I look again into my journal. 16th March. “Clarence has returned; at times dejected; at times excited; he is totally unlike his former self. We are at Newlands again. All these scenes and objects associated with happier hours! They bring but bitterness to me. I never approach the fountain of Egeria... When I hear the sound of horses’ feet in those long avenues, I fly—I am ill—I cannot rest—and oh, this crowd! how it oppresses me! How I long for a friend to whom I could impart my sorrow. Oh, for advice!—Dear father! would that I were at home and by thy side. Mother, you would take your stricken daughter to your arms. Though weak and ill, how strong within me is the power of suffering...”
You say, Major Frankfort, that you love me; I believe you; you will love me ever, for you will ever pity me; and so, knowing what your heart will feel on reading this, I will not shed all my miserable thoughts of this period upon paper.
All this time Lyle was intent upon his purpose. He felt my fate was in his hands.
He took up a new position.
I was sitting one morning in Lady Amabel’s boudoir. A servant ushered in Mr Lyle. He started back; “It was Lady Amabel he came to see,” he said.
I begged him to be seated, and rose to go for her.
He detained me gently.
How specious he was—how blind was I! He had “been studying me for weeks;” from the first moment we met, he “had been deeply interested in me. He had perceived the shade that an early sorrow had cast round me, and had come to ask Lady Amabel if there was no hope for him; he would not press the question on me now, it would be unkind.”
I believed that he felt for me from his soul; that he would have “given worlds for a look which would bid him not quite despair; but this was not the time to assail me. He knew I had pride; it was blinded now, but the mist would clear away, the scales would fall from my eyes. I should do him justice; he grieved that the world should have dared to tamper with my name—.” He quite frightened me as he said this. I was oppressed with a sense of bitterness and wrong, against which I was powerless; but here was one who seemed disposed to do me justice. I wished to do right. Lady Amabel would have been all kindness had I unburdened my full heart to her, but she would not have understood me; she would have proposed a ride or a drive, or a fête, or might have sent for Clarence, to scold him. Ah me! I had not a friend at hand who could give me good advice; and here sat this clever experienced, silver-tongued man, offering me his sympathy, and teaching me to believe he was the only one near me who could feel for me—who had, in fact, any real regard for me; and this regard was offered so humbly that I had not a word to say against the expression of it. On the one hand was Clarence Fairfax, reckless of my affection, ignoring it indeed, and, as Lyle remarked, with indignation he protested he could not suppress, “insulting me publicly, by doing homage before my face to a shameless woman, whose triumph was the greater in that she had drawn this infatuated young man from one so lovely and pure-hearted as myself.”