"Excuse the brevity and insufficiency of this letter, written at the moment of departure.—You will hear from me again, when I am able to send you my address, and I shall hope to have a letter from you. Meanwhile Heaven bless you, my angelic Ethel! Love your mother, and never, in spite of every thing, permit unkind thoughts of her to harbour in your mind. Make Mr. Villiers think as well of me as he can, and believe me that your welfare will always be the dearest wish of my heart. Adieu.
"Ever affectionately yours.
"C. LODORE."
She folded and sealed this letter, and at the same moment there was a knock at the door of her house, which she knew announced the arrival of Fanny Derham. She was still much agitated, and trying to calm herself, she took up a newspaper, and cast her eyes down the columns; so, by one of the most common place of the actions of our life, to surmount the painful intensity of her thoughts. She read mechanically one or two paragraphs—she saw the announcements of births, marriages, and deaths. "My moral death will not be recorded here," she thought, "and yet, I shall be more dead than any of these." The thought in her mind remained as it were truncated; her eye was arrested—a paleness came over her—the pulses of her heart paused, and then beat tumultuously—how strange—how fatal were the words she read!—
"Died suddenly at the inn at the Mola di Gaeta, on her way from Naples, Clorinda, the wife of the honourable Horatio Saville, in the twenty-second year of her age."
Her drawing-room door was opened, the butler announced Miss Derham, while her eyes still were fixed on the paragraph: her head swam round—the world seemed to slide from under her. Fanny's calm clear voice recalled her. She conquered her agitation—she spoke as if she had not just crossed a gulf—not been transported to a new world; and, again, swifter than light, brought back to the old one. She conversed with Fanny for some time; giving some kind of explanation for not having been to see Ethel, begging her young friend to press her invitation, and speaking as if in autumn they should all meet again. Fanny, philosophic as she was, regarded Lady Lodore with a kind of idolatry. The same charm that had fascinated the unworldly and abstracted Saville, she exercised over the thoughtful and ingenuous mind of the fair young student. It was the attraction of engaging manners, added now to the sense of right, joined to the timid softness of a woman, who trembled on acting unsupported, even though her conscience approved her deeds. It was her loveliness which had gained in expression what it had lost in youth, and kindness of heart was the soul of the enchantment. Fanny ventured to remonstrate against her sudden departure. "O we shall soon meet again," said Cornelia; but her thoughts were more of heaven than earth, as the scene of meeting; for her heart was chilled—her head throbbed—the words she had read operated a revolution in her frame, more allied to sickness and death, than hope or triumph.
Fanny at length took her leave, and Lady Lodore was again alone. She took up the newspaper—hastily she read again the tidings; she sunk on the sofa, burying her face in the pillow, trying not to think, while she was indeed the prey to the wildest thoughts.
"Yes," thus ran her reflections, "he is free—he is no longer married! Fool, fool! he is still lost to you!—an outcast and a beggar, shall I solicit his love! which he believes that I rejected when prosperous. Rather never, never, let me see him again. My beauty is tarnished, my youth flown; he would only see me to wonder how he had ever loved me. Better hide beneath the mountains among which I am soon to find a home—better, far better, die, than see Saville and read no love in his eyes.
"Yet thus again I cast happiness from me. What then would I do? Unweave the web—implore Mr. Villiers to endure my presence—reveal my state of beggary—ask thanks for my generosity, and humbly wait for a kind glance from Saville, to raise me to wealth as well as to happiness.—Cornelia, awake!—be not subdued at the last—act not against your disposition, the pride of your soul—the determinations you have formed—do not learn to be humble in adversity—you, who were disdainful in happier days—no! if they need me—if they love me—if Saville still remembers the worship—the heart's entire sacrifice which once he made to me—will a few miles—the obscurity of my abode—or the silence and mystery that surrounds me, check his endeavours that we should once again meet?
"No!" she said, rising, "my destiny is in other and higher hands than my own. It were vain to endeavour to controul it. Whatever I do, works against me; now let the thread be spun to the end, while I do nothing; I can but endure the worst patiently; and how much better to bear in silence, than to struggle vainly with the irrevocable decree! I submit. Let Providence work out its own ends, and God dispose of the being he has made—whether I reap the harvest in this world or in the next, my part is played, I will strive no more!"