A priest did bless it.
Ellen.
All those who have had trials in this world—and who has not?—must know that there are moments in our life during which we seem to live centuries! and that a few hours sometimes are sufficient to rouse, influence, and form a character for ever.
So was it with poor Emmeline! She who had never known a sorrow—she who had looked to her future life as to one scene of bright enjoyment, on a sudden saw the picture changed, and beheld nothing but trials, disappointment, mortification, and sorrow. She had at once to decide, and on one of the most important steps probably in her life, without a single friend to counsel and uphold her: and he, who should have been that friend, that support, was the one against whom she had to arm herself, and exert energies of character, of which she did not even know herself to be possessed.
What Fitzhenry had said was true—she did not love him; that is to say, was not in love with him; but she had entertained a sort of girlish affection for the companion of her early youth, and it was impossible not to admire the handsome, accomplished, informed being he now was. Her innocent mind adding to these prepossessions, the light in which she had ever been taught to consider him, of her future husband, gave to her feelings something sacred and tender, so that she had looked to her union with him with stronger anticipations of happiness, than those which mere obedience to her father’s wishes could have given.
Fitzhenry’s letter fell from her hands, and almost hysteric sobs escaped from her heart. “What have I done to be so cruelly used, so scorned, so upbraided!” she could not help ejaculating; and again she seized the fatal letter. “He despises me for having trusted him; he even reproaches me for that, in which he alone is to blame. She would leave him; leave those paltry honours which he thought had been her object; leave him that wealth which had been the motive (she could no longer doubt it) of her having been sought in marriage by him; and with the vehemence of indignant feeling, she directly seized on a pen, in order to demand an immediate and total separation.
But scarcely had she written the first word, when, with the natural timidity of a young girl, she shrunk from the responsibility and enterprise of so desperate a step, and from all the publicity which she would, by it, draw on herself. She laid down her pen; pressed, with both hands, her throbbing temples, as if to quiet their agitated pulsations; and then, returning to the fatal letter, she perused it again and again, till gradually her most angry feelings were calmed. She could not curse him—would not upbraid him. His language to her, though harsh, was so open, so honourable! and then, with the happy buoyancy of youth, and of an innocent, unbroken mind—”I will make him love me yet,” she thought—”I will so consult his wishes in every thing; so play my hard part, that he shall see I am not the mere child, the worldly insensible fool he thinks me; he must in time love me, and we shall still be happy.”
This was what her feelings dictated; and this line of conduct she told herself her duty to her parents required of her. She would not break their hearts by letting them know how they had been deceived; but, for their sakes, she would submit to her fate.
Happy in having thus reconciled her duties to her inclinations, she could not help picturing to herself that future to which, with such fortunate credulity, she fondly looked, when she should have overcome her husband’s unfavourable opinion of her, and won his affections; and, in indulging such flattering dreams, Emmeline sat some time lost in thought, till roused by the sound of hurried steps in the adjoining room. That room was Lord Fitzhenry’s.
The drawing-room opened into a gallery, the first door in which, was that of Emmeline’s dressing-room; her bedroom was beyond; and beyond that again, but, having no communication with Emmeline’s apartment, was Lord Fitzhenry’s; it had been his when a boy; and that now allotted to Emmeline had been his father’s.