"She has never recovered her close attendance on the two wounded cavaliers at Ceuta," continued Ferdinand, "The life of so worthless a being as I am, may have been dearly purchased; but I will not say the same of my friend! However, Marcella will not own to this cause of her illness. She rather believes it to be a punishment laid on her, for her long resistance to the wishes of my father, for her entire seclusion from the world. This idea has fastened on her; and now all her petitions are to be fixed with our aunt, the abbess of the Ursalines."
Louis closed the letter at this passage. The form of Marcella was then before him. She whose bloom of health, he was too sensible had in part been sacrificed for him! He recalled her as she used to sit, evening after evening, by his apparently unobserving side, in that sad chamber of suffering at Ceuta. In those hours, the bright moon of that clear atmosphere, shining through the solitary window, fell direct on her face. It was pale from watching; but her eyes were often fixed on the orb; and the expression of her countenance, ever reminded him of Milton's lines:
"So dear to Heaven is saintly charity!
That when a soul is found sincerely pure
A thousand liveried angels lacquey her;
Tell her of things, that no gross ear can hear;
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants,
Begin to cast a beam on th' outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal!"
When he used to repeat these lines to himself in her presence, and gazing upon that form, which already appeared half angel; he did not sigh when they closed with the remembrance of the vow, urged on her by her father. Why then did separation make a change? Why did her image haunt him? Why did his heart feel as if it had received another death stroke, when he read it was now her own repeated wish, to retire into the convent of the Ursalines?
His bosom's deepest grief whispered the solution to this mystery. While his father lived in exile, he was conscious to no feeling that did not point at him. That absorbing interest gone, the repressed sympathies of his heart streamed towards their attraction; and he found that he loved, and had most inexplicably dared to hope! But this letter of Ferdinand's extinguished the vain chimera. He was made sensible that the object of his tenderest thoughts, had never been more to him than a Sister of Mercy; that her unconscious eyes had never looked a dearer language; that she was now passing from him, by her own wish for ever!
"Then be it so!" said he, striking his breast; "I deserve this new misery, for my most extravagant presumption."
A few weeks after the receipt of these letters, Sir Anthony Athelstone was so completely recovered, as to meditate the transfer of himself and family to Bamborough. Mr. Athelstone's little household had been some time removed to Lindisfarne; and the prospect of the whole party being reunited under the venerable roof, was impatiently anticipated by them all. But the Baronet being one in the domestic circle of the Pastorage, was to be yet further postponed. The King had died the beginning of the month; and Sir Anthony was suddenly summoned to town, by order of his successor George the Second, to receive His Majesty's commands respecting the civil management of his northern counties. Other great land-holders, north of the Humber, had received the same writ; and without demur, the Baronet set forward with his nearest neighbour, to obey the summons of their new King.
Louis and Cornelia had their uncle's permission to proceed immediately to Bamborough; and either invite the family of the Pastorage to be their guests till his return, or if they preferred it cross over and take up their temporary abode at Lindisfarne.
It was a fine morning in the month of June, when they set off from Athelstone manor. Lorenzo, who would never lose sight of his master, rode by the side of the carriage. The usual out-riders kept their stations before and behind.
The cousins being together alone for so many hours, various subjects passed in review before them; and none of deeper interest, than the mutual attachment of Ferdinand and Alice.