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Had'st thou but died ere yet dishonor's cloud
O'er that young heart had gathered as a shroud,
I then had mourned thee proudly, and my grief
In its own loftiness had found relief;
A noble sorrow cherished to the last,
When every meaner wo had long been past.
Yes, let affection weep, no common tear
She sheds when bending o'er an honored bier.
Let nature mourn the dead—a grief like this,
To pangs that rend my bosom had been bliss.
Mrs. Hemans.
Florence had been very ill, and a week after the scene in our last chapter Mr. Hurst removed her down to his old mansion-house on the Long Island shore. There the associations were less painful than at his town residence, where the sweetest years of her life had been spent in unrestrained association with the man who had so cruelly deceived her. The old mansion-house had witnessed only one fatal scene in the drama of her love; and here she consented to remain. Her father divided his time between her and the unpleasant duties that called him to town; and more than once he was forced to endure the presence of the man whose very look was poison to him, but after the distressing night when the error of his daughter was first made known, the noble old merchant had regained all his usual dignified calmness. No bursts of passion marked his interviews with the wretch who had wounded him, but firm and resolute he proceeded, step by step, in the course that his reason and will had at first deliberately marked out. In three days time Jameson was to depart for Europe, and forever. It was singular what power the merchant had obtained over his own strong passions; always grave and courteous, his demeanor had changed in nothing, save that toward his child there was more delicacy, more tender solicitude than she had ever received from him before, even in the days of her infancy. It seemed that in forgiving her fault, he had unlocked some hidden fount of tenderness which bedewed and softened his whole nature. Florence, who had always felt a little awe of her father when no act of hers existed to excite it, now that she had given him deep cause of offence, had learned to watch for his coming as the young bird waits for the parent which is to bring him food. One night, it was just before sunset, Mr. Hurst entered his daughter's chamber with a handful of heliotrope, tea-roses, and cape-jesamines, which he had just gathered. In his tender anxiety to relieve the sadness that preyed upon her, he remembered her passion for these particular flowers, and had spent half an hour in searching them out from the wilderness of plants that filled a conservatory in one wing of the building. The chamber where Florence sat was the one in which she had put on her wedding garments scarcely three weeks before. The old ebony mirror, with the fantastic and dark tracery of its frame, hung directly before her, and from its depth gleamed out a face so changed that it might well have startled one who had been proud of its bloom and radiance one little month before.
The window was open, as it had been that day, and across it fell the old apple-tree, with the fruit just setting along its thickly-leaved boughs, and a few over-ripe blossoms yielding their petals to every gush of air that came over them. These leaves, now almost snow-white, had swept, one by one, into the chamber, settling upon the chair which Florence occupied, upon her muslin wrapper, and flaking, as with snow, the glossy disorder of her hair. With a sort of mournful apathy she felt these broken blossoms falling around her, remembering, oh, how keenly, their rosy freshness, when she had selected them as a bridal ornament. She remembered, too, the single glimpse which that old mirror had given of her lover—that one prophetic glimpse which had been enough to startle, but not enough to save her.
Florence was filled with these miserable reminiscences when her father entered the chamber. She greeted him with a wan smile, that told her anxiety to appear less wretched than she really was in his presence. He came close up to her where she sat, and stooping to kiss her forehead, laid the blossoms he had brought in her lap.
Mr. Hurst little knew how powerful were the associations those delicate flowers would excite. The moment their fragrance arose around her Florence began to shudder, and turning her face away with an expression of sudden pain, swept them to the floor.
"Take them away, oh take them away!" she said. "That evening their breath was around me while I sat listening to—take them out of the room, I cannot endure their sweetness."
Mr. Hurst strove to soothe the wild excitement which his unfortunate flowers had occasioned. It was a touching sight—that proud man, so cruelly wronged by his daughter, and yet bending the natural reserve of his nature into every endearing form, in order to convince her how deep was his love, how true his forgiveness.
"My Florence, try to conquer this keen sensitiveness. Strive, dear child, to think of these things as if they had not been!"