"Yes; but we must not detain her here to be suspected. We must let her go to Drumcairn; and the attachment of the Gordons towards her will be better proof of her deserts than all that you and I could assert in her favour."
Lionel, seized with avidity on this view, which seemed to open into a new vista of hope, that sparkled in his eye. "Come," said he, "let us return. We must caution Rachel not to suffer a newspaper to fall in her mistress' way till she reaches the end of her journey. Alas! that journey! Oh Clara! we shall feel an aching void when she is gone!"
The brother and sister returned home, and instructed Rachel in her lesson.
Clara and her friend passed the greater part of the day together in mutual regrets at parting—professions of unalterable attachment, and promises of future correspondence. Lionel made but one attempt to interrupt the tête-à-tête; and then exhibited so much emotion, in spite of all his efforts at concealment, that Zorilda became embarrassed; and Clara, dreading some painful eclaircissement, prevailed on her brother, by a supplicating look, to leave the room.
When Lionel was gone, Zorilda, blushing violently, and taking Clara's hand, entreated her to grant the request which she was going to make.
"Your kind brother and you will be desirous to perform the duties of hospitality to the last hour; but you must indulge my wishes. I cannot see either of you in the morning. You will deliver the packet, which I am to entrust to your care this evening, into my hands here in this dressing-room before you go to bed; but I conjure you to prevent me from seeing any of your family after they have become acquainted with my history. I feel unspeakable pain at confiding the strange events of my life to your parents; but I am impelled by gratitude to assure them, as far as I can, that they have not thrown away their charity upon an impostor. I feel it due also to myself to prove, that I am not willingly or needlessly a young female adventurer, assuming an air of mystery and romance to win upon curiosity or benevolence. Alas! I am truly what I seem. I may be spurned with contempt, but I will try and make myself believed. Promise—faithfully promise, that I shall see none but yourself after the reading of my narrative."
Clara felt the energy with which this petition was urged; and the quickness of her penetration unravelled the true cause of Zorilda's earnestness. Lionel's looks and manners, though guarded by the strictest care, betrayed those feelings which are never more powerfully expressed than when they most assiduously seek to avoid all expression. Zorilda had long resisted every demonstration; but there is a language which those who have felt the influence of a strong attachment within their own breasts, cannot, if they would, misunderstand; and Zorilda had been forced into a reluctant conviction, that she was dear to Lionel. A conviction, the more painful, because he was, of all earthly beings, the man in whose breast it was most agonizing to her heart to plant a thorn. Lionel's was, in fact, of all human characters, that which, most resembling Zorilda's, would have drawn upon every sympathy of her nature, had not her pre-occupied affections been sealed to every sentiment which might shake their rooted hold. She had, it is true, too keen a sense of moral perfection not to perceive young Cecil's merit in its full extent. She had sometimes caught herself in making involuntary comparisons between Algernon and him. She had even started from herself, as she had once mentally exclaimed, "Oh did he but resemble Lionel!" The sentence was never finished, even in her heart; and the aspiration so pure that angels might have witnessed it, seemed, to the scrupulous sensibility of Zorilda's soul, a species of inconstancy towards the idol whom she had worshipped from earliest, happiest, purest infancy, for which she had found it difficult to forgive herself. Algernon existed no longer for her, but his image was enshrined in her memory; and though he had ceased to be worthy of her love, she never dreamed of bestowing it upon another.
"Why did I refuse to tie myself by a vow?" would she sometimes say as she mused on the past, "but because the free-will offering of a broken heart is as certain as a sickly bond could make it."
But Zorilda began to perceive that Lionel loved her, and dreaded nothing so much as a disclosure of feelings which she could not repay in kind. She was therefore urgent in her entreaty to Clara, that she might be allowed to glide away unnoticed, and her friend easily promised for herself. The bitterness of a farewell, perhaps for ever, was too deeply felt, to make her anxious to pronounce it.
The evening hour arrived, and Zorilda put her packet into the hands of Miss Cecil, who hastened to the library where her father, mother, and brother were assembled. The narrative was read; the diamond cross examined, the miniature admired; the whole pondered; but very different were the feelings which these interesting memoranda produced in the minds of the old and the young. Sir Godfrey and his Lady were evidently displeased, and though they did not refuse their pity, it was mingled with distrust.