At this far from unwelcome advice, Robert smiled and sighed; but the smile swallowed up the sigh, for his soul kindled with hope. His father smiled also; the cloud of a stern authority had passed from his brow, and before that now perfectly reconciled party rose, it was decided that Robert should make immediate preparations for commencing a regulated course of continental travels, the route to be drawn out by his brother and his expenses in the tour to be liberally supplied by his father. The length of the probation was not then thought on, at least not mentioned. Shortly afterwards, when Robert hastened from the library to communicate what had passed to the beloved object of the discussion, he left his father and his brother together to think and to plan all the rest for him.
But Edith Beaufort wept when she heard of the separation; her heart failed within her. For since her first coming under the roof of her guardian uncle, she had never been without seeing her brother-like cousin beyond a few days or weeks at most. He was now going to be banished (and, it was asserted, for her sake too) into far distant countries, and for an indefinite period—months, perhaps years. And these saddening thoughts made her weep afresh, though silently; for her full-flowing tears were soft and noiseless, like the heart from whence they sprung. Robert, with all his now sanguine expectations, sought to cheer her, but in vain. She felt an impression, that should he go, they would never meet again. But she did not betray that feeling to him; yet the infection of her despondency, by its continuance, so wrought on his own consequent depressed spirits, that when his father announced to him that his absence must be for two or three years at least, he ventured to remonstrate, beseeching that it might be limited to the shorter term of two years. The baronet derided the proposal, with many words of contempt towards the urgent pleader. Robert withheld from disclosing to the too often hard mind of his father that the proposition he so scorned had originated in the tender bosom of Edith Beaufort, and Sir Fulke's sarcasm fell so thick on the bending head of his son, that at last the insulted feelings of the generous lover became so indignant at the little confidence placed in the real manliness of his character, which had hitherto been found ever present when actually called for, that his heart began to swell to an almost uncontrollable exasperation, and while struggling to master himself from uttering the disrespectful retort risen to his lips, his brother again accidentally entered the room, and by giving Robert the moment to pause, happily rescued his tottering duty from that regretful offence.
As soon as Algernon appeared, the baronet resumed his sarcastic tone, in a rapid recapitulation of Robert's retrograde request. Algernon again took up the cause of his brother, and, with his usual tact, gained the victory, by the dexterous gayety with which he pleaded for the young noviciate in all the matters for which he was to be sent so far afield to learn. At last the conference ended by Sir Fulke agreeing to a proposition from his eldest son,—that the time for this foreign tutelage might possibly expire within the second year, should the results evoked by the ambitious passion of his youngest born be in any fair progress to fulfilment.
In little more than a week after this final arrangement, every preparation was finished for the wildly-contemplated tour. Robert had taken a heart-plighting adieu from his beloved Edith. But by his father's positive injunction, there was no engagement for a hereafter actual plighting of hands made between them. Yet their eloquent eyes, transparent through their mutual tears, vowed it to each other, and with silent prayers for his indeed early return, they parted.
When taking leave of his father, and receiving his directions relative to a correspondence with his family, permission was peremptorily denied him to hold any with his cousin Edith. He had learned enough lately to avoid all supplications to the paternal quarter, if he would not invite scorn as well as to receive disappointment. But Algernon whispered to him "that nobody should remain wholly incognita to him in that house while he dipped pen in any one of the three hundred and sixty-five inkhorns under its awful towers!" Robert then bowed his farewell with a flushed cheek and grave respect to his father, but gratefully separated from his brother with a warm pressure of the hand. The old household servants blessed him as he passed through the hall, and in a few minutes he found himself seated in the family post-chaise and four that was to convey him from the home of his youth and happy innocence, and, alas! to return to it "an altered man."
When he reached Dover to embark, he fell in with the present Earl of Tinemouth, then Mr. Stanhope, sent abroad on a similar errand with himself. But Stanhope's was to forget a mistress—Somerset's to merit the one he sought. The two young men were kinsfolk by birth, and they now felt themselves so in severing from their parents. Stanhope was in high wrath against his, and he soon rekindled the already excited mind of Somerset to a responsive demonstration of resentment. They determined to show that "they were not such boys as to submit any further in passive obedience to the stern authority dominating over them." Sir Fulke's particular charge against his son was a "womanish softness, unworthy his loftier sex!" "Show him," cried Stanhope, that "you have the hardihood of a true man by an immediate act of independence. Let us travel together, kinsmen as we are, change our names, and let no one in England know anything about us during our tour except the two dear women on whose accounts we are thus transported!"
With these views they landed in France, gave themselves out to be brothers (which a certain resemblance in their persons corroborated), and called themselves Sackville. Agreeably amused with the novelties presented to them at almost every step of their tour from gay Paris to sentimental Italy, they proceeded pretty amicably until they reached Naples. There Mr. Stanhope involved himself in an intrigue with the only daughter of an old British officer, who had retired to that climate for his health. Somerset remonstrated on the villany of seducing an innocent girl, when he knew his heart and hand were pledged to another. Stanhope, enraged at finding a censor in a companion whom he had considered to be as headstrong as himself, ended the argument by drawing his sword, and if the servants of the hotel had not interfered, the affray would probably have terminated with one of their lives. Since that hour they never met. Mr. Stanhope fled from his shame and his bleeding friend, and, fearful of consequences, took temporary refuge in one of the Aonian Isles, not daring to proceed any further against the innocence of the poor officer's daughter, who had been thus rescued from becoming his victim!
When recovered from his wound, Robert Somerset (by some strange infatuation still retaining the name of Sackville) proceeded to Florence, in which interesting city, for works of art, ancient and modern, and the graces of classic society, determining to stay some time, he rather sought than repelled the civilities of the inhabitants. Here he became acquainted with the palatine, and the lovely Countess Therese, his daughter. Her beauty pleased his taste; her gentle virtues and exquisite accomplishments affected both his heart and mind; and he often gazed on her with tenderness, when his fidelity to Edith Beaufort only meant him to convey a look of grateful admiration. The palatine honored England, and was prepared to esteem her sons wherever he might meet them; and very soon he became so attached to this apparently lonely young traveller, that he invited him to all the excursions he and his daughter made into the adjoining states, whether visiting them by the romantic scenery of the land-roads, or coasting the beautiful bays of the sublime shores on either side of those parts of the Mediterranean.
In the midst of this intimacy, as if she were aware of a friendship so hostile to his cousin's love, he suddenly ceased to receive any remembrance-messages from her to him, in the two last letters from his brother,—for he had never allowed himself to so brave his father's parting commands as to write to her himself. Desperate with jealousy of some unknown object supplanting him, he was on the point of setting off for home, to judge with his own eyes, when a large packet from England was put into his hands. On opening it he found a letter from Edith, on which his surprised and eager gaze had immediately fixed. Without looking on any of the rest, he broke the seal, and read, astounded by the contents, "that having for some time been led to consider the probable consequences to him, both from his father's better judgment and the ultimate opinion of the world, should he and she continue their pertinacious adherence to their childish attachment, she had tried to wean both him and herself from so rebellious a folly towards her revered guardian, his honored father; and trusting that the gradual shortening of her cousin-like messages to him, through his brother's letters, must have had the effect intended, she now had permission to write one herself to him, to convince him at once of the unreasonableness and danger of all such premature entanglements. For," she added, "soon after his departure, a journey to town had taught her to know her own heart. She learned to feel that it was still at her disposal; and time did not long pass after she returned to the country before, having compared the object of her awakened taste with that of her former delusion, she persuaded her own better judgment to set a generous example to her ever-dear cousin Robert, by marrying where that judgment now pointed. And so, with the full consent of Sir Fulke (who she well knew had been totally averse to her marriage with his youngest son), she had yielded to the long love of his brother, which had been struggling in his manly bosom many agonizing months against his persistent fidelity to Robert, but whose sister she hoped to shortly become, as his affectionate Edith—then Somerset."
Having read this extraordinary epistle to the end, so monstrous in the character of its sentiments and its language, when compared with all he had hitherto known of the pure and simple mind from which it came, a terrible revulsion seized on his own, and, almost maddened with horror at every name in that letter, he foreswore his family forever! Hastening, as for one drop of heaven's dew upon his burning brain, to seek Therese Sobieski, he found her alone, and though without such aim when he rushed so frenzied into her presence, he besought her "to heal a miserable and broken heart, which could only be saved to endure any continuance of life by an acknowledgment that she loved him!" Alas! the avowal was too soon wrung from that tender and noble spirit! and yielding to a paroxysm of a rash and blinding revenge, he hurried her to a neighboring convent and secretly married her.