CHAPTER XXIV.
Blanch. Now shall I see thy love; what motive may
Be stronger with thee than the name of wife?
Const. That which upholdeth him that thee upholds,
His honour!”
———“I know thee well;
But in thy fortunes am unlearn’d and strange.”
Shakspeare.
I never sate out a more melancholy dinner than that with Mr. Hartley and his daughter on the last evening of my sojourn in the metropolis. Mine honoured uncle was gloomy and abstracted. Isidora looked the very image of despair; and I felt any thing but martial satisfaction at the immediate certainty of having an early opportunity afforded of “fleshing my maiden sword.” Like the courage of Bob Acres, my military ardour was hourly evaporating from my finger-ends. A month since, the prospect of being shot at was a matter of indifference; but in that brief space my feelings had undergone a marvellous change. From childhood, I had listened to my father’s stories as he “told how fields were won,” and caught the enthusiasm of a man, every inch a soldier. But then I knew not what it was to love—I had not felt the witchery that attends a first attachment—the confession of mutual passion as yet had not fallen my ear, soft as angels’ whispers to sleeping infancy. I had loved, and sued, and was accepted; and now this sweetest dream of life was to be broken; and from one dearer than all that earth contained, I was to be separated for a long period—perhaps for ever! I came rapidly to the conclusion, that glory was well enough in its way; but still it was an awkward business to have to seek it at the other side of the Pyrenees; and, had it pleased Heaven to bring about a general pacification, I think that 1 would have borne the disappointment like a philosopher.