The gray dawn was now beginning to advance, but Amanda had no inclination for repose. As she stood at the window, she heard the solemn stillness of the scene frequently interrupted by the distant noise of carriages, carrying home the weary sons and daughters of dissipation. “But a few hours ago,” said she, “and how gay, how animated was my soul; how dull, how cheerless now! Oh! Mortimer, but a few hours ago, and I believed myself the beloved of thine heart, but the flattering illusion is now over, and I no longer shall hope, or thou deceive.” She changed her clothes, and, flinging herself on the bed, from mere fatigue, at length sunk into a slumber.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
“Love reigns a very tyrant in my heart, Attended on his throne by all his guard Of furious wishes, fears, and nice suspicions.”—Otway.
The next morning brought Sir Charles Bingley to Castle Carberry. Fitzalan was out, but Amanda received him in her dressing-room. He told her, with evident concern, he was on the point of setting off for the metropolis, to embark from thence immediately for England, having received letters that morning, which recalled him there. He regretted that their intimacy, or rather friendship, as with insinuating softness he entreated permission to call it, was interrupted at its very commencement—declared it gave him more pain than she could imagine, or he express—and that his return to Ireland would be expedited, for the purpose of renewing it, and requested he might be flattered with an assurance of not being totally forgotten during his absence. Amanda answered him as if she supposed mere politeness had dictated the request. Her father, she said, she was sure, would be happy to see him, if he returned again to their neighborhood. At his entrance, he said he could stay but a few minutes, yet he remained about two hours, and when he arose to depart, declared he had reason to think the castle an enchanted one. He found it difficult to get from it; “yet, unlike the knights of old,” continued he, “I wish not to break the spell which detained me in it.”
Day after day elapsed, and no Lord Mortimer appeared. Amanda, indeed, heard frequently of him, and always as the admirer of Lady Euphrasia. Frequently, too, she heard about the family at Ulster Lodge, their superb entertainments, and those given in the neighborhood to them. The Kilcorbans seemed to have given her up entirely. Lady Greystock was the only one of the family who continued to pay her any attention. She called once or twice at Castle Carberry to see whether her apron was finished, and tell all the news she had picked up, to Amanda. The resolution which Amanda had formed of concealing her melancholy from her father, she supported tolerably well, but she only indulged it more freely in solitude. The idea of Lord Mortimer’s union with Lady Euphrasia haunted her imagination and embittered every moment. “Yes,” she would exclaim (as she wandered through the garden, which had been converted from a rude wilderness into a scene of beauty by her superintending care), “I have planted flowers, but another shall enjoy their sweets. I have planted roses for Mortimer to strew in the path of Lady Euphrasia;—I have adorned the landscape, and she shall enjoy its beauty!”
About three weeks after the ball, as she sat at work one morning in the dressing-room, beguiling her thoughts with a little plaintive song, she heard the door softly open behind her: she supposed it to be Ellen; but not finding any one advance, turned round and perceived not Ellen indeed, but Lord Mortimer himself. She started from her chair:—the work dropped from her hands, and she had neither power to speak or move.
“I fear I have surprised and alarmed you,” said Lord Mortimer. “I ask pardon for my intrusion, but I was informed I should find Mr. Fitzalan here.”
“He is in the study, I believe, my lord,” replied Amanda, coolly, and with restored composure. “I will go and inform him your lordship wishes to see him.”
“No,” exclaimed he, “I will not suffer you to have so much trouble: my business is not so urgent as to require my seeing him immediately.” He reseated Amanda, and drew a chair near her.