The boy, Rushbrook, is become a man, and the apparent heir of Lord Elmwood’s fortune; while his own daughter, his only child by his once adored Miss Milner, he refuses ever to see again, in vengeance to her mother’s crimes.
The least wonderful change, is, the death of Mrs. Horton. Except Sandford, who remains much the same as heretofore.
We left Lady Elmwood in the last volume at the summit of human happiness; a loving and beloved bride. We begin this volume, and find her upon her death-bed.
At thirty-five, her “Course was run”—a course full of perils, of hopes, of fears, of joys, and at the end, of sorrows; all exquisite of their kind, for exquisite were the feelings of her susceptible heart.
At the commencement of this story, her father is described in the last moments of his life, with all his cares fixed upon her, his only child—how vain these cares! how vain every precaution that was taken for her welfare! She knows, she reflects upon this; and yet, impelled by that instinctive power which actuates a parent, Lady Elmwood on her dying day has no worldly thoughts, but that of the future happiness of an only child. To every other prospect in her view, “Thy will be done” is her continual exclamation; but where the misery of her daughter presents itself, the expiring penitent would there combat the will of Heaven.
To detail the progression by which vice gains a predominancy in the heart, may be a useful lesson; but it is one so little to the satisfaction of most readers, that the degrees of misconduct by which Lady Elmwood fell, are not meant to be related here; but instead of picturing every occasion of her fall, to come briefly to the events that followed.
There are, nevertheless, some articles under the former class, which ought not to be entirely omitted.
Lord Elmwood, after four years enjoyment of the most perfect happiness that marriage could give, after becoming the father of a beautiful daughter, whom he loved with a tenderness almost equal to his love of her mother, was under the indispensable necessity of leaving them both for a time, in order to rescue from the depredation of his own steward, his very large estates in the West Indies. His voyage was tedious; his residence there, from various accidents, prolonged from time to time, till near three years had at length passed away. Lady Elmwood, at first only unhappy, became at last provoked; and giving way to that irritable disposition which she had so seldom governed, resolved, in spite of his injunctions, to divert the melancholy hours caused by his absence, by mixing in the gay circles of London.
Lord Elmwood at this time, and for many months before, had been detained abroad by a severe and dangerous illness, which a too cautious fear of her uneasiness, had prompted him to conceal; and she received his frequent apologies for not returning, with a suspicion and resentment they were calculated, but not intended, to inspire.
To violent anger, succeeded a degree of indifference still more fatal—Lady Elmwood’s heart was not formed for such a state—there, where all the tumultuous passions harboured by turns, one among them soon found the means to occupy all vacancies: a passion, commencing innocently, but terminating in guilt. The dear object of her fondest, her truest affections, was away; and those affections, painted the time so irksome that was past; so wearisome, that, which was still to come; that she flew from the present tedious solitude, to the dangerous society of one, whose whole mind depraved by fashionable vices, could not repay her for a moment’s loss of him, whose absence he supplied. Or, if the delirium gave her a moment’s recompence, what were her sufferings, her remorse, when she was awakened from the fleeting joy, by the arrival of her husband? How happy, how transporting would have been that arrival a few months before! As it would then have been felicity unbounded, it was now—language affords no word that can describe Lady Elmwood’s sensations, on being told her Lord was arrived, and that necessity alone had so long delayed his return.