"God bless you!" cried I, taking the hand she extended to me, and pressing it heartily between my own. "My mother's son blesses you, for the kind sympathy you have expressed in his welfare. You are my good angel, and have inspired me with a thousand new and pleasing hopes."
"These will not, however, prove your legitimacy, my young friend," said she, with a smile, "so restrain your ardour for a more fortunate time. I have a letter from your mother, written the morning after her marriage, describing her feelings during the ceremony and the remorse which marred her happiness, for having disobeyed and abandoned her aged father. She mentions her old nurse, and her father's gardener, as being the only witnesses present, and remarks on the sexton giving her away, as a bad omen, that she felt superstitious about it, and that her husband laughed at her fears.
"The register of the marriage, you say, has been destroyed. The parties who witnessed it, are most likely gathered to their fathers. But the very circumstance of the register having been destroyed, and this letter of your mother's, will, I think, be greatly in your favour. At all events, the parish of —— is only a pleasant ride among the Derby hills; and you can examine the registers for a trifling donation to the clerk; and ascertain from him, whether Mr. Roche, the clergyman who then resided in the parish, or his sexton, are still living. I will now introduce you to my niece, who always speaks of you with interest, and refuses to believe the many things advanced by your cousin to your disadvantage."
"Just like Miss Lee," said I. "She is not one to listen to the slanders of an enemy, behind one's back. I heard in the village, that Mr. Theophilus was in this neighbourhood, and a suitor of Miss Lee's."
"A mere village gossip. He is staying with Mr. Thurton, who lives in the pretty old-fashioned house, you passed on the hill on your way hither, and is a frequent visitor here. Mr. Moncton is anxious to promote an alliance between his son and my niece. In birth and fortune they are equals, and the match, in a worldly point of view, unexceptional."
"And Theophilus?"
"Is the most devoted of lovers."
"Execrable villain! and his poor young wife dying at the Hall of a broken heart. Can such things be, and the vengeance of heaven sleep!"
"You don't mean to insinuate that Mr. Theophilus Moncton is a married man."
"I scorn insinuations, I speak of facts; which to his face, I dare him to deny."