“I would like to see my papa,” she replied. “I should be glad to hear that he forgives me: how glad! how glad! That’s all that troubles your poor Jane; all in the world that troubles her poor heart—I think.”
These words were uttered in a tone of such deep and inexpressible misery, and with such an innocent and childlike unconsciousness of the calamity which weighed her down that no heart possessing common humanity could avoid being overcome.
“Look on me, love,” exclaimed her father. “Your papa is here, ready to pity and forgive you.”
“William,” said Agnes, “a thought strikes me,—the air that Charles played when they first met has been her favorite ever since you know it—go get your flute and play it with as much feeling as you can.”
Jane made no reply to her father’s words. She sat musing, and once or twice put up her hand to her sidelocks, but immediately withdrew it, and again fell into a reverie. Sometimes her face brightened into the fatal smile, and again became overshadowed with a gloom that seemed to proceed from a feeling of natural grief. Indeed the play of meaning and insanity, as they chased each other over a countenance so beautiful, was an awful sight, even to an indifferent beholder, much less to those who then stood about her.
William in about a minute returned with his flute, and placing himself behind her, commenced the air in a spirit more mournful probably than any in which it had ever before been played. For a long time she noticed it not: that is to say, she betrayed no external marks of attention to it. They could perceive, however, that although she neither moved nor looked around her, yet the awful play of her features ceased, and; their expression became more intelligent and natural. At length she sighed deeply several times, though without appearing to hear the music; and at length, without uttering a word to any one of them, she laid her head I upon her father’s bosom, and the tears fell; in placid torrents down her cheeks. By a signal from his hand, Mr. Sinclair intimated that for the present they should be silent; and by another addressed to William, that he should play on. He did so, and she wept copiously under the influence of that charmed melody for more than twenty minutes.
“It would be well for me,” she at length said, “that is, I fear it would, that I had never heard that air, or seen him who first sent its melancholy music to my heart. He is gone; but when—when will he return?”
“Do not take his departure so heavily, dear child,” said her father. “If you were acquainted with life and the world you would know that a journey to the Continent is nothing. Two years to one as young as you are will soon pass.”
“It would, papa, if I loved him less. But my love for him—my love for him—that now is my misery. I must, however, rely upon other strength than my own. Papa, kneel down and pray for me,—and you, mamma, and all of you; for I fear I am myself incapable of praying as I used to do, with an un-divided heart.”
Her father knelt down, but knowing her weak state of mind, he made his supplication as short and simple as might be consistent with the discharge of a duty so solemn.