It was over! and I sat long silent and motionless with the letters before me. I then determined to bear uncomplainingly my fate, and never let him know the agony which his thus breaking our engagement had caused me. “Did I die from it,” was my proud resolution, “I will die in silence. He, to believe so quickly, so readily, an assertion made against me, by an enemy of his, and proved by an enemy of mine. Did he ask me, ‘Was it so—and wherefore?’ No: but acted on the information, careless of my pain—oh! well he knew that I loved him—and exulted in it from revenge. Had he asked me, oh! how humbly would I have acknowledged my fault, and throwing myself more trustingly on his love, how would I have prayed for forgiveness, till the proud man, in his strength, would have been softened by my tears, and taken me again in love to his bosom.” But it was over, and she who had caused this misery should not triumph. I jumped from my seat, bathed my eyes, curled my hair elaborately, decked myself in a most becoming dress, and on seeing my ashy cheeks, in the glance I gave into the glass, for the first time painted them with carmine. I then descended into the drawing-room. Mr. Harold, the wealthy merchant from the city, whom I have spoken of, had returned the day before, on a visit to my uncle, and for him, and to him, I played and sung. I was in my wildest spirits. I kept up this farce for weeks whenever the eyes of the household were upon me, till I thought in the struggle my mind must give way. At this crisis a letter came from a cousin of my mother, to whom I had written to ask for an asylum, gladly welcoming me to her home—for she was aged and infirm, and wanted companionship. I accepted at once; received a cold acquiescence from my uncle—a still more indifferent one from my cousin—and set out for my new home in Kentucky, determined to hide myself forever from the eyes of those whose triumph was built on the ruins of my happiness. Oh! Hugh, could you have known how deeply I have repented of that speech, wrung from my wounded pride, even you would have forgiven me and loved me still—but you never, never loved as I did you. But it is, as I said, all, all past; my dream is ended, and I now walk sadly my allotted time on earth, a sorrower and a sojourner in a vale of tears.
Here ended this sketch from her journal; and Cora Norton sat at first meditating, with her head still leaning on her arm. Turning at last to her aunt, who was dozing across the room, she said—
“What has become of Col. Dudley, Aunt Mary?”
“Ech! what!” exclaimed the old lady; and then being thoroughly roused, she took her knitting from the floor, where it had slipped during her nap, received from Cora her spectacles, and upon her niece repeating her inquiry—
“He is now,” said Aunt Mary, gaping and rubbing her eyes, “the husband of Clare Alton, and lives in his far distant home—at least so I heard about five years since, the only time I ever heard of him. It is said that the match was made up for him entirely by his aunt, and that Clare is an excellent housekeeper—raises more chickens and turkies than any lady in the neighborhood. She, as my informant told me, is quite the model housewife of her neighbors, and has finished a hexagon bed-quilt, of I don’t know how many thousand patches. As to herself and the colonel, they get along very politely I believe—
“Living together as most people do,
Suffering each other’s foibles, by accord,
And not exactly either one or two.”
And now, Cora love, it is bedtime. Need I ‘point a moral’ to the journal you have read? Ah! no, you say. Well! when that little rattling tongue of yours seems disposed to laugh and say flippant things about your lovers, think of my girl-friend, Florence Walton, and profit by her dear-bought experience.”