Assuming a cheerful air, the count led his wife and daughter to the dining-room, and partook of the repast with a forced appetite, in order to avoid giving pain to those who watched all his movements and hung upon all his words with such tender solicitude.
After dinner, the count, still pondering upon the scene in which a tender wife and affectionate daughter had administered to him such sweet consolation, and experiencing a delicious balm in the domestic felicity which he enjoyed, said to Isabella, "Read me from your Album, my dear girl, those lines which a poet is supposed to address to his wife, and which always possess new charms for me."
Isabella hastened to obey her father's wishes, and read, in a soft and silver tone, the following stanzas:—
THE POET TO HIS WIFE.
When far away, my memory keeps in view,
Unweariedly, the image of my wife;
This tribute of my gratitude is due
To her who seems the angel of my life—
The guiding star that leads me safely through
The eddies of this world's unceasing strife;—
Hope's beacon, cheering ever from afar,
How beautiful art thou, my guiding star!
Our children have thy countenance, that beams
With love for him who tells thy virtues now;—
Their eyes have caught the heavenly ray which gleams
From thine athwart the clouds that shade my brow,
Like sunshine on a night of hideous dreams!—
The first to wean me from despair art thou;
For all th' endearing sentiments of life
Are summed up in the words Children and Wife.
The mind, when in a desert state, renews
Its strength, if by Hope's purest manna fed;
As drooping flowers revive beneath the dews
Which April mornings bountifully shed.
Mohammed taught (let none the faith abuse)
That echoes were the voices of the dead
Repeating, in a far-off realm of bliss,
The words of those they loved and left in this.
My well-beloved, should'st thou pass hence away,
Into another and a happier sphere,
Ere death has also closed my little day,
And morn may wake no more on my career,
"I love thee," are the words that I shall say
From hour to hour, during my sojourn here.
That thou in other realms may'st still be found
Prepared to echo back the welcome sound.
Scarcely had Isabella finished these lines, when a servant entered the room, and announced a Mr. Johnson, "who had some pressing business to communicate, and who was very sure that he shouldn't be considered an intruder."
Mr. Johnson—a queer-looking, shabby-genteel, off-hand kind of a man—made his appearance close behind the servant, over whose shoulder he leered ominously.