path that he had known through life. He pressed her then to his bosom, he treated her gently and kindly, and once more, to her powerful gentleness, the fierce and lion-like spirit of her husband was softened and bowed down.
She had not said one word of the dark shade of jealousy which had shown itself in Franklin Gray's first words to her. She was far too wise to comment on it, or to attempt to do it away by any eloquence but those of acts. She saw it plainly, however; she felt that what in her breast was but pity, had been misunderstood by her husband; and from a certain vague expression on Lord Harold's face when last he spoke to her, she feared that, with him, man's vanity had once more misjudged woman's best feelings. She blamed herself, however, more than either: "I should have known," she thought, "that man cannot see into the heart;" and from that hour she went near the prisoner no more. She gave no cause for so abstaining, and she took care that the woman who accompanied her should provide for his comfort as far as might be. It is the meed of such conduct, however, almost always to pass unremarked; the recompense, the success is in our own hearts. Franklin Gray saw that she was less with the prisoner than before, but he did not see that she was never with him at all.
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
Having now exposed to view the state of mind of Franklin Gray, we must turn once more to Lord Harold, and display, in some degree at least, the feelings by which he was affected. His heart was one naturally kind; his impulses were in general noble and generous; but he had derived from his mother a strong degree of that quality which, more than any other of the human heart, lays our hearts open to evil passions, unless it be very early enlisted on the side of the good ones; I mean pride.
From his father, too, had descended to him various faults and peculiarities, which, if everything had gone smooth with him though life, might perhaps have remained dormant, or, under particular circumstances, might have assumed the aspect of virtues, when in fact they were much more nearly allied to vices. There was, when roused by anger or stimulated by hatred, a degree of remorseless determination about his character, very much resembling that of Lord Danemore. This had shown itself in a degree in his conduct towards Langford; but since that period all the bad points in his nature, which had been originally brought forth by his disappointment in regard to Alice, had been called into still greater activity by the wounds he had received, by the irritation of sickness, and by pondering in solitude and in a state of confinement, not only over the disappointment of his first and early love, but over the mortification which his vanity had received, and over the annoyance of having to remain at a distance from the scene of action, where he knew, from the few words which Langford had spoken to him, that great and important events were likely to be transacted.
Under these circumstances, a degree of angry irritation had taken possession of his mind; and even on the day when he was removed from the neighbourhood of Moorhurst he would have resisted, had his strength been sufficient to render opposition at all effectual. Besides his own weakness, however, there was about Franklin Gray a tone of command and authority, a decision, a breaking forth of powerful intellect, which had the effect of producing, as the first impulse, an inclination to obey in all that surrounded him; and Lord Harold felt that power, and was angry with himself for feeling it.
He had determined, then, even before the period of the interview which we have just described, to seek his liberty by any means; and had the Robber at once granted him what he sought, had he either soothed or reasoned with him, the whole current of the young nobleman's feelings might have been changed, and he might have learned to admire those very qualities which now, arrayed as they were in opposition to his wishes and obnoxious to his pride, not only excited hatred, but created a stern and bitter determination both of taking vengeance, which he called "inflicting punishment," and of triumphing over the pride of one whose mental powers overawed him, which he called again "doing justice."
As he sat and listened to the brief discussion between Franklin Gray and the beautiful creature that pleaded for his liberty, his determination became more strong, his purpose more decided; and though, to do him but justice, vanity did not speak, and he entertained no definite thought of striving to raise into warmer feelings the compassion which he had excited in Mona's breast, and of thus striking the Robber in the most vulnerable point, he could not, as we have before said, help feeling a sensation of admiration mingling with his gratitude, and sentiments rising up in his bosom which might easily have become dangerous and evil.