Did no warning voice whisper to her that she had made a rash choice?—that the bitterness of party hatred outlives all other hate?—that the man who had persecuted her young enthusiastic husband to the death was not likely to prove a kind neighbor to his widow? Mrs. Wildegrave forgot all this, and only hoped that Squire Hurdlestone had outlived his hostility to her family. Sixteen years had elapsed since Captain Wildegrave had perished on the scaffold. The world had forgotten his name, and the nature of his offence. It was not possible for a mere political opponent to retain his animosity to the dead. But she had formed a very incorrect estimate of Squire Hurdlestone's powers of hating.
The arrival of Captain Wildegrave's widow in his immediate vicinity greatly enraged the old Squire; but as he possessed no power of denouncing women as traitors, he was obliged to content himself by pouring forth, on every occasion, the most ill-natured invectives against his poor unprotected neighbors.
He wondered at the impudence of the traitor Wildegrave's widow and daughter daring to lift up their heads among a loyal community, where her husband's conduct and his shameful death were but too well known. Alas! he know not how the lonely heart will pine for the old familiar haunts—how the sight of inanimate objects which have been loved in childhood will freshen into living greenness its desolate wastes. The sordid lover of gold, the eager aspirant for this world's trifling distinctions, feels nothing, knows nothing, of this.
Elinor Wildegrave, the only child of these unhappy parents, had just completed her seventeenth year, and might have formed a perfect model of youthful innocence and beauty. Her personal endowments were so remarkable, that they soon became the subject of conversation, alike in the halls of the wealthy and in the humble abodes of the poor. The village-gossips were not backward in mating the young heiress of sorrow with the richest and noblest in the land. Elinor was not unconscious of her personal attractions, but a natural delicacy of mind made her shrink from general admiration. Her mother's scanty income did not enable them to hire servants; and the work of the house devolved upon Elinor, who was too dutiful a child to suffer her ailing mother to assist her in these domestic labors. The lighter employments of sewing and knitting, her mother shared; and they were glad to increase their slender means by taking in plain work; which so completely occupied the young girl's time, that she was rarely seen abroad, excepting on Sundays, when she accompanied her mother to the parish church; and then, the loveliness which attracted such attention was always partially concealed by a large veil. Mark Hurdlestone's valet happened to meet the young lady returning home through the park without this envious appendage, and was so struck with her beauty, that he gave his young master an eloquent description of the angel he had seen.
"Believe me, sir, she is a mate for the King. If I were but a gentleman of fortune like you, I should feel proud to lay it at her feet."
Mark heard him with indifference. He had never felt the least tender emotion towards woman, whom he regarded as an inferior being, only formed to administer to the wants, and contribute to the pleasures, of man.
"Miss Wildegrave," he said, "might be a fine girl. But he could see no beauty in a woman whose father had died upon the scaffold, and who had no fortune. She and her mother were outcasts, who could no longer be received into genteel society."
The valet, with more taste than his master, shrugged up his shoulders, and answered with a significant smile: "Ah, sir! if we could but exchange situations."
A few days after this conversation, Mark Hurdlestone met Elinor Wildegrave by accident, and became deeply enamoured with the lovely orphan.
In spite of his blunt speech and misanthropic manners, the young heir of Oak Hall, at that period, was not wholly destitute of the art of pleasing. He was sensible and well-read. His figure was commanding, and his carriage good. His stern features were set off by the ruddy glow of health; and the brilliancy of his lip and eye, the dazzling whiteness of his small even teeth, and the rich masses of raven hair that curled in profusion round his high forehead, atoned in some measure for the disagreeable expression which at all times pervaded his remarkable countenance.