Marianne laughed. "I did not imagine you so romantic," said she tauntingly. "Do not alarm yourself; the rage for dying of love is gone by: therefore, notwithstanding the power of your charms, you must excuse me, if I presume to doubt their murderous properties."
Rosabella was too much mortified by the manner in which her confidant treated her scruples, to wish to continue the conversation; though the reasoning of Marianne produced its full effect upon her mind, and even, in spite of herself, influenced her conduct.
In the mean time, the family of Mr. Montagu experienced considerable uneasiness on account of Clara, whose health gradually declined.
"I cannot imagine what is the matter with my daughter?" said Mrs. Montagu one day to Dr. Coleman; "I wish you would talk to her a little.—Here, Clara, my dear, do just step this way.—You will be quite shocked, doctor, at the change in her appearance. Poor girl! I don't think she has ever properly overcome the fright she experienced at the first sight of the Mummy, for she has never seemed herself since. Indeed
'It seems to me she hoards some secret care,
That breaks her rest and drives her to despair.'"
"What do you quote that from, my dear?" asked Mr. Montagu, more interested in his wife's quotation than the illness of his daughter.
"Oh! it is one of a lot I bought the other day at the patent steam-book manufactory, in Hatton-Garden. I had been buying some other things, and so I persuaded the man to throw me in a bargain of quotations very cheap. They were all quite new, and ready cut, dried, and made up into pills for use. But I never saw such a man in my life;—you think nothing at all about your daughter. I really wish you would question her a little, for she will tell me nothing."
"Very well, my dear, I will," said Mr. Montagu; but the next instant he was absorbed in his studies again, and had even quite forgotten that such a being as Clara existed.
"Really," said Mrs. Montagu to the doctor, "I do not think any poor woman in the world ever was so plagued as I am. You see what a husband I have. He never troubles his head about any thing; and if I were to take it into my head to walk off, I don't think he would even miss me; and then, my daughter—but here she comes.—Clara, I sent for you to speak to Dr. Coleman."
Dr. Coleman was excessively struck by the alteration in Clara's appearance. The beautiful, lively, blooming girl was changed to a pale shadow-like being, whose existence seemed to hang upon a thread, and whose fragile form the first ungentle breeze would annihilate.