THE ELOPEMENT.

BY MRS. EDWARD THOMAS.

III.

'Tis easy to awaken an untouched heart
To the fine rapture of affection's thrill!
But to requicken one that's old in love-
That's proved its fleetingness, its faithlessness-
Is hopeless as the task of her who hopes
To weep the dead to life-more hopeless far!

EMILY was a wife-a mother. She was surrounded by luxury approaching to magnificence. She was the idol of the circle which she adorned with a modest and endearing grace; but she was not happynot even content. She ceased to take an interest in aught around her; she was absorbed in her own untold, unheeded anguish. Her heart was left to ache, her spirits to droop, her health to fail.

Lord Lindsford was kind, gentle, and affectionate, but he was not communicative. He was chilled by his wife's reserve, her visible dissatisfaction. He was conscious of some great misunderstanding existing between them, some grievous uncongeniality of character; and, fearing that he had committed a woful mistake in marrying again, circumstanced as he unhappily was, he resigned himself passively to his fate, as he considered it, and did not seek, by explanation or expostulation, to rectify what he supposed to be an irremediable error. He never alluded to Lady Lindsford. Would that he had! for then Emily might have formed some opinion of his real sentiments; and she had not courage to venture on such a forbidden subject. He spent the greater part of his time alone in his study, and in that study was suspended a full-length portrait of Blanche. There might be nothing sinister to her love in that; but, coupled with his estranging manner, it wrung her keenly jealous and self-distrustful heart with a pang of the severest agony.

At length he was obliged to notice her fast declining health; it was too apparent to be overlooked for one more instant. And then he was all alarm, anxiety, and tenderness; then, as he held her thin and feverish hand, and gazed upon her hollow cheeks, her sunk and suspicious eyes, he wondered that he had not marked the change before. He sought a remedy for the malady which was eating as a canker into her heart, and instant removal from the country was prescribed, but by slow and easy stages, so as to avoid all unnecessary fatigue. To persons who have everything at their command, but little time is required to prepare for a journey; so, in the course of a few hours after Doctor Howard's recommendation, Emily, her husband and children, were posting along the Great North Road towards the metropolis.

Stopping at Stamford for the night, on the second day of their departure-for they did indeed travel slowly, according to the doctor's strict injunctions-Emily, whilst tea was preparing for her, flung herself upon a sofa, to recruit a little, feeling exceedingly exhausted, Lord Lindsford having taken the two elder children into the town, and her own baby being asleep with its nurse.

She was aroused, however, very shortly, from a half-dreaming slumber, by the door being cautiously opened, and admitting a female figure, but too closely veiled and cloaked up to distinguish who it might be. Emily naturally concluded that it was some traveller like herself, who had possibly mistaken the apartment for the one she was occupying.

"Pardon this intrusion, madam," said the stranger, carefully fastening the door, “but, seeing Lord Lindsford's carriage in the yard, and finding that you were here, and alone, I have ventured to come to crave

66

Pray tell me at once, and simply, in what manner I can serve you, madam.'

"Serve me-you serve me!—it was not for such a purpose I sought

you."

"For what other, then?"

"To see Lord Lindsford's wife."

“And what could have induced such a curiosity?"

"Curiosity! It was no such vague, such idle feeling; it was an imperative desire, an irresistible passion, brought me here."

"You quite alarm me. Pray be more composed-more explicit." "I will. You are Lady Lindsford-I was Lady Lindsford." "You!-oh Heavens!-you!" exclaimed Emily, darting towards her; "let me look at you, Blanche; let me look at you well."

"For what? To note the ravages of remorse-the gnawings of despair-to exult over my destination?"

Do I not

"Do I look as if I could exult, as if I could triumph? rather look the prostrated, the guilty?" "Ah! ah! taunt me with my guilt." "Pardon, forgive. I meant it not. Blanche, for pity-let me behold the fatal beauty which estranges my husband's heart from me-let me look on her who makes me the most miserable of women."

Let me look upon your face,

"You miserable? Impossible! Virtuous as you are, happy."

you must be

"I may be virtuous, madam, but I am not the less wretched. My husband weeps over your children, but he never smiles upon mine. My husband almost flies my presence by day to commune with your more precious shadow. My husband is mute and morose to me through the livelong day, but, at night, even whilst I am watching and weeping, and praying by him, his soul is far away in dreams with you; and tears will steal through his closed eyelids, and sighs will steal from his bosom, and fond words from his lips, and all for you-all for you."

"Good God! but I am grieved for this! I, so undeserving! you, so superior in merit and virtue. Fear not, he must yet do you justice, must still love and honour you, and blush at the infatuation which, for one moment, still enthrals him. Ah, could he see me as I am," she continued, flinging up her veil, and revealing a face of ghastly paleness, "he would soon be cured of his delirium-soon find that it was less than a shadow What can he want to for which he sacrificed real substantial happiness. make him love you as he once loved me?"

"The prestige of early associations. The dew of my affection fell upon a cold and withered heart, chill as the exhalations of autumn twilight. Yours was distilled in the bright and sunny morning of youth, to

awaken the slumbering blossoms of that heart, to grace it with a loveliness all glorious within, and to array external nature for it with beauty and beatitude. Oh! it is that first, that only love, felt in the dawn of life, which teaches the surprised and gladdened heart the ineffable knowledge that earth is blissful-earth is paradisean!"

"But surely, surely, it was you who touched that heart first with the divine fire of love."

"I only kindled that fiercer volcanic flame which spread its desolating lava over the sweet and fresh vegetation of that heart!"

"Oh, fear not, distrust not; its purest love ever was, ever will be yours."

your

"Would that I could believe you, madam; would that I could!" "You may! Has he not proved it in his union with you? Oh! how, with your still unsullied virtue, can you doubt influence over him? How, with your unspotted chastity, can you have a grief, a care? What, oh! what, under heaven, does a woman require to make her supremely blest, save purity of character ?"

"The reflection which it affords is a great mitigation of anguish in disappointment; but it will not satisfy the yearning heart entirely-it will not confer unqualified happiness.'

"It will, it must; I feel, I know it will." "So you think, because you true felicity without it."

have forfeited it; and I admit there is no

"None, oh, God! none. Oh! you do not know what it is to have an upbraiding conscience-a fame polluted, a name denounced! You do not know what it is to eat every morsel of food which fainting nature constrains even the wretched to swallow, with bitter herbs, and in haste! You do not know what it is to see the beauty despised and slighted by him who dragged me down to what I am-the beauty that awakened your jealous envy and regret-the beauty that has been my bane! Oh! that the fate of Gehazi had been mine! Oh! that the leprosy of Naaman had clung to the daughter of my mother! Oh! how easily I fell ! Never do you fall from rectitude."

"Me!"

"Well, well, do not look so indignant. I was as confident of strength to resist temptation once. I should have resented the merest supposition of such a thought being attached to me as the direst insult; yet, see what I am become; and all through the woful mistake of not mistrusting myself. Still, sunk and degraded as I doubtless appear to you, you do not know-you cannot imagine all I suffer from. You, with your innocence untarnished, your honour unimpugned, can have no conception of the various causes of mortification and anguish which beset the daily life of the forlorn victim of guilt and infamy. You can have no possible idea how tenaciously she courts the homage once due-once naturally rendered to her; how outraged she feels at any inadvertence -any want of respect; how imperiously she extorts it; how prone to take offence, even where none is intended; how eager to catch at the faintest semblance of that deference which was formerly hers by right of birth and station. Why, it is not alone the being separated for ever from the husband of my girlhood,-the children of my heart's purest affection; it is not alone the conviction that they will never more

voluntarily bless this eye with their cherished view-pronounce this name with their hallowed lips; yet, surely that were enough for even such an abandoned creature to bear as a punishment,-but, madam, I have still other sorrows, other regrets, to torture and distract me. I am gnawed with a secret, an insatiable craving to enter that world again from which I fled in shame and crime. I cannot endure the solitude, the estrangement from my fellow-creatures to which guilt has consigned me. I see your horror and amaze at this confession. You wonder that I should be anxious to seek a world so anxious to shun me; but such is the restless perversity-the inconsistency of a frail and fallen heart." "Poor, poor Blanche!"

"Ah! you pity me-you weep for me. You can commiserate my agony. God bless you for it !-God in heaven bless you for it! See my gratitude for that which I should once so have disdained! But I prize even such sterile compassion above rubies! For intolerable, most intolerable to me has been the thought, that, if we ever met, you would avoid my very presence ;-you, the whole world-the oldest friend-the dearest companion-the most familiar associate-would all affect ignorance of my very being, shudder at my memory, blush at my name, and feel contaminated at my most distant contiguity."

"Oh, why do you torture yourself with such cruel surmises? Why care for this world's opinion at all? Why not rather endeavour to win by submission, by repentance, the opinion of Him who can indeed befriend you, restore you to peace here, honour hereafter? Oh, Blanche! think of the higher importance attached to the good-will of the Almighty! -think that it is alone obtained through contrition and prayer!"

"I have not prayed since I sinned."

"Pray now, then. Let us kneel down and pray together. You do not know the comfort it will yield you; it is all my support and consolation !"

"Let me expose all the ulcers of this heart first, and then tell me whether it is in the power of prayer to heal them."

"Yea, I do most solemnly believe so; were they even more envenomed, more cankerous than the corroding gangrene of turpitude ever yet inflicted. Oh, Blanche !-dear, dear Blanche !" continued Emily, tenderly taking her hand, and pressing it affectionately between her own, "try the efficacy of Heaven's freely proffered remedy; only try it. I am a true prophetess, believe me. I feel inspired; prayer will be beneficial to your stricken spirit, my poor suffering thing!"

"Oh! this is quite, quite too much for me!" exclaimed the agonised woman, bursting into tears. "I am completely overcome by your kindness; I never thought to weep before you-before any one. I taught myself to be proud; I hardened myself against the sentiments of contrite emolliating penitence; but this sympathy unlocks the floodgates of my soul, and grief and remorse will overleap the barriers of culpable disdain. Oh, Lady Lindsford! oh, Emily! if you could but conceive how deeply this most unexpected tenderness has touched me! To be almost-quite, quite caressed by you! who do know all my transgressions. That is the way, of a truth, to win the sinner from the path of evil! Why, Emily, when I have by chance received some trifling act of common civility from strangers, I have been ready to worship them for it, although perfectly

and painfully aware that that simple attention was evinced towards such an outcast merely because they were strangers; and that the instant they should become acquainted with the plague-spot of infamy attaching to my loathsome name, they would flee from me, as they of old fled to the

hills and to the mountains to avoid contact with the horrible and devastating contagion threatening to annihilate them and theirs. Think, then, what must be my adoration of your angelic condescension-your angelic benignity.

"Ah! little did you imagine that such a page of heartfelt humiliation would be laid open to you this day! Little did you imagine that she who robbed you of your early peace would be this day prostrate at your feet, ready to make all the reparation in her power for the pangs she then occasioned! Little did you imagine that this day you would behold the once triumphant, haughty, beautiful, and wicked Blanche St. Aubin, trembling and repentant, wasted, wan, and dying, on her way to a foreign country-to a foreign grave.

"But not once have you inquired how I now happened to be here? Never once have you expressed the slightest surprise at this truly extraordinary rencontre."

"I attributed to chance

"To Providence rather-to Providence. Yes, the Almighty has granted me this last sad, unhoped-for interview, to afford me at least one sweet pathetic memory to dwell upon, in that land of chill and darkness whither I am hastening, where no familiar voice will ever more greet mine ear, no familiar look ever meet my gaze, no familiar hand shut out this terrible world, as vision groweth dim and sightless for earth, but fearfully clear and distinct for heaven, or eternal doom. But I hear Lord Lindsford approaching: how well I know his step! Oh, where shall I hide from his view? The sight of him would kill me outright!"

"I will go and stop him. But we will meet again. I will see you early in the morning, to bid you farewell, dear Blanche,—to bid God speed you on your lonely and perilous way."

"Do, do: but pray not a word of my being here!"

IV.

Like pearl in oyster, so the human heart
Hath one pellucid gem of purity,

Of worth peculiar, and of price untold!-
The tear of charity, that falls for guilt,
It to deterge from all polluting stain.
The holy water welling from the soul
Of Christian piety, is such a tear!

EMILY, as she was enjoined, did not say one sentence which could lead Lord Lindsford to suppose that the mother of the children whom he had so lately been endeavouring to amuse, whilst he hoped their other dear mamma was obtaining a little quiet sleep, was actually under the same roof-had actually been conversing with his wife. But he was not destined to be kept long in such ignorance.

"Oh! my lord-oh! my lady-oh! ma'am, pray pardon me," exclaimed the mistress of the hotel, rushing without ceremony into the apartment where Emily and her husband were seated, after a light, early