"I listened to his story. 'You are an incorrigible fellow,' said I. 'How can I give ear to your promises? Still I am willing to assist you. I am myself going to America; you shall accompany me.' By degrees I afterward explained the service I needed; yet I only half disclosed the truth. Osborne never knew the name or position of the lady who was to be my companion across the Atlantic. A man's notions of the conduct of others are always coloured by his own ruling passion. Osborne thought I was intent on carrying off an heiress.
"With this ally I proceeded to Cumberland—my mind more intent on the result of my schemes than their intermediate detail. I learned before I went that Mr. Neville was still in town. This was a golden opportunity, and I hastened to use it. I reached the spot that Alithea inhabited—I entered the outer gate of the demesne—I rode up to the avenue that led to the house—I was ushered into the room where I knew that I should find her. I summoned every power to calm the throbbing of my heart. I expected to find her changed; but when I saw her, I discovered no alteration. It was strange that so much of girlish appearance should remain. Her figure was light and airy; her rich clustering ringlets abundant as before; her face—it was Alithea! All herself! That soft, loving eye—that clear brow—those music-breathing lips—time had not harmed her—it was herself.
"She did not at once recognise me; the beardless stripling was become a weather-beaten, thought-worn man; but when I told her who I was—the name so long forgotten—never heard since last she spoke it, 'Rupert!' burst from her lips—it united our severed lives; and her look of rapture, her accent all breathless with joy, told me that her heart was still the same—ardent, affectionate, and true.
"We sat together, hand linked in hand, looking at each other with undisguised delight. At first, with satanic cunning, I assumed the brother's part. I questioned her concerning her fate—her feelings; and seeing that she was averse to confess the truth of her disappointed, joyless married state, I led her back to passed days. I spoke of her dear mother. I said that often had the image of that pale, wise spirit checked, guided, and whispered sage lessons to me in my banishment. I recalled a thousand scenes of our childhood, when we wandered together—hand in hand—heart linked to heart—confiding every pain—avowing every wild or rebellious thought, or discussing the mighty secrets of nature and of fate, which to our young hearts were full of awe and mystery, and yet of beauty and joy. As I spoke, I examined her more narrowly. At first she had appeared to me the same; now I marked a difference. Her mouth, the home of smiles, had ever its sweet, benignant expression; but her eyes, there was a heaviness in the lids, a liquid melancholy in their gaze, which said that they were acquainted with tears; her cheeks, once round, peachlike, and downy, were not fallen, yet they had lost their rich fulness. She was more beautiful; there was more reflection, more sentiment in her face; but there was far, far less happiness. Before, smiles sprung up wherever she turned to gaze; now, an interest akin to pity and tears made the spectator's heart ache as he watched the turns of a countenance which was the faithful mirror of the truest heart that ever beat. Worse than this, there ever and anon shot across her face a look that seemed like fear. Oh, how unlike the trusting, dreadless Alithea!
"My talk of other days at first soothed, then excited, and threw her off her guard. By degrees I approached the object of all my talk, and drew her to speak of her father, and the motives that induced her marriage. My knowledge and vivid recollections of all that belonged to her made her unawares speak, as she had not done since we parted, the undisguised truth; and before she knew what she had said, I had led her to confess that she had never loved her husband; that she found no sympathy, and little kindness in him; that her life had been one of endurance of faults alien to her own temperament. Had I been more cautious, I had allowed this to pass off at first, and won her entire confidence before I laid bare my own thoughts; for all she said had never before been breathed into any living ear but mine. It was her principle to submit, and to hide her sense of her husband's defective disposition; and had I not, with a serpent's subtlety, glided on imperceptibly; had I not brought forward her mother's name, and the memory of childhood's cloudless years, she had been mute with me. But now I could contain myself no longer. I told her that I had seen the miserable being to whom she was linked. I uttered curses on the fate that had joined them together. She laid her hand on my arm, and looking in my face with confiding innocence, 'Hush, Rupert,' she said, 'you make me mean more than I would willingly have you think. He is not unkind; I have no right to complain; it is not in every man that we can find a brother's or a friend's heart. Neville does not understand these things; but he is my husband; as such I honour him.'
"I saw the internal feeling that led her to speak thus; I saw the delicate forbearance that filled her noble mind. She thought of her virgin faith plighted—long years spent at his side—her children—her fidelity, which, if it had ceased to cling to him, had never wandered, even in thought, to another; duties exemplarily fulfilled—earnest strivings to forget his worthlessness. All this honour for her own pure nature, she cheated herself into believing was honour paid to him. I resolved to tear the veil which her gentleness and sense of right had drawn before the truth, and I exclaimed, impetuously, 'Wrong yourself not so much, dear girl! do not fancy that your high soul can really bow down to baseness. You pay reverence to your own sense of duty; but you hate—you must hate that man.'
"She started, and her face and neck became died in blushes, proceeding half from anger at being urged beyond her wish, half from native modesty at hearing her husband thus spoken of. As for myself, I grew mad as I looked on her, and felt the sweet, transporting influences that gathered round; here indeed was the creature whom I had loved through so many years, who was mine in my dreams, whose faith and true affection I fancied I held for ever; and she was torn from me, given away, not to one who, like me, knew and felt her matchless excellence, but to a base-minded thing, from whom she must shrink as from an animal of another species. All that her soul contained of elevated thoughts and celestial aspirations, all of generous, high, and heroic that warmed her heart, what were they before a blind, creeping worm, who held a matchless jewel in his hand, and deemed it dross? He even could not understand, or share the more sober affections—mutual trust and mutual forbearance; the utterance of love, the caresses of tenderness, what were these to a wretch who saw baseness and deceit in the most lofty and pure feelings of a woman's heart?
"I expressed these thoughts, or rather, they burst from me. She interrupted me. 'I do not deny,' she said, 'for I know not how you have cheated me of my secret, but that repinings have at times entered my mind; and I have shed foolish tears, to think that the dreams of my girlhood were as a bright morning, quickly followed by a dim, cloudy day. But I have reproved myself for this discontent, and you do very wrong to revive it; the heart will rebel, but religion, and philosophy, and the very tears I shed, sooth its ruffled mood, and make me remember that we do not live to be happy, but to perform our duties; to fulfil mine is the aim of my life; teach me how to do that more completely, more entirely to resign myself, and you will be my benefactor. It is true that my husband does not understand the childish overflowings of my heart, which is too ready to seek its joys among the clouds; he does not dwell with rapture on the thoughts and sentiments which give me so much life and happiness—he is a stronger and sterner nature; a slower one also, I acknowledge, one less ready to sympathize and feel. But if I have in my intercourse with him regretted that lively, cheering interchange of sentiment which I enjoyed with you, you are now here to bestow it, and my life, hitherto defective, your return may render complete.'
"I laughed bitterly. 'Poor innocent bird,' I cried; 'think you at once to be free, and in a cage? at once to feel the fowler's grasp, and fly away to heaven? Alithea, you miserably deceive yourself; hitherto you have but half guessed the secrets of a base grovelling spirit—have you never seen your husband jealous?'
"She shuddered—and I saw a spasm of exquisite pain cloud her features as she averted her head from me, and the look of trembling fear I had before remarked crept over her. I was shocked to see so much of the slave had entered her soul. I told her this; I told her she was being degraded by the very duties which she was devoting herself, body and soul, to perform; I told her that she must be free; she looked wonderingly, but I continued. 'Is not the very name of liberty dear and exhilarating? does it not draw you irresistibly onward? is not the very thought of casting your heavy chains from off you full of new and inexpressible joy? Poor prisoner, do you not yearn to breathe without a fear? would you not with transport escape from your jailer to a home of love and freedom?'