Let the suit then be pressed. Let there be no respite. Let calamity fall fast and heavy. Let disobedience and presumption meet their just reward. But where was the agent? Where was he who had pointed out the path of revenge? What had he said when she last saw him? Better, Esther thought scornfully, better even that match than this. And what meant his dark insinuations? Had he not dared to threaten?
Langour crept over the muser. She began to grow aweary of the sun. She felt as if her self-control were slipping from her grasp. Shadowy fears beset her. She did not like to be alone. She was glad when her husband came home from his official duties; and he became seriously alarmed at her altered demeanour. She seemed to be sinking into a state of lethargy, which might affect her mind. Mr. Pendarrel sent to beg Mrs. Winston to come and watch by her mother, who was evidently very ill. And Gertrude came, but for some time her presence seemed only to irritate the invalid. It might be observed that from about this day Esther entirely discontinued her old practice of calling her husband by the name which he had abandoned to obtain her hand.
CHAPTER XII.
Anne magis Siculi gemuerunt æra juvenci,
Aut magis auratis pendens laquearibus ensis
Purpureas subter cervices terruit, Imus;
Imus præcipites, quam si sibi dicat, intus
Palleat infelix, quod proxima nesciat uxor?
Persius.
Down, headlong, down—Say could that bull of fire,
Or thread-suspended sword such fear inspire,
As his, whose thoughts, to bosom-wife unknown,
Ring in his livid heart—Down, headlong, down?
That same evening the fugitive couple arrived in the metropolis, and took up their abode in apartments engaged for them by Mr. Riches at a hotel. It was time. Already they were beginning to long for other company than their own; a few days more might make their own companionship intolerable. One quarter of the moon had nearly taught them the vanity of the lover's chimera, that they were all-sufficient for one another. There was so much anxiety about their path, so much gloom around the present, so much dismay in the future, that their spirits drooped, and even love seemed to grow cold in their hearts. Let them beware, for they were united for ever. In the preservation of their mutual regard lay their only chance of peace; should that vanish, there was nothing but misery before them. The day might then come when Mildred would be qualified to receive succour from her mother, on the terms which Esther, in the fierceness of her first indignation, had not scrupled to prescribe.
The sense of the fault they had committed lay at the bottom of their discontent. Mildred repented with bitter sorrow her rupture of all filial ties, and exaggerated her sister's account of the distress it had occasioned, thinking sometimes that she might even have broken her mother's heart. She forgot the severity with which she had lately been treated, and remembered only the tenderness which she had not seldom experienced. She often recollected how she had been pressed to her mother's bosom on the night of the fire, and she trembled to dwell upon the affection which one moment had cast away.