“‘Betsy,’ said I to her afterwards, you should not have mentioned these things before the children; do you forget how noticing they are?’
“‘Oh, so they are,’ said Betsy, ‘but only for the moment; and I’ll wager Miss Charlotte has forgotten it all already.’
“But, poor thing,” Fanny added, “she remembered it but too well.”
“I’ll not believe this,” cried Robert.
“Let Betsy be called, then,” said the housekeeper, “and we’ll soon get at the truth.” Betsy came, was questioned by the housekeeper, and acknowledged the fact.
“Then,” said Robert, “you have murdered my master’s daughter, and you and I can never be more to one another than we are at this moment;” and he hastily left the room.
Betsy gazed after him for an instant, and then fell on the floor. She was immediately raised up and conveyed to bed, but recovering soon after, and expressing a wish to sleep, her attendant left her. The unhappy woman, feeling herself unable to face her mistress after what had happened, immediately got up, and, jumping from the window, fled from the Hermitage. The first accounts they had of her were contained in a letter from herself to Lady Beaumont, written on her death-bed, wherein she described the miserable life she had led since quitting the Hermitage, and entreating her ladyship’s forgiveness for the unhappiness which she had occasioned.
“Let what has happened,” said Lady Beaumont, “be a warning to those who have the charge of them, to beware of what they say before children;—a sentiment which Sir George considered as so just and important, that he had it engraven on the stone which covered the little innocents, that their fate and its cause might be had in everlasting remembrance.”—“The Odd Volume.”
AN ORKNEY WEDDING.
By John Malcolm.