In the meantime, changes, dark melancholy changes, had altered every thing at Widecomb. The two old men, whom we last saw conversing cheerfully of times long gone, and past joys unforgotten, had both fallen asleep, to wake no more but to immortality. Sir Miles St. Aubyn slept with his fathers in the bannered and escutcheoned chapel adjoining the Hall, wherein he had spent so many, and those the happiest, of his days; while William Allan—he had preceded his ancient friend, his old rival, but a few weeks on their last journey—lay in the quiet village church-yard, beneath the shade of the great lime-trees, among the leaves of which he had loved to hear the hum of the bees in his glad boyhood. The leaves waved as of old, and twinkled in the sunshine, and the music of the reveling bees was blithe as ever, but the eye that had rejoiced at the calm scenery, the ear that had delighted in the rural sound, was dim, and deaf forever.
Happy—happy they. Whom no more cares should reach, no more anxieties, forever—who now no more had hopes to be blighted, joys to be tortured into sorrows, and, worst of all, affections to breed the bitterest griefs, and make calamity of so long life. Happy, indeed, thrice happy!
There was a pleasant parlor, with large oriel windows looking out upon the terrace of Widecomb Hall, and over the beautiful green chase, studded with grand old oaks, down to the deep ravine through which the trout stream rushed, in which the present lord of that fair demesne had so nearly perished at the opening of my tale.
And in that pleasant parlor, within the embrasure of one of the great oriels, gazing out anxiously over the lovely park, now darkening with the long shadows of a sweet summer evening, there stood as beautiful a being as ever gladdened the eye of friend, husband, or lover, on his return from brief absence home.
It was Theresa—Allan no longer, but St. Aubyn; and with the higher rank which she had so deservedly acquired, she had acquired, too, a higher and more striking style of beauty. Her slender, girlish stature had increased in height, and expanded in fullness, roundness, symmetry, until the delicate and somewhat fragile maiden had been matured into the perfect, full-blown woman.
Her face also was lovelier than of old; it had a deeper, a more spiritual meaning. Love had informed it, and experience. And the genius, dormant before, and unsuspected save by the old fond father, sat enthroned visibly on the pale, thoughtful brow, and looked out gloriously from those serene, large eyes, filled as they were to overflowing with a clear, lustrous, tranquil light, which revealed to the most casual and thoughtless observers, the purity, the truth, the whiteness of the soul within.
But if you gazed on her more closely,
You saw her at a nearer view
A spirit, yet a woman too.
You saw that how pure, how calm, how innocent so-ever, she was not yet exempt from the hopes, the fears, the passions, and the pains of womanhood.