"Her maid, I believe," said Miss Cecil, hastily, "is no genealogist. She looks like an old heir-loom in the shape of a nurse, who has been more conversant with swaddling-clothes than coats of arms; but I am sure that Miss Gordon must be of a good stock, she is so pretty and so elegant."
"That is a fallacious test, as I have often told you," rejoined Lady Cecil. "To be sure it little signifies when we are merely called upon to relieve distress, what rank the sufferer holds in the Herald's Court. We reserve that inquiry for our friendships and alliances."
Clara being afraid of displeasing her mother by an ill-timed remark on the possibility of giving one's confidence, and affection too, without referring to her mother's favourite volume, entitled, "Norroy King at Arms," contented herself with assenting to the first branch of her proposition, while the latter was left undisputed, and went to inquire whether there was any thing that she could do for her guest.
On the surgeon's return next day Zorilda's fever had greatly increased, and the accident which she had met with only appeared its accelerating, not original cause. Her mind was the real seat of malady. The unkindness of Lady Marchdale, and the perfidy of her once beloved Algernon, preyed upon her innocent heart, while the occurrence of such strange events as she had lately experienced, confused her head. On the third day of her illness she became delirious, and raved incessantly of all that weighed upon her spirit, but so incoherently, that none who was ignorant of her story could draw any collected evidence from the wild and whirling words which she uttered. The name of Algernon, however, escaped her lips so often as to convince young Cecil, to whom his sister reported all she heard, that a deep attachment existed in Zorilda's breast, of which Lord Hautonville was the object.
"Alas!" said Lionel, "the sweet girl has little knowledge of the man to whom she has betrothed her guileless heart. Her pure mind arrays the image of its devotion in the colours of her own glowing fancy, and represents the object of her love as he should be, not as he is. I would not have you, my Clara, married to Lord Hautonville though he wore a crown imperial, and could trace his pedigree through a forest, instead of a single tree."
"I neither love crowns nor pedigrees for myself," replied Clara; "but we must not let the artless Zorilda be deceived. We must devise means of snatching her from future misery, if you know the object of her regards to be unworthy of them."
"It is a delicate task," answered Cecil, "but she may perhaps have made discoveries, the pain of which now presses on her feeble frame. I have questioned her attendant, who is a niggard of her information, or ignorant of what I want to know. Yet still I can gather, that this lovely creature has been harshly treated by Lady Marchdale, whose aversion to the idea of her son's alliance with the friendless Zorilda, I conclude to be the cause of a manner so contrary to her former kindness. Perhaps the noble minded stranger may have set out upon this journey to remove all solicitude from the minds of her benefactors, and make a sacrifice of her own inclination to her sense of honour and virtue; but what a man must he be, who, knowing himself in possession of Zorilda's affections, can thus basely desert her?"
"He may not know of the sacrifice," said Clara. "Upon proposing to the old nurse to write to Miss Gordon's friends, and inform them of her present situation, she conjured me to preserve an inviolable secrecy respecting her, alleging the probable speedy termination of her illness, and the fear of alarming her relations, as the pretext for silence; but so extraordinary was the poor woman's vehemence, so urgent her entreaty, that I could not help feeling that 'more was meant than met the ear.'"
A physician who was called concurred with surgeon Crump, that no danger of contagion was to be dreaded, and Clara took advantage of this assurance to bestow the tenderest care on her guest, frequently stealing from her own room at night, to take Rachel's post and send her to bed.