"Doubtless she will forget it!" he said to himself; "doubtless she will never think of it more; but yet I have spoken what was either an insult or a declaration, and for my own honor's sake I can not quit the country till I have pursued it further."
Well done, Maître Cupidon! Strangely well managed for a little blind gentleman, strongly suspected of being lame in one leg! But 'tis time to give over gossiping, for I have a long story to tell, and very little space to tell it in; and if we stop investigating every thing that passes in the mind of all the principal personages in this tale, we shall never get half through all the perils, and dangers, and hairbreadth escapes, which have not yet begun.
Well, the chaise rolled on; but as, for the sake of his hurt companion, Burrel had ordered it to roll slowly, his own thoughts rolled a considerable deal faster, and he had got happily over the above cogitations, and a great many more to boot, before the vehicle entered the little town of Emberton. All the good folks in the place were agog with the joy and excitement of a fire, and the misfortunes of their fellow-creatures; and, although it had been discovered, by the arrival of Mrs. Darlington's carriage, that unfortunately no one had been killed, yet every body looked out anxiously for the next comers from the scene of action, in order to have the pleasure of a detailed account of the property destroyed. Good Lord! what a pleasure and a satisfaction it was to the ladies of Emberton to commiserate Mrs. Darlington! There is certainly no affection of human nature half so gratifying as commiseration! It raises us so infinitely above the object we commiserate; and, oh! if that object have been for long years a thing or person to be envied!--Ye gods! quit your nectar, for it is not worth a sup, and learn to commiserate one another!
"Poor Mrs. Darlington! Only think how unfortunate to have her fine place entirely destroyed!" cried Commiseration. "She that was so smart and gay, and held her head so high!" observed Envy. "No great harm; it will lower her pride!" said Hatred. "They say all her title-deeds are burned, and she is likely to lose the whole estate!" whispered Malice. "It was ill enough got, I dare say!" added All Uncharitableness; "for no one could tell how her father made his money!" And thus the matter being settled to the satisfaction of every one who had lungs to cry out "Poor Mrs. Darlington!" the good people of Emberton waited anxiously for the next arrival, to see whether it would afford them any thing equally new and pleasant to say upon the subject.
The next arrival, as we before hinted, was that of Henry Burrel, Esq., carrying in the post-chaise along with him "Poor Wat Harrison," as the surgeon had called him; and this conjunction of two such very opposite planets in one post-chaise, was wonderfully prolific of agreeable speculations to the folks of Emberton. Some declared that Poor Wat Harrison, or Sailor Wat, as he was called, had been detected in plundering the house, and had been brought down in irons. Some vowed that he had insulted Mr. Burrel, and had been knocked down by that gentleman with a blow which had fractured his skull. One little boy, who saw him pass with a bloody handkerchief round his head, ran across to his father on the other side of the way, crying out, "Oh, papa, they have brought home the widow's son, at the end of the lane, with his throat cut! You used always to say he would be hanged!"
Besides this gentle vaticination of his ultimate destiny, various were the reports that his appearance in Burrel's post-chaise produced. Nevertheless, the chaise rolled on, and passing through the town, turned up the lane leading by the park wall toward the mansion-house, and, after proceeding about a couple of hundred yards, stopped at the door of a neat cottage, humble and small, but clean and decked with flowers.
"Stay, and let me help you out!" said Burrel to his companion, as the postillion opened the door.
"No, no!" cried the lad, rousing himself from the sort of dozing state in which he had hitherto continued. "It will frighten her. Let me get out myself. She has had frights enough already."
He was next the door, and he staggered down the steps with an effort; but, before his foot touched the ground, a female figure appeared at the entrance of the cottage. It was that of a woman about forty years of age, with traces of considerable beauty, less withered apparently by time than by sorrow; for the braided hair upon her forehead was but thinly mingled with gray, the teeth were fine and white, the eye clear and undimmed. But there was many a line about the mouth which seemed to hold every smile in chains, and there was an expression of deep, habitual anxiety in the eyes, fine as they were, that can only be fixed in them by care. They seemed always asking, "What new sorrow now?" She was dressed in the garb of a widow--not deep weeds--but those habiliments which might still be worn as marks of the eternal mourning of the heart, after time and the world's changes had banished the memory of her loss from every bosom but her own. They were neat and clean, but plain and even coarse; and her appearance--and it did not belie her state--was altogether that of a person in the humbler class of life; but with a mind, and perhaps an education, in some degree superior to those of her own station.
As the young man got out of the chaise, she took two or three quick steps forward to meet him, exclaiming, with an anxious gaze at his face, "Oh, my boy! what has happened now!"