The unexpected apparition of Miss Aurelia Darnel, beaming with all the emanations of ripened beauty, blushing with all the graces of the most lovely confusion, could not but produce a violent effect upon the mind of Sir Launcelot Greaves. He was, indeed, overwhelmed with a mingled transport of astonishment, admiration, affection, and awe. The colour vanished from his cheeks, and he stood gazing upon her, in silence, with the most emphatic expression of countenance.
Aurelia was infected by his disorder. She began to tremble, and the roses fluctuated on her face. “I cannot forget,” said she, “that I owe my life to the courage and humanity of Sir Launcelot Greaves, and that he at the same time rescued from the most dreadful death a dear and venerable parent.”—“Would to Heaven she still survived!” cried our adventurer, with great emotion. “She was the friend of my youth, the kind patroness of my felicity! My guardian angel forsook me when she expired! Her last injunctions are deep engraver on my heart!”
While he pronounced these words, she lifted her handkerchief to her fair eyes, and, after some pause, proceeded in a tremulous tone, “I hope, sir, —I hope you have—I should be sorry—Pardon me, sir, I cannot reflect upon such an interesting subject unmoved”—Here she fetched a deep sigh, that was accompanied by a flood of tears; while the knight continued to bend his eyes upon her with the utmost eagerness of attention.
Having recollected herself a little, she endeavoured to shift the conversation: “You have been abroad since I had the pleasure to see you —I hope you were agreeably amused in your travels.”—“No, madam,” said our hero, drooping his head; “I have been unfortunate.” When she, with the most enchanting sweetness of benevolence, expressed her concern to hear he had been unhappy, and her hope that his misfortunes were not past remedy; he lifted up his eyes, and fixing them upon her again, with a look of tender dejection, “Cut off,” said he, “from the possession of what my soul held most dear, I wished for death, and was visited by distraction. I have been abandoned by my reason—my youth is for ever blasted.”
The tender heart of Aurelia could bear no more—her knees began to totter, the lustre vanished from her eyes, and she fainted in the arms of her attendant. Sir Launcelot, aroused by this circumstance, assisted Dolly in seating her mistress on a couch, where she soon recovered, and saw the knight on his knees before her. “I am still happy,” said he, “in being able to move your compassion, though I have been held unworthy of your esteem.”—“Do me justice,” she replied; “my best esteem has been always inseparably connected with the character of Sir Launcelot Greaves.”—“Is it possible?” cried our hero; “then surely I have no reason to complain. If I have moved your compassion, and possess your esteem, I am but one degree short of supreme happiness—that, however, is a gigantic step. O Miss Darnel! when I remember that dear, that melancholy moment.”—So saying he gently touched her hand, in order to press it to his lips, and perceived on her finger the very individual ring which he had presented in her mother’s presence, as an interchanged testimony of plighted faith. Starting at the well-known object, the sight of which conjured up a strange confusion of ideas, “This,” said he, “was once the pledge of something still more cordial than esteem.” Aurelia, blushing at this remark, while her eyes lightened with unusual vivacity, replied, in a severer tone, “Sir, you best know how it lost its original signification.”—“By Heaven! I do not, madam!” exclaimed our adventurer. “With me it was ever held a sacred idea throned within my heart, cherished with such fervency of regard, with such reverence of affection, as the devout anchorite more unreasonably pays to those sainted reliques that constitute the object of his adoration.”—“And, like those reliques,” answered Miss Darnel, “I have been insensible of my votary’s devotion. A saint I must have been, or something more, to know the sentiments of your heart by inspiration.”
“Did I forbear,” said he, “to express, to repeat, to enforce the dictates of the purest passion that ever warmed the human breast, until I was denied access, and formally discarded by that cruel dismission?”—“I must beg your pardon, sir,” cried Aurelia, interrupting him hastily, “I know not what you mean.”—“That fatal sentence,” said he, “if not pronounced by your own lips, at least written by your own fair hand, which drove me out an exile for ever from the paradise of your affection.”—“I would not,” she replied, “do Sir Launcelot Greaves the injury to suppose him capable of imposition; but you talk of things to which I am an utter stranger. I have a right, sir, to demand of your honour, that you will not impute to me your breaking off a connexion, which—I would—rather wish—had never”——“Heaven and earth! what do I hear?” cried our impatient knight; “have I not the baleful letter to produce? What else but Miss Darnel’s explicit and express declaration could have destroyed the sweetest hope that ever cheered my soul; could have obliged me to resign all claim to that felicity for which alone I wished to live; could have filled my bosom with unutterable sorrow and despair; could have even divested me of reason, and driven me from the society of men, a poor, forlorn, wandering lunatic, such as you see me now prostrate at your feet; all the blossoms of my youth withered, all the honours of my family decayed?”
Aurelia looking wishfully at her lover, “Sir,” said she, “you overwhelm me with amazement and anxiety! you are imposed upon, if you have received any such letter. You are deceived, if you thought Aurelia Darnel could be so insensible, ungrateful, and—inconstant.”
This last word she pronounced with some hesitation, and a downcast look, while her face underwent a total suffusion, and the knight’s heart began to palpitate with all the violence of emotion. He eagerly imprinted a kiss upon her hand, exclaiming, in interrupted phrase, “Can it be possible?—Heaven grant—Sure this is no illusion!—O madam!—shall I call you my Aurelia? My heart is bursting with a thousand fond thoughts and presages. You shall see that dire paper which has been the source of all my woes—it is the constant companion of my travels—last night I nourished my chagrin with the perusal of its horrid contents.”
Aurelia expressed great impatience to view the cruel forgery, for such she assured him it must be. But he could not gratify her desire, till the arrival of his servant with the portmanteau. In the meantime, tea was called. The lovers were seated. He looked and languished; she flushed and faltered. All was doubt and delirium, fondness and flutter. Their mutual disorder communicated itself to the kind-hearted sympathising Dolly, who had been witness to the interview, and deeply affected at the disclosure of the scene. Unspeakable was her surprise, when she found her mistress, Miss Meadows, was no other than the celebrated Aurelia Darnel, whose eulogium she had heard so eloquently pronounced by her sweetheart, Mr. Thomas Clarke; a discovery which still more endeared her lady to her affection. She had wept plentifully at the progress of their mutual explanation, and was now so disconcerted, that she scarce knew the meaning of the orders she had received. She set the kettle on the table, and placed the tea-board on the fire. Her confusion, by attracting the notice of her mistress, helped to relieve her from her own embarrassing situation. She, with her own delicate hands, rectified the mistake of Dolly, who still continued to sob, and said, “Yau may think, my Leady Darnel, as haw I’aive yeaten hool-cheese; but it y’an’t soa. I’se think, vor mai peart, as how I’aive bean bewitched.”
Sir Launcelot could not help smiling at the simplicity of Dolly, whose goodness of heart and attachment Aurelia did not fail to extol, as soon as her back was turned. It was in consequence of this commendation, that, the next time she entered the room, our adventurer, for the first time, considered her face, and seemed to be struck with her features. He asked her some questions, which she could not answer to his satisfaction; applauded her regard for her lady, and assured her of his friendship and protection. He now begged to know the cause that obliged his Aurelia to travel at such a rate, and in such an equipage; and she informed him of those particulars which we have already communicated to our reader.