“What! nothing in all that quantity of paper and writing? Lord, child! you are quite in a dream”—and Mrs. Benson took off her spectacles, and her eyes from the newspaper she was reading, and fixed them attentively on her daughter. This roused her from her reverie, and suddenly recollecting herself, she said, “Oh yes, I forget; he says, he can’t come home yet, and we had better go to Charlton to my father till his return.”
“Well, I think that will be a very good plan,” said Mrs. Benson: “some business, I suppose, detains him.”
“I suppose so,” echoed Emmeline.
Mrs. Benson still kept her eyes fixed on Emmeline, and both remained for some time in silence and abstraction. Again all her former doubts and suspicions returned to her mind; and when she looked on her absent, dejected daughter, who still sat gazing on the letter in her hand, she almost resolved to speak to her, and force herself into her confidence. But though with little of the outward refinement of the world, Mrs. Benson had great delicacy of feeling, as well as excellent sense: she felt that when she was not called upon to give advice, or to reprehend what was wrong, she had no business to interfere between her daughter and her husband; and indeed, here, what could she say? Emmeline was certainly changed; she was no longer the gay, light-hearted being she used to be, but apparently her husband behaved perfectly well to her; at least nothing had ever passed, that Mrs. Benson could have named as a proof of unkindness; and as for Emmeline, she was to him gentleness—acquiescence itself; but still, Mrs. Benson could not help feeling that all was not right, although she could not perhaps have given any positive reason for her suspicions. How she longed to bid her confide to her every feeling, every care of her heart, as in days of yore, when she hushed her young sorrows to rest on her bosom, and kissed away her childish tears! But when a mother resigns her darling child to him who is to be the arbiter of her future destiny, she loses, in a great measure, that dear prerogative of affection. Mrs. Benson, feeling this, wisely forbore; and the next day, without any thing more passing between them on the subject, they set off together for Charlton, where Mr. Benson had, since Lady Fitzhenry’s marriage, chiefly resided.
When there, Emmeline wrote to her husband. There is something so private, so sacred, in a letter—we can, in writing, express so much, which, either from shyness, or emotion, we cannot bring ourselves to say by word of mouth, that Emmeline longed to give way to her inclinations, and pour out on the paper her feelings towards him; but she felt that the utterance of one word which could in any way be interpreted into an allusion to her painful situation, would be breaking her agreement; and she merely told him of her journey and her safe arrival; glad of having even such uninteresting subjects to treat of, and that to Fitzhenry! to whom she could have written volumes!
In about ten days she got an answer; it had no date: (his letters to her never had beyond the post town on the frank.) In it, he named the day for his return to Arlingford. Two days previous to it, notwithstanding Mrs. Benson’s remonstrances, and her father’s railleries, Emmeline would return home. “He might possibly arrive,” she thought to herself; “something might bring him back before the day he had fixed upon, and she was resolved on departure.”
But, exactly the contrary happened from what she had anticipated; that day passed in anxious but vain expectation; and the next—and the next. At length, on the fourth, Reynolds, with a countenance expressive of the share he had taken in the disappointment, put a letter into her hand, with the well-known, well-beloved signature of Fitzhenry. And it did not, this time, merely enclose a printed petition, but was from himself. He said in it, that the unexpected arrival of his friend Mr. Pelham, (the minister at Vienna,) had detained him in town, as he had waited till he could accompany him to Arlingford, which he now hoped he should be able to do in a couple of days. Mr. Moore, his former travelling companion, would also come with him, and they would soon be followed by his cousin, Lady Saville, her husband, and sister. Emmeline had just seen Lady Saville, when she had paid a visit of form to the Benson family, on the match being declared; and on the wedding-day she was present at the ceremony.
CHAPTER V.
As t’other day my hand he seized,