"My friends say they have received no letters from Bedinfield, my dear mother. You know I wrote, for you were kind enough to seal my long crossed epistles. You told me they would serve me so!"
"I have often known fluctuations in correspondence among young people, my love. I used to fancy in my youth that I was particularly ill-used; but, when I look back, I perceive it was circumstances which over-ruled many events."
Lady Ennismore continued speaking to Julia, but the distance prevented the substance of her remarks reaching her friends. Before the speech concluded, however, they had gained the door, which Lady Ennismore closed after their transit, and the subject was never more renewed. A heavy sigh from her father arrested Christobelle's attention. She asked him if he was ill.
"Not in body, my dear child: my mind alone is wretched."
"Oh, why, papa?" she exclaimed, in surprise; "what makes you wretched in this beautiful place of Julia's? and Julia herself so well and happy!"
"There is no happiness with that dangerous woman, and that feeble son!" said her father, as he paced the room. "There is no peace for my poor child—ignorance, ignorance is her only earthly chance! Why was I so weak, so deluded, to marry my poor child to a wretched idiot?"
"Papa," Christobelle uttered gently—"dear papa, who are you meaning?"
He did not hear her speak; her father apparently forgot her presence, for he continued walking.
"To give way to a woman's tears, when my judgment recoiled at the union, was folly, was wickedness. My heart will feel this, for I knew it was wrong, yet I sanctioned it by my presence. My poor Julia!—my poor, poor girl!"
Christobelle could not bear to hear her father's self-reproach; she went to him and took his hand.