"I will not deny," I answered, "but that he doth testify a vast regard for me, or that he is a gentleman of such great parts and exceedingly winning speech that a gentlewoman should be flattered to be addressed by him; but, dear lady," I continued, opening my heart to her, "albeit I relish greatly his society, mine heart doth not altogether incline to his suit; and Mr. Congleton hath lately warned me to be less free in allowing of his attentions than hath hitherto been my wont; for, he said, his means be so scanty, that it behoveth him not to think of marriage until his fortunes do improve; and that his father would not be competent to make such settlements as should be needful in such a case, or without which he should suffer us to marry. As Hubert had never opened to me himself thereon in so pointed a fashion as to demand an answer from me, I was somewhat surprised at mine uncle's speech; but I found he had often ministered talk of his passion for me—for so he termed it—to Kate and her husband."
"And did it work in thee, sweet one, no regrets," my lady asked, "that the course of this poor gentleman's true love should be marred by his lack of wealth?"
"In truth no, dear lady," I replied; "except that I did notice, with so much of pain as a good heart must needs feel in the sufferings of another, that he was both sad and wroth at the change in my manner. And indeed I had always seen—and methinks this was the reason that my heart inclined not warmly toward his suit—that his affection was of that sort that doth readily breed anger; and that if he had occasion to misdoubt a return from me of such-like regard as he professed, his looks of love sometimes changed into a scowl, or something nearly resembling one. Yet I had a kindness toward him, yea, more than a kindness, an attachment, which methinks should have led me to correspond to his affection so far as to be willing to marry him, if mine uncle had not forbade me to think on it; but since he hath laid his commands upon me on that point, methinks I have experienced a freedom of soul and a greater peace than I had known for some time past."
"'Tis well then as it is," my lady said; and after some further discourse we parted that day.
It had been with me even as I had said to her. My mind had been more at ease since the contending would and would not, the desire to please Hubert and the fear to be false in so doing, had been stayed,—and mostly since he had urged me to entertain him as a friend, albeit defended to receive him as a lover. And that peace lasted until a day—ay, a day which began like other days with no perceptible presentiment of joy or sorrow, the sun shining as brightly, and no more, at its rise than on any other morning in June; and the thunder-clouds toward noon overshadowing its glory not more darkly than a storm is wont to do the clear sky it doth invade; nor yet evening smiling again more brightly and peacefully than is usually seen when nature's commotion is hushed, and the brilliant orb of day doth sink to rest in a bed of purple glory; and yet that day did herald the greatest joys, presage the greatest anguish, mark the most mighty beginnings of most varied endings that can be thought of in the life of a creature not altogether untried by sorrow, but on the brink of deeper waters than she had yet sounded, on the verge of such passages as to have looked forward to had caused her to tremble with a two-fold resentment of hope and of fear, and to look back to doth constrain her to lay down her pen awhile for to crave strength to recount the same.
[TO BE CONTINUED in Volume II]
From Chambers's Journal.
TERRENE PHOSPHORESCENCE.
It has been suggested that light, heat, magnetism, and electricity are only the effects of motion among the molecules of matter. Our earth is but an aggregation of atoms, and every substance upon which we lay our hands is in like manner formed of infinitesimal particles, so small as to baffle microscopic investigation. When we consider that animalcula have been discovered so minute that it would take a million of them to form a grain of sand, it is evident that motion as motion among the ultimate particles of matter is beyond man's powers of observation. Physical investigations have led us to believe that these atoms have an action or circulation of their own, and as this action of necessity escapes our eye, it is not irrational, when looking for some evidence of this disturbance, to attribute to it physical forces for which we cannot satisfactorily account, yet which appertain to the earth. Thus has arisen the hypothesis above stated; and intimately connected with those forces (heat, electricity, etc.) is phosphorescence, a power on which the examinations of twenty years have thrown little light, and which still remains of doubtful origin.