Louis was now in air, in the dawning light of paradise; nor were the interchanges produced by suspense, more than passing shadows, to the luminous hope that shone upon his soul.
He and Ferdinand took horse for the short ride to Morewick; and during their drive the Marchioness communicated to her daughter, all that Louis had confided to her, respecting the cause of his late eagerness to return thither. As Marcella listened to the history of his friendship for Duke Wharton; its trials, its sufferings; and now its triumph, in the reformation of his friend from all his errors, and final restoration as from the grave; her tears bore too true a witness to the interest with which she hearkened to every circumstance that related to him. She hardly allowed herself to breathe, during that part of the narrative where her mother particularly enlarged on Cornelia's cares of the Duke; and repeated the observation of Louis, that such cares seemed his friend's best sanative; for that he believed, if any two persons were fitted by Providence for each other, it was the nobly eccentric mind of Wharton, to the celestial harmony of his cousin's.
"She is my ruling planet, that I have found at last," said the Duke to his friend, "and her attraction will keep me in its orbit."
Marcella was too confounded by the last scene between her and Louis, to confess a word of what had passed; she had been even more ashamed to communicate her apprehensions to her anxious parent, concerning this boasted cousin of the Marquis de Montemar. Therefore she now looked down, believing the fulness of her secret yet unknown to all but to its object, and gladly would she have died, rather than be conscious to the degradation of that hour.
She knew that her father had obtained from the Pope, a dispensation from his vow, relative to immuring her in a convent; and she did not doubt that Louis had been told the same in their first meeting at Harwich.
Though she had pined in thought, from the hour of her losing sight of him; and felt how hard it was to do, what she most inconsistently wished to accomplish, to make monastic vows, when her heart lingered after an earthly image!—yet, though the canker preyed inwardly, she knew not the extent of her love, till she found its fangs of jealousy, when she first heard him speak of Cornelia being at Morewick, and that he must hasten to rejoin her. His conduct during their last day's journey to Alnwick, filled her with all the tortures of passion; for not until then, had she known, by the reverse and the disappointment, the incipient hope which had lurked at the bottom of her heart,—that she was not indifferent to him!
Louis in the last interview at the inn in Alnwick, had avowed something of this sentiment, but the circumstances overwhelmed her; and wishing to forget the whole for ever, she did not even make a remark to her mother on what she imparted.
Louis and Ferdinand having preceded the carriage half an hour, they stood with Mr. Athelstone under the porch of the hall, to receive the travellers.
Marcella's eye instantly fell on the silver-headed Pastor of Lindisfarne. He seemed to stand, like the benignant saint of Patmos, venerable in years, and reverend in the spirit of holiness. He saluted the cheek of the animated Marchioness; but when he put out his hand to support the advancing steps of Marcella, her knees obeyed the impulse of her heart, and she bent before him, kissing his sacred hand.
"Bless you! bless you, my child!" said he, laying his other hand upon her head. Louis's ready heart could not bear the sight of such a recognition, without a sensibility he feared to shew; and he vanished into the recesses of the hall. The Pastor raised her in his arms, and bearing her gently into a room, put her into those of Cornelia, who had just embraced the Marchioness.