Jenkins, unbidden, brought Emmeline her breakfast in her own apartment, although at Arlingford that was a meal at which she and Fitzhenry had always hitherto met. How painfully did she then feel the separation between them! Fitzhenry was in sorrow, and she, his wife, dared not go near him; even the servants seemed to dictate to her her conduct, and to be aware of her situation.
As to her departure, she knew not what to determine. She had said she would go. Her husband had not opposed her declared intention, and she did not like again to be accused of caprice. Not feeling, however, that she could leave Arlingford without at least again seeing him, she put off her journey till the following day.
To pass the slow unoccupied hours, Emmeline, knowing there was no chance of seeing Fitzhenry for some time, wandered out. The country was now in its first freshness of beauty—all smiled around her. Those rides and paths which, the summer before, she had first seen, with Fitzhenry at her side, were again clothed in the lovely green of spring. Often at those spots, connected in her mind with some circumstance, word, or even look of Fitzhenry, which a few months back had, although in delusion, made her heart sometimes beat with the flattering hope that she was not quite indifferent to him, poor Emmeline would remain fixed, quite unconscious of the time she thus passed in vague reverie. For, compared with what she had endured in London, there was a sort of pleasure in her present state of mind, raised and soothed as it had been, by the late pious duties in which she had been engaged, and softened by the charm of renovated nature. How often does some accidental sound or perfume, wafted to us on a spring breeze, startle the mind by confused recollections of hours gone by, and by undefinable sensations of mixed pain and pleasure!
Emmeline had not been long returned to the house before a servant came and told her that dinner was ready, and that my lord was waiting for her. Their meeting was rather awkward on both sides. Fitzhenry never raised his eyes upon her; but she was now well used to that sort of cold neglect on his part. It was the first time for several months that they had been tête-à-tête. This circumstance, and the room they were in, all brought back forcibly to Emmeline’s mind their wedding-day; that day of exultation and joy to her parents, and at its dawn of hope and happiness even to herself—and how had it all ended!
To one formed for tenderness, for all the social charities of life, there could not be a more cheerless fate than hers; for, repulsed from where her heart should have found its best home, she was even denied the consolations of confidential friendship. Occupied with these thoughts, Emmeline was little inclined to join in uninteresting, forced conversation. Fitzhenry, too, seemed much depressed, and they ate their repast in nearly total silence.
When it was ended, Fitzhenry, under the plea of having several orders to give, and many things to arrange in consequence of the death of Reynolds, soon returned to his own room, and Emmeline passed the remainder of the evening alone. On the approach of midnight, as he never appeared, she concluded that Fitzhenry did not intend to return; she therefore rang for her candle, and left the drawing-room; but before she reached her own apartment, she was met in the gallery by her husband—they both stopped.
“I shall leave this place to-morrow,” said Emmeline, in a low voice. “Have you any letters or orders to send by me?” She still fondly hoped he would make some objection to her departure; but he merely replied, that he concluded she was going to Grosvenor-Street; that he would follow in a few days; and that if she did not set out early, he would send some letters by her.
“I can go at any hour,” said Emmeline, “I am in no hurry; it does not signify at what time I go; all hours are the same to me.” And so they parted.
It was in the same cold, distant manner that they separated next morning, when Emmeline left Arlingford for town. For though she loitered on, always hoping Fitzhenry would let fall some word at which she might catch as an encouragement to stay, he never in any manner opposed her departure; and at last, with a heavy heart, she entered her carriage, and, after a melancholy, solitary journey, drove over London’s noisy pavement, now glazed by a burning May sun, into Grosvenor-Street.
Those who have lived in London when melancholy circumstances have excluded them from participating in its amusements, will enter into Emmeline’s feelings when, during the first, and on many an ensuing dismal evening, which she spent alone, she heard the carriages hurry past her door in the constant bustle of pleasure. Often, as she sat in the dusk of the now long-protracted spring evenings, Emmeline was only roused from some deep reverie to a consciousness of the lateness of the hour, by the glare of the lamps and flambeaux of some of these gay equipages passing her darkened windows, and hastening to some general resort of diversion.