There was a change in Annie, however, which alarmed and pained him; she was pale and thin, and strangely and feverishly restless. Lady Emily, from being constantly with her, had not remarked the great alteration, but acknowledged, in answer to St. Clair’s anxious queries, that she had seemed more unhappy the last four months, that the calm and tranquil cheerfulness which had characterised her had given place to alternations of fitful gaiety and more frequent depression; but what had occasioned it she could not tell; she thought it might be physical, as she had had a slight cough hanging about her for weeks, which nothing she took seemed to remove. Four months previous! was it possible that she might regret the promises she had so ingenuously given? Lord St. Clair more than once caught her glance fixed with a degree of pleading earnestness upon him, as if she failed in courage to speak; and as he was not one to encourage painful doubts where a word might solve them, he took an opportunity of kindly and affectionately inquiring why she was so changed.
The cause was soon revealed. About ten days after she had written to him, as we related, she had seen, amongst other despatches directed to Lord St. Clair, which were lying on the library table waiting to be arranged and forwarded, a single letter, the writing of the direction of which had caused such a sudden thrill and subsequent faintness, that it had been with difficulty she refrained from involuntarily tearing it open, to know from whom it came. She said that she had endeavoured to conquer the strange fancy; to reason with herself, that the resemblance to a writing she but too well remembered was mere accident. Yet so powerful had been its effect, that even when she recalled the superscription, the same feelings of heart-sickness returned as had overpowered her when it first met her eye. It had been put up with other public despatches—the family having before its arrival closed and sent more private letters; that as he had never alluded to it, she had struggled to believe it could have been nothing of interest to her, and yet the subject would not leave her mind, allowing her neither sleep at night nor rest by day. She knew it folly, she said, but conquer it she could not.
And that fearful state of internal restlessness was fated to continue; for, most unfortunately, the packet of despatches in which that was had been lost, in the overflow of a river which the messenger who bore it had to ford, and Lord St. Clair had never alluded to it, for his letters to Annie had been shorter than he liked, from the annoyance and increase of trouble which the loss of this very packet had occasioned him in his political employment. That the post-mark seemed Italian was all she could tell him, and his anxiety became as great as hers, though that it could really be what it was easy to discover Annie really imagined it, he believed impossible.
Meanwhile, the poor girl’s health—under a suspicion which, however imaginary, was very fearful—did not improve, and her relatives rested not till a skilful physician had been consulted; his opinion instantly decided them, and, despite of Annie’s resistance, a tour on the Continent was resolved on, Lord Ennerdale desiring her not to let him see her again, till she could bring back her own rosy smiling self.
The party consisted of only Lord St. Clair, Lady Emily, and Annie; and, making only a brief stay at Paris, they proceeded in a south-easterly direction, crossed the Jura, and fixed their residence for some weeks in the vicinity of Geneva. The complete change of air and scene seemed so to renovate Annie, that physical strength gradually returned, and with it more apparent calm of mind. Congeniality of taste in our companions is indispensable for the real enjoyment of travelling, and this Annie fully possessed; those three years of intimate association with the apparently cold and passionless Lady Emily had deepened Annie’s regard, but not altered her cousin’s chilling manner. But this delicious commune with nature, uninterrupted by intercourse with the world, caused her more than once so to relax as to excite even Annie’s surprise, and convince her more than ever that Lady Emily had not always been what she then was.
They were sitting one evening under the projecting roof of a jutting gallery belonging to a cottage in the beautiful valley of Chamouni; Lord St. Clair had that day left them to join a party of excursionists, in an expedition somewhat too fatiguing for his companions. The cottage, situated on a projecting mount or cliff, commanded a more extensive view than the parish of Prieuré itself permits. The rich luxuriance of the vale stretched beneath them, intersected with cliffs covered with foliage and large patches of emerald moss, and variously-tinted lichen clothing the grey stones. Here and there a true Alpine cottage peeped through dark woods of fir and larch, and the blue and sparkling Arve glided noiselessly along, still more lovely in the evening hour, as the glowing rays of sunset are contrasted with the deep shadows falling all around. Above them towered mountains of every form, blending their separate charms in a whole so sublime and extensive that height and breadth were lost in distance; misty vapours, or light fleecy clouds, were ever wreathing their snow-capped brows, while Mont Blanc itself stood alone in its sublime grandeur, and in the unsullied purity of its snowy robe. The sun itself was invisible, but its glowing rays were shed upon the mountain, dyeing it with a deep, rosy flood of light peculiar to that locality, and only to be described by its thrilling resemblance to that fearfully brilliant flush sometimes traced on the countenance of mortal beauty, when life is fading imperceptibly away, and the strange yet perfect loveliness rivets not alone the eye but the imagination with a species of fascination which we have no power to resist. The period of its continuance might have been from fifteen to twenty minutes, when it suddenly changed into a pale greyish tinge, of a shade and appearance so peculiar that it affected the heart and mind with the same species of awe as that with which we regard the sudden change from brilliant life to the ashy hues of death.
An exclamation of admiration, even of delight, broke so naturally from the lips of Lady Emily St. Clair, that her young companion looked up in her face with astonishment.
“Have I not surprised you, Annie?” she said, with a quiet smile. “Are you still amongst those who believe that one so cold and silent as I am now can have no feeling for enjoyment, can see no beauty in nature, no poetry in the universe?”
“No,” replied Annie, earnestly; “I know so much of you that mere superficial observers can never know, that I can well believe there is still more which my inexperienced eye can never reach. I wish,” she added, after a short pause, and with some hesitation, “that I were worthy to know you as you are, that you loved me sufficiently to unveil sometimes that which is so studiously concealed.”
“Do not do me such wrong, dearest Annie, as to doubt that I love you, because I am to you, in general, as to indifferent persons. I cannot change the manner acquired by months, nay, whole years of suffering, even to those whose affections I would do much to win. There is little of interest and much of suffering in my past life; but you shall hear it if you will.”