“Oh! look, Miss Stanley, how beautiful your work shows, now she is dressed. How kind you were to make her all these pretty things. I can do it all but these buttons, will you do them for me?”
Clara laid down her pen with a smile, to comply with the child’s request; and as she did so, Laura laid her little head caressingly on her bosom, saying, fondly, “Dear, dear, Miss Stanley, I wish papa would come; he would thank you for all your goodness much better than I can.”
“I wish he would come, for your sake and his own, dearest—not to thank me, though I shall not love you the less for being so grateful, Laura,” was the reply, in a voice, whose low, musical tones brought back, as by a flash of light to Sir Dudley’s heart, feelings, thoughts, memories, of past years, which he thought were hushed for ever.
“Miss Stanley! Clara! inscrutable Providence!—is it to you I owe my child?” he exclaimed, springing suddenly forward, and clasping his little child to his heart—one moment covering Laura’s upturned face with kisses, the next turning his earnest, grateful gaze on the astonished Clara.
For an instant her heart grew faint, for the fatigue of long-continued nursing had weakened her; nor could she realize in that agitating moment the lapse of ten years, since she had last looked on his face, or listened to its richly expressive voice. Time had passed over her heart, leaving its early dream unchanged, and vainly she strove to feel how long a period had flown. All seemed a thick and traceless mist; but when she succeeded in shaking off that prostrating weakness, forcing herself to remember it was Sir Dudley Granville, not Granville Dudley, who had thus addressed her, still one fact was certain, the object of her first, her only affection was at her side once more—it was his child her care had saved.
Day after day did Clara Stanley and Sir Dudley Granville pass hours together by the couch of Laura. Though conscious her secret was still her own, and grateful that, after the first burst of natural feeling, Granville’s manner to her was only that of an obliged and appreciating friend, Clara’s peculiarly delicate feelings would have kept her from Laura’s room during the visits of her father; but the child was restless and uncomfortable whenever she was absent, and Granville so evidently entreated her continued presence, that to keep away was impossible. It was during these pleasant interviews Sir Dudley related the cause of his change of name. He had become, most unexpectedly, the heir to his godfather, Sir William Granville, who had left him all his estates, on the sole condition of his adopting, for himself and his heirs, the name of Granville—Sir Granville Granville, he added, with a smile, was not sufficiently euphonious, and so he had placed the Dudley first instead of last. He alluded in terms of the warmest admiration to her works, and wondered at his own stupidity in never connecting the Miss Stanley of his Laura’s letters with the authoress he had once known. A very peculiar smile beamed on the lips of Clara as he thus spoke, but she did not say its meaning.
One day, some six or seven weeks after Granville’s appearance at Ashford, Clara had just comfortably seated herself at her desk, after seeing Laura ensconced in her little pony chaise, when she was startled by hearing Sir Dudley’s voice, in accents of unusual seriousness, close beside her.
“Will you tell me, Miss Stanley, how you can possibly contrive to unite so perfectly the literary with the domestic characters? I have watched, but cannot find you fail in either—how is this?”
“Simply, Sir Dudley, because, in my opinion, it is impossible to divide them. Perfect in them, indeed, I am not; but though I know it is possible for woman to be domestic without being literary—as we are all not equally endowed by Providence—to my feelings, it is not possible to be more than usually gifted without being domestic. The appeal to the heart must come from the heart; and the quick sensibility of the imaginative woman must make her feel for others, and act for them, more particularly for the loved of home. To write, we must think, and if we think of duty, we, of all others, must not fail in its performance, or our own words are bitter with reproach. It is from want of thought most failings spring, alike in duty as in feeling. From this want the literary and imaginative woman must be free.”
Granville’s eyes never moved from the fair, expressive face of the gentle woman who thus spoke, till she ceased, and then he paced the room in silence; till, seating himself beside her, he besought her to listen to him, and pity and forgive him, and prove that she forgave him; and, ere she could reply, he poured forth the tale of his earlier love—how truly he loved her, even when his idle prejudices against literary women caused him to fly from her influence, and enter into a hurried engagement with one, beautiful indeed, but, from having no resources within herself, the mere votaress of pleasure and outward excitement. How bitterly he had repented through seven weary years the misery he had brought upon himself—how constantly he had yearned for a companion of his home and of his mind—and how repeatedly, as he glanced over her pages, where pure fresh feeling breathed in every line, and the love of home and its sacred ties were so forcibly inculcated, he had cursed his own folly. How he had sought to drown thought in a public career, but had still felt desolate; and now that he looked on her again, not only in her own character, but as the preserver of his child, how completely he felt that happiness was gone from him for ever, unless she would give it in herself!