CHAPTER XVII

'Now then,' said Adeline, her tears dropping fast as she spoke, 'now, then, we are alone in the world; henceforward we must be all to each other.'

'Is the idea a painful one, Adeline?' replied Glenmurray reproachfully.

'Not so,' returned Adeline, 'Still I can't yet forget that I had a mother, and a kind one too.'

'And may have again.'

'Impossible:--there is a vow in heaven against it. No--My plans for future happiness must be laid unmindful and independent of her. They must have you and your happiness for their sole object; I must live for you alone: and you,' added she in a faltering voice, 'must live for me.'

'I will live as long as I can,' replied Glenmurray sighing, 'and as one step towards it I shall keep early hours: so to rest, dear Adeline, and let us forget our sorrows as soon as possible.'

The next morning Adeline's and Glenmurray's first care was to determine on their future residence. It was desirable that it should be at a sufficient distance from London, to deserve the name and have the conveniences of a country abode, yet sufficiently near it for Glenmurray to have the advice of a London physician if necessary.

'Suppose we fix at Richmond?' said Glenmurray: and Adeline, to whom the idea of dwelling on a spot at once so classical and beautiful was most welcome, joyfully consented; and in a few days they were settled there in a pleasant but expensive lodging.

But here, as when abroad, Glenmurray occasionally saw old acquaintances, many of whom were willing to renew their intercourse with him for the sake of being introduced to Adeline; and who, from a knowledge of her situation, presumed to pay her that sort of homage, which, though not understood by her, gave pangs unutterable to the delicate mind of Glenmurray. 'Were she my wife, they dared not pay her such marked attention,' said he to himself; and again, as delicately as he could, he urged Adeline to sacrifice her principles to the prejudices of society.

'I thought,' replied Adeline gravely, 'that, as we lived for each other, we might act independent of society, and serve it by our example even against its will.'

Glenmurray was silent.--He did not like to own how painful and mischievous he found in practice the principles which he admired in theory--and Adeline continued:

'Believe me, Glenmurray, ours is the very situation calculated to urge us on in the pursuit of truth. We are answerable to no one for our conduct; and we can make any experiments in morals that we choose. I am wholly at a loss to comprehend why you persist in urging me to marry you. Take care, my dear Glenmurray--the high respect I bear your character was shaken a little by your fighting a duel in defiance of your principles; and your eagerness to marry, in further defiance of them, may weaken my esteem, if not my love.'

Adeline smiled as she said this: but Glenmurray thought she spoke more in earnest than she was willing to allow; and, alarmed at the threat, he only answered, 'You know it is for your sake merely that I speak,' and dropped the subject; secretly resolving, however, that he would not walk with Adeline in the fashionable promenades, at the hours commonly spent there by the beau monde.

But, in spite of this precaution, they could not escape the assiduities of some gay men of fashion, who knew Glenmurray and admired his companion; and Adeline at length suspected that Glenmurray was jealous. But in this she wronged him; it was not the attention paid her, but the nature of it, that disturbed him. Nor is it to be wondered at that Adeline herself was eager to avoid the public walks, when it is known that one of her admirers at Richmond was the Colonel Mordaunt whom she had become acquainted with at Bath.

Colonel Mordaunt, 'curst with every granted prayer,' was just beginning to feel the tedium of life, when he saw Adeline unexpectedly at Richmond; and though he felt shocked at first, at beholding her in so different a situation from that in which he had first beheld her, still that very situation, by holding forth to him a prospect of being favoured by her in his turn, revived his admiration with more than its original violence, and he resolved to be, if possible, the lover of Adeline, after Glenmurray should have fallen a victim, as he had no doubt but he would, to his dangerous illness.

But the opportunities which he had of seeing her suddenly ceased. She no longer frequented the public walks; and him, though he suspected it not, she most studiously avoided; for she could not bear to behold the alteration in his manner when be addressed her, an alteration perhaps unknown to himself. True, it was not insulting; but Adeline, who had admired him too much at Bath not to have examined with minute attention the almost timid expression of his countenance, and the respectfulness of his manner when he addressed her, shrunk abashed from the ardent and impassioned expression with which he now met her--an expression which Adeline used to call 'looking like Sir Patrick;' and which indicated even to her inexperience, that the admiration which he then felt was of a nature less pure and flattering than the one which she excited before; and though in her own eyes she appeared as worthy of respect as ever, she was forced to own even to herself, that persons in general would be of a contrary opinion.

But in vain did she resolve to walk very early in a morning only, being fully persuaded that she should then meet with no one. Colonel Mordaunt was as wakeful as she was; and being convinced that she walked during some part of the day, and probably early in a morning, he resolved to watch near the door of her lodgings, in hopes to obtain an hour's conversation with her. The consequence was, that he saw Adeline one morning walk pensively alone, down the shady road that leads from the terrace to Petersham.

This opportunity was not to be overlooked; and he overtook and accosted her with such an expression of pleasure on his countenance, as was sufficient to alarm the now suspicious delicacy of Adeline; and, conscious as she was that Glenmurray beheld Colonel Mordaunt's attentions with pain, a deep blush overspread her cheek at his approach, while her eyes were timidly cast down.

Colonel Mordaunt saw her emotion, and attributed it to a cause flattering to his vanity; it even encouraged him to seize her hand; and, while he openly congratulated himself on his good fortune in meeting her alone, he presumed to press her hand to his lips. Adeline indignantly withdrew it, and replied very coldly to his inquiries concerning her health.

'But where have you hidden yourself lately?' cried he.--'O Miss Mowbray! loveliest and, I may add, most beloved of women, how have I longed to see you alone, and pour out my whole soul to you!'

Adeline answered this rhapsody by a look of astonishment only--being silent from disgust and consternation,--while involuntarily she quickened her pace, as if wishing to avoid him.

'O hear me, and hear me patiently!' he resumed. 'You must have noticed the effect which your charms produced on me at Bath; and may I dare to add that my attentions then did not seem displeasing to you?'

'Sir!' interrupted Adeline, sighing deeply, 'my situation is now changed; and--'

'It is so, I thank Fortune that it is so,' replied Colonel Mordaunt; 'and I am happy to say, it is changed by no crime of mine.' (Here Adeline started and turned pale.) 'But I were unworthy all chance of happiness, were I to pass by the seeming opportunity of being blest, which the alteration to which you allude holds forth to me.'

Here he paused, as if in embarrassment, but Adeline was unable to interrupt him.

'Miss Mowbray,' he at length continued, 'I am told that you are not on good terms with your mother; nay, I have heard that she has renounced you; may I presume to ask if this be true?'

'It is,' answered Adeline trembling with emotion.

'Then, as before long it is probable that you will be without--without a protector--' (Adeline turned round and fixed her eyes wildly upon him.) 'To be sure,' continued he, avoiding her steadfast gaze, 'I could wish to call you mine this moment; but, unhappy as you appear to be in your present situation, I know, unlike many women circumstanced as you are, you are too generous and noble-minded to be capable of forsaking in his last illness the man whom in his happier moments you have honoured with your love.' As he said this, Adeline, her lips parched with agitation, and breathing short, caught hold of his arm; and pressing her cold hand, he went on: 'Therefore, I will not venture even to wish to be honoured with a kind look from you till Mr Glenmurray is removed to a happier world. But then, dearest of women, you whom I loved without hope of possessing you, and whom now I dote upon to madness, I conjure you to admit my visits, and let my attentions prevail on you to accept my protection, and allow me to devote the remainder of my days to love and you!'

'Merciful Heaven!' exclaimed Adeline, clasping her hands together, 'to what insults am I reserved!'

'Insults!' echoed Colonel Mordaunt.

'Yes, Sir,' replied Adeline: 'you have insulted me, grossly insulted me, and know not the woman whom you have tortured to the very soul.'

'Hear me, hear me, Miss Mowbray!' exclaimed Colonel Mordaunt, almost as much agitated as herself: 'by heaven I meant not to insult you! and perhaps I--perhaps I have been misinformed--No! Yes, yes, it must be so; your indignation proves that I have--You are, no doubt--and on my knees I implore your pardon--you are the wife of Mr Glenmurray.'

'And suppose I am _not_ his wife,' cried Adeline, 'is it then given to a wife only to be secure from being insulted by offers horrible to the delicacy, and wounding to the sensibility, like those which I have heard from you?' But before Colonel Mordaunt could reply, Adeline's thoughts had reverted to what he had said of Glenmurray's certain danger; and, unable to bear this confirmation of her fears, with the speed of phrensy she ran towards home, and did not stop till she was in sight of her lodging, and the still closed curtain of her apartment met her view.

'He is still sleeping, then,' she exclaimed, 'and I have time to recover myself, and endeavour to hide from him the emotion of which I could not tell the reason.' So saying, she softly entered the house, and by the time Glenmurray rose she had regained her composure. Still there was a look of anxiety on her fine countenance, which could not escape the penetrating eye of love.

'Why are you so grave this morning?' said Glenmurray, as Adeline seated herself at the breakfast table:--'I feel much better and more cheerful to-day.'

'But are you, indeed, better?' replied Adeline, fixing her tearful eyes on him.

'Or I much deceive myself,' said Glenmurray.

'Thank Heaven!' devoutly replied Adeline. 'I thought--I thought--' Here tears choked her utterance, and Glenmurray drew from her a confession of her anxious fears for him, though she prudently resolved not to agitate him by telling him of the rencontre with Colonel Mordaunt.

But when the continued assurances of Glenmurray that he was better, and the animation of his countenance, had in a degree removed her fears for his life, she had leisure to revert to another source of uneasiness, and to dwell on the insult which she had experienced from Colonel Mordaunt's offer of protection.

'How strange and irrational,' thought Adeline, 'are the prejudices of society! Because an idle ceremony has not been muttered over me at the altar, I am liable to be thought a woman of vicious inclinations, and to be exposed to the most daring insults.'

As these reflections occurred to her, she could scarcely help regretting that her principles would not allow her delicacy and virtue to be placed under the sacred shelter bestowed by that ceremony which she was pleased to call idle. And she was not long without experiencing still further hardships from the situation in which she had persisted so obstinately to remain. Their establishment consisted of a footman and a maid servant; but the latter had of late been so remiss in the performance of her duties, and so impertinent when reproved for her faults, that Adeline was obliged to give her warning.

'Warning, indeed!' replied the girl: 'a mighty hardship, truly! I can promise you I did not mean to stay long; it is no such favour to live with a kept miss; and if you come to that, I think I am as good as you.'

Shocked, surprised, and unable to answer, Adeline took refuge in her room. Never before had she been accosted by her inferiors without respectful attention; and now, owing to her situation, even a servant-maid thought herself authorised to insult her, and to raise herself to her level!

'But surely,' said Adeline mentally, 'I ought to reason with her, and try to convince her that I am in reality as virtuous as if I were Glenmurray's wife, instead of his mistress.'

Accordingly she went back into the kitchen; but her resolution failed her when she found the footman there, listening with a broad grin on his countenance to the relation which Mary was giving him of the 'fine trimming' which she had given 'madam.'

Scarcely did the presence of Adeline interrupt or restrain her; but at last she turned round and said, 'And, pray, have you got anything to say to me?'

'Nothing more now,' meekly replied Adeline, 'unless you will follow me to my chamber.'

'With all my heart,' cried the girl; and Adeline returned to her own room.

'I wish, Mary, to set you right,' said Adeline, 'with respect to my situation. You called me, I think, a kept miss, and seemed to think ill of me.'

'Why, to be sure, ma'am,' replied Mary, a little alarmed--'every body says you are a kept lady, and so I made no bones of saying so; but I am sure if so be you are not so, why I ax pardon.'

'But what do you mean by the term kept lady?'

'Why, a lady who lives with a man without being married to him, I take it; and that I take to be your case, ain't it, I pray?'

Adeline blushed and was silent:--it certainly was her case. However, she took courage and went on.

'But mistresses, or kept ladies in general, are women of bad character, and would live with any man; but I never loved, nor ever shall love, any man but Mr Glenmurray. I look on myself as his wife in the sight of God; nor will I quit him till death shall separate us.'

'Then if so be that you don't want to change, I think you might as well be married to him.'

Adeline was again silent for a moment, but continued--

'Mr Glenmurray would marry me to-morrow, if I chose.'

'Indeed! Well, if master is inclined to make an honest woman of you, you had better take him at his word, I think.'

'Gracious heaven!' cried Adeline, 'what an expression! Why will you persist to confound me with those deluded women who are victims of their own weakness?'

'As to that,' replied Mary, 'you talk too fine for me; but a fact is a fact--are you or are you not my master's wife?'

'I am not.'

'Why then you are his mistress, and a kept lady to all intents and purposes: so what signifies argufying the matter? I lived with a kept madam before; and she was as good as you, for aught I know.'

Adeline, shocked and disappointed, told her she might leave the room.

'I am going,' pertly answered Mary, 'and to seek for a place; but I must beg that you will not own you are no better than you should be, when a lady comes to ask my character; for then perhaps I should not get any one to take me. I shall call you Mrs Glenmurray.'

'But I shall not call _myself_ so,' replied Adeline. 'I will not say what is not true, on any account.'

'There now, there's spite! and yet you pretend to call yourself a gentlewoman, and to be better than other kept ladies! Why, you are not worthy to tie the shoestrings of my last mistress--she did not mind telling a lie rather than lose a poor servant a place; and she called herself a married woman rather than hurt me.'

'Neither she nor you, then,' replied Adeline gravely, 'were sensible of what great importance a strict adherence to veracity is, to the interests of society. I am;--and for the sake of mankind I will always tell the truth.'

'You had better tell one innocent lie for mine,' replied the girl pertly. 'I dare to say the world will neither know nor care anything about it: and I can tell you I shall expect you will.'

So saying she shut the door with violence, leaving Adeline mournfully musing on the distress attending on her situation, and even disposed to question the propriety of remaining in it.

The inquietude of her mind, as usual, showed itself in her countenance, and involved her in another difficulty: to make Glenmurray uneasy by an avowal of what had passed between her and Mary was impossible; yet how could she conceal it from him? And while she was deliberating on this point, Glenmurray entered the room, and tenderly inquired what had so evidently disturbed her.

'Nothing of any consequence,' she faltered out, and burst into tears.

'Could "nothing of consequence" produce such emotion?' answered Glenmurray.

'But I am ashamed to own the cause of my uneasiness.'

'Ashamed to own it to me, Adeline? To be sure, you have a great deal to fear from my severity!' said he, faintly smiling.

Adeline for a moment resolved to tell him the whole truth; but fearful of throwing him into a degree of agitation hurtful to his weak frame, she, who had the moment before so nobly supported the necessity of a strict adherence to truth, condescended to equivocate and evade; and turning away her head, while a conscious blush overspread her cheek, she replied, 'You know that I look forward with anxiety and uneasiness to the time of my approaching confinement.'

Glenmurray believed her; and overcome by some painful feelings, which fears for himself and anxiety for her occasioned him, he silently pressed her to his bosom; and, choked with contending emotions, returned to his own apartment.

'And I have stooped to the meanness of disguising the truth!' cried Adeline, clasping her hands convulsively together: 'surely, surely, there must be something radically wrong in a situation which exposes one to such a variety of degradations!'

Mary, meanwhile, had gone in search of a place; and having found the lady to whom she had been advised to offer herself, at home, she returned to tell Adeline that Mrs Pemberton would call in half an hour to inquire her character. The half-hour, an anxious one to Adeline, having elapsed, a lady knocked at the door, and inquired, in Adeline's hearing for Mrs Glenmurray.

'Tell the lady,' cried Adeline immediately from the top of the staircase, 'that Miss Mowbray will wait on her directly.' The footman obeyed, and Mrs Pemberton was ushered into the parlour: and now, for the first time in her life, Adeline trembled to approach a stranger; for the first time she was going to appear before a fellow-creature, conscious she was become an object of scorn, and, though an enthusiast for virtue, would be considered as a votary of vice. But it was a mortification which she must submit to undergo; and hastily throwing a large shawl over her shoulders, to hide her figure as much as possible, with a trembling hand she opened the door, and found herself in the dreaded presence of Mrs Pemberton.

Nor was she at all re-assured when she found that lady dressed in the neat, modest garb of a strict Quaker--a garb which creates an immediate idea in the mind, of more than common rigidness of principles and sanctity of conduct in the wearer of it. Adeline curtsied in silence.

Mrs Pemberton bowed her head courteously; then, with a countenance of great sweetness, and a voice calculated to inspire confidence, said, 'I believe thy name is Mowbray; but I came to see Mrs Glenmurray; and as on these occasions I always wish to confer with the principal, wouldst thou, if it be not inconvenient, ask the mistress of Mary to let me see her?'

'I am myself the mistress of Mary,' replied Adeline in a faint voice.

'I ask thine excuse,' answered Mrs Pemberton, re-seating herself: 'as thou art Mrs Glenmurray, thou art the person I wanted to see.'

Here Adeline changed colour, overcome with the consciousness that she ought to undeceive her, and the sense of the difficulty of doing so.

'But thou art very pale, and seemest uneasy,' continued the gentle Quaker--'I hope thy husband is not worse?'

'Mr Glenmurray, but not my husband,' said Adeline, 'is better to-day.'

'Art thou not married?' asked Mrs Pemberton with quickness.

'I am not.'

'And yet thou livest with the gentleman I named, and art the person whom Mary called Mrs Glenmurray!'

'I am,' replied Adeline, her paleness yielding to a deep crimson, and her eyes filling with tears.

Mrs Pemberton sat for a minute in silence; then rising with an air of cold dignity, 'I fear thy servant is not likely to suit me,' she observed, 'and I will not detain thee any longer.'

'She can be an excellent servant,' faltered out Adeline.

'Very likely--but there are objections.' So saying she reached the door: but as she passed Adeline she stopped, interested and affected by the mournful expression of her countenance, and the visible effort she made to retain her tears.

Adeline saw, and felt humbled at the compassion which her countenance expressed: to be an object of pity was as mortifying as to be an object of scorn, and she turned her eyes on Mrs Pemberton with a look of proud indignation: but they met those of Mrs Pemberton fixed on her with a look of such benevolence, that her anger was instantly subdued; and it occurred to her that she might make the benevolent compassion visible in Mrs Pemberton's countenance serviceable to her discarded servant.

'Stay, madam,' she cried, as Mrs Pemberton was about to leave the room, 'allow me a moment's conversation with you.'

Mrs Pemberton, with an eagerness which she suddenly endeavoured to check, returned to her seat.

'I suspect,' said Adeline, (gathering courage from the conscious kindness of her motive,) 'that your objection to take Mary Warner into your service proceeds wholly from the situation of her present mistress.'

'Thou judgest rightly,' was Mrs Pemberton's answer.

'Nor do I wonder,' continued Adeline, 'that you make this objection, when I consider the present prejudices of society.'

'Prejudices!' softly exclaimed the benevolent Quaker.

Adeline faintly smiled, and went on--'But surely you will allow, that in a family quiet and secluded as ours, and in daily contemplation of an union uninterrupted, faithful, and virtuous, and possessing all the sacredness of marriage, though without the name, it is not likely that the young woman in question should have imbibed any vicious habits or principles?'

'But in contemplating thy union itself, she has lived in the contemplation of vice; and thou wilt own, that, by having given it an air of respectability, thou hast only made it more dangerous.'

'On this point,' cried Adeline, 'I see we must disagree--I shall therefore, without further preamble, inform you, madam, that Mary, aware of the difficulty of procuring a service, if it were known that she had lived with a kept mistress, as the phrase is,' (here an indignant blush overspread the face of Adeline,) 'desired me to call myself the wife of Glenmurray: but this, from my abhorrence of all falsehood, I peremptorily refused.'

'And thou didst well,' exclaimed Mrs Pemberton, 'and I respect thy resolution.'

'But my sincerity will, I fear, prevent the poor girl's obtaining other reputable places; and I, alas! am not rich enough to make her amends for the injury which my conscience forces me to do her. But if you, madam, could be prevailed upon to take her into your family, even for a short time only, to wipe away the disgrace which her living with me has brought upon her--'

'Why can she not remain with thee?' asked Mrs Pemberton hastily.

'Because she neglected her duty, and, when reproved for it, replied in very injurious language.'

'Presuming probably on thy way of life?'

'I must confess that she has reproached me with it.'

'And this was all her fault?'

'It was:--she can be an excellent servant.'

'Thou hast said enough; thy conscience shall not have the additional burthen to bear, of having deprived a poor girl of her maintenance--I will take her.'

'A thousand thanks to you,' replied Adeline: 'you have removed a weight off my mind; but my conscience, has none to bear.'

'No?' returned Mrs Pemberton: 'dost thou deem thy conduct blameless in the eyes of that Being whom thou hast just blessed?'

'As far as my connexion with Mr Glenmurray is concerned, I do.'

'Indeed?'

'Nay, doubt me not--believe me that I never wantonly violate the truth; and that even an evasion, which I, for the first time in my life, was guilty of to-day, has given me a pang to which I will not again expose myself.'

'And yet, inconsistent beings as we are,' cried Mrs Pemberton, 'straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel, what is the guilt of the evasion which weighs on thy mind, compared to that of living, as thou dost, in an illicit commerce? Surely, surely, thine heart accuses thee; for thy face bespeaks uneasiness, and thou wilt listen to the whispers of penitence, and leave, ere long, the man who has betrayed thee.'

'The man who has betrayed me! Mr Glenmurray is no betrayer--he is one of the best of human beings. No, madam: if I had acceded to his wishes, I should long ago have been his wife, but, from a conviction of the folly of marriage, I have preferred living with him without the performance of a ceremony which, in the eye of reason, can confer neither honour nor happiness.'

'Poor thing!' exclaimed Mrs Pemberton, rising as she spoke, 'I understand thee now--Thou art one of the enlightened, as they call themselves--Thou art one of those wise in their own conceit, who, disregarding the customs of ages, and the dictates of experience, set up their own opinions against the hallowed institutions of men and the will of the Most High.'

'Can you blame me,' interrupted Adeline, 'for acting according to what I think right?'

'But hast thou well studied the subject on which thou hast decided? Yet, alas! to thee how vain must be the voice of admonition!' (she continued, her countenance kindling into strong expression as she spoke)--'From the poor victim of passion and persuasion, penitence and amendment might be rationally expected; and she, from the path of frailty, might turn again to that of virtue: but for one like thee, glorying in thine iniquity, and erring, not from the too tender heart, but the vain-glorious head,--for thee there is, I fear, no blessed return to the right way; and I, who would have tarried with thee even in the house of sin, to have reclaimed thee, penitent, now hasten from thee, and for ever--firm as thou art in guilt.'

As she said this she reached the door; while Adeline, affected by her emotion, and distressed by her language, stood silent and almost abashed before her.

But with her hand on the lock she turned round, and in a gentler voice said, 'Yet not even against a wilful offender like thee, should one gate that may lead to amendment be shut. Thy situation and thy fortunes may soon be greatly changed; affliction may subdue thy pride, and the counsel of a friend of thine own sex might then sound sweetly in thine ears. Should that time come, I will be that friend. I am now about to set off for Lisbon with a very dear friend, about whom I feel as solicitous as thou about thy Glenmurray; and there I shall remain some time. Here then is my address; and if thou shouldest want my advice or assistance write to me, and be assured that Rachel Pemberton will try to forget thy errors in thy distresses.'

So saying she left the room, but returned again, before Adeline had recovered herself from the various emotions which she had experienced during her address, to ask her Christian name. But when Adeline replied, 'My name is Adeline Mowbray,' Mrs Pemberton started, and eagerly exclaimed, 'Art thou Adeline Mowbray of Gloucestershire--the young heiress, as she was called, of Rosevalley?'

'I was once,' replied Adeline, sinking back into a chair, 'Adeline Mowbray of Rosevalley.'

Mrs Pemberton for a few minutes gazed on her in mournful silence: 'And art thou,' she cried, 'Adeline Mowbray? Art thou that courteous, blooming, blessed being, (for every tongue that I heard name thee blessed thee,) whom I saw only three years ago bounding over thy native hills, all grace, and joy, and innocence?'

Adeline tried to speak, but her voice failed her.

'Art thou she,' continued Mrs Pemberton, 'whom I saw also leaning from the window of her mother's mansion, and inquiring with the countenance of a pitying angel concerning the health of a wan labourer who limped past the door?'

Adeline hid her face with her hands.

Mrs Pemberton went on in a lower tone of voice,--'I came with some companions to see thy mother's grounds, and to hear the nightingales in her groves; but' (here Mrs Pemberton's voice faltered) 'I have seen a sight far beyond that of the proudest mansion, said I to those who asked me of thy mother's seat; I have heard what was sweeter to my ear than the voice of the nightingale; I have seen a blooming girl nursed in idleness and prosperity, yet active in the discharge of every Christian duty; and I have heard her speak in the soothing accents of kindness and of pity, while her name was followed by blessings, and parents prayed to have a child like her. O lost, unhappy girl! such _was_ Adeline Mowbray: and often, very often, has thy graceful image recurred to my remembrance: but, how art thou changed! Where is the open eye of happiness? where is the bloom that spoke a heart at peace with itself? I repeat it, and I repeat it with agony. Father of mercies! is this thy Adeline Mowbray?'

Here, overcome with emotion, Mrs Pemberton paused; but Adeline could not break silence: she rose, she stretched out her hand as if going to speak, but her utterance failed her, and again she sunk on a chair.

'It was thine,' resumed Mrs Pemberton in a faint and broken voice, 'to diffuse happiness around thee, and to enjoy wealth unhated, because thy hand dispensed nobly the riches which it had received bounteously: when the ear heard thee, then it blessed thee; when the eye saw thee, it gave witness to thee; and yet--'

Here again she paused, and raised her fine eyes to heaven for a few minutes, as if in prayer; then, pressing Adeline's hand with an almost convulsive grasp, she drew her bonnet over her face, as if eager to hide the emotion which she was unable to subdue, and suddenly left the house; while Adeline, stunned and overwhelmed by the striking contrast which Mrs Pemberton had drawn between her past and present situation, remained for some minutes motionless on her seat, a prey to a variety of feelings which she dared not venture to analyse.

But, amidst the variety of her feelings, Adeline soon found that sorrow, sorrow of the bitterest kind, was uppermost. Mrs Pemberton had said that she was about to be visited by affliction--alluding, there was no doubt, to the probable death of Glenmurray--And was his fate so certain that it was the theme of conversation at Richmond? Were only _her_ eyes blind to the certainty of his danger?

On these ideas did Adeline chiefly dwell after the departure of her monitress; and in an agony unspeakable she entered the room where Glenmurray was sitting, in order to look at him, and form her own judgment on a subject of such importance. But, alas! she found him with the brilliant deceitful appearance that attends his complaint--a bloom resembling health on his cheek, and a brightness in his eye rivalling that of the undimmed lustre of youth. Surprised, delighted, and overcome by these appearances, which her inexperience rendered her incapable of appreciating justly, Adeline threw herself on the sofa by him; and, as she pressed her cold cheek to his glowing one, her tearful eye was raised to heaven with an expression of devout thankfulness.

'Mrs Pemberton paid you a long visit,' said Glenmurray, 'and I thought once, by the elevated tone of her voice, that she was preaching to you.'

'I believe she was,' cheerfully replied Adeline, 'and now I have a confession to make; the season of reserve shall be over, and I will tell you all the adventures of this day without _evasion_.'

'Aye, I thought you were not ingenuous with me this morning,' replied Glenmurray: 'but better late than never.'

Adeline then told him all that had passed between her and Mary and Mrs Pemberton, and concluded with saying, 'But the surety of your better health, which your looks give me, has dissipated every uneasiness; and if you are but spared to me, sorrow cannot reach me, and I despise the censure of the ignorant and the prejudiced. The world approve! What is the world to me?'--

'The conscious mind is its own awful world!'

Glenmurray sighed deeply as she concluded her narration.

'I have only one request to make,' said he--'Never let that Mary come into my presence again; and be sure to take care of Mrs Pemberton's address.'

Adeline promised that both his requests should be attended to. Mary was paid her wages, and dismissed immediately; and a girl being hired to supply her place, the ménage went on quietly again.

But a new mortification awaited Glenmurray and Adeline. In spite of Glenmurray's eccentricities and opinions, he was still remembered with interest by some of the female part of his family; and two of his cousins, more remarkable for their beauty than their virtue, hearing that he was at Richmond, made known to him their intention of paying him a morning visit on their way to their country-seat in the neighbourhood.

'Most unwelcome visitors, indeed!' cried Glenmurray, throwing the letter down; 'I will write to them and forbid them to come.'

'That's impossible,' replied Adeline, 'for by this time they must be on the road, if you look at the date of the letter: besides, I wish you to receive them; I should like to see any relations or friends of yours, especially those who have liberality of sentiment enough to esteem you as you deserve.'

'You!--you see them!' exclaimed Glenmurray, pacing the room impatiently: 'O Adeline, that is _impossible_!'

'I understand you,' replied Adeline, changing colour: 'they will not deem me worthy,' forcing a smile, 'to be introduced to them.'

'And therefore would I forbid their coming. I cannot bear to _exclude_ you from my presence in order that I may receive them. No: when they arrive, I will send them word that I am unable to see them.'

'While they will attribute the refusal to the influence of the _creature_ who lives with you! No, Glenmurray, for my sake I must insist on your not being denied to them; and, believe me, I should consider myself as unworthy to be the choice of your heart, if I were not able to bear with firmness a mortification like that which awaits me.'

'But you allow it to be a mortification?'

'Yes; it is mortifying to a woman who knows herself to be virtuous, and is an idolater of virtue, to pay the penalty of vice, and be thought unworthy to associate with the relations of the man whom she loves.'

'They shall not come, I protest,' exclaimed Glenmurray.

But Adeline was resolute; and she carried her point. Soon after this conversation the ladies arrived, and Adeline shut herself up in her own apartment, where she gave way to no very pleasant reflections. Nor was she entirely satisfied with Glenmurray's conduct:--true, he had earnestly and sincerely wished to refuse to see his unexpected and unwelcome guests; but he had never once expressed a desire of combating their prejudices for Adeline's sake, and an intention of requesting that she might be introduced to them; but, as any common man would have done under similar circumstances, he was contented to do homage to 'things as they are,' without an effort to resist the prejudice to which he was superior.

'Alas!' cried Adeline, 'when can we hope to see society enlightened and improved, when even those who see and strive to amend its faults in theory, in practice tamely submit to the trammels which it imposes?'

An hour, a tedious hour to Adeline, having elapsed, Glenmurray's visitors departed; and by the disappointment that Adeline experienced at hearing the door close on them, she felt that she had had a secret hope of being summoned to be presented to them; and, with a bitter feeling of mortification, she reflected, that she was probably to the man whom she adored a shame and a reproach.

'Yet I should like to see them,' she said, running to the window as the carriage drove up, and the ladies entered it. At that moment they, whether from curiosity to see her, or accident, looked up at the window where she was. Adeline started back indignant and confused; for, thrusting their heads eagerly forward, they looked at her with the bold unfeeling stare of imagined superiority; and Adeline, spite of her reason, sunk abashed and conscious from their gaze.

'And this insult,' exclaimed she, clasping her hands and bursting into tears, 'I experience from Glenmurray's _relations_! I think I could have borne it better from any one else.'

She had not recovered her disorder when Glenmurray entered the room, and, tenderly embracing her, exclaimed, 'Never, never again, my love, will I submit to such a sacrifice as I have now made;' when seeing her in tears, too well aware of the cause, he gave way to such a passionate burst of tenderness and regret, that Adeline, terrified at his agitation, though soothed by his fondness, affected the cheerfulness which she did not feel, and promised to drive the intruders from her remembrance.

Had Glenmurray and Adeline known the real character of the unwelcome visitors, neither of them would have regretted that Adeline was not presented to them. One of them was married, and to so accommodating a husband, that his wife's known gallant was his intimate friend; and under the sanction of his protection she was received every where, and visited by every one, as the world did not think proper to be more clear-sighted than the husband himself chose to be. The other lady was a young and attractive widow, who coquetted with many men, but intrigued with only one at a time; for which self-denial she was rewarded by being allowed to pass unquestioned through the portals of fashionable society. But these ladies would have scorned to associate with Adeline; and Adeline, had she known their private history, would certainly have returned the compliment.

The peace of Adeline was soon after disturbed in another way. Glenmurray finding himself disposed to sleep in the middle of the day, his cough having kept him waking all night, Adeline took her usual walk, and returned by the church-yard. The bell was tolling; and as she passed she saw a funeral enter the church-yard, and instantly averted her head.

In so doing her eyes fell on a decent-looking woman, who with a sort of angry earnestness was watching the progress of the procession.

'Aye, there goes your body, you rogue!' she exclaimed indignantly, 'but I wonder where your soul is now?--where I would not be for something.'

Adeline was shocked, and gently observed, 'What crime did the person of whom you are speaking, that you should suppose his soul so painfully disposed of?'

'What crime?' returned the woman: 'crime enough, I think:--why, he ruined a poor girl here in the neighbourhood: and then, because he never chose to make a will, there is she lying-in of a little by-blow, with not a farthing of money to maintain her or the child, and the fellow's money is gone to the heir-at-law, scarce of kin to him, while his own flesh and blood is left to starve.'

Adeline shuddered:--if Glenmurray were to die, she and the child which she bore would, she knew, be beggars.

'Well, miss, or madam, belike, by the look of you,' continued the woman glancing her eye over Adeline's person, 'what say you? Don't you think the fellow's soul is where we should not like to be? However, he had his hell here too, to be sure! for, when speechless and unable to move his fingers, he seemed by signs to ask for pen and ink, and he looked in agonies; and there was the poor young woman crying over him, and holding in her arms the poor destitute baby, who would as he grew up be taught, he must think, to curse the wicked father who begot him, and the naughty mother who bore him!'

Adeline turned very sick, and was forced to seat herself on a tombstone. 'Curse the mother who bore him!' she inwardly repeated,--'and will my child curse me? Rather let me undergo the rites I have despised!' and instantly starting from her seat she ran down the road to her lodgings, resolving to propose to Glenmurray their immediate marriage.

'But is the possession of property, then,' she said to herself as she stopped to take breath, 'so supreme a good, that the want of it, through the means of his mother, should dispose a child to curse that mother?--No: my child shall be taught to consider nothing valuable but virtue, nothing disgraceful but _vice_.--Fool that I am! a bugbear frightened me; and to my foolish fears I was about to sacrifice my own principles, and the respectability of Glenmurray. No--Let his property go to the heir-at-law--let me be forced to labour to support my babe, when its father--' Here a flood of tears put an end to her soliloquy, and slowly and pensively she returned home.

But the conversation of the woman in the church-yard haunted her while waking, and continued to distress her in her dreams that night, and she was resolved to do all she could to relieve the situation of the poor destitute girl and child, in whose fate she might possibly see an anticipation of her own: and as soon as breakfast was over, and Glenmurray was engaged in his studies, she walked out to make the projected inquiries.

The season of the year was uncommonly fine; and the varied scenery visible from the terrace was, at the moment of Adeline's approach to it, glowing with more than common beauty. Adeline stood for some minutes gazing on it in silent delight; when her reverie was interrupted by the sound of boyish merriment, and she saw, at one end of the terrace, some well-dressed boys at play.

'Alas! regardless of their doom The little victims play!'

immediately recurred to her: for, contemplating the probable evils of existence, she was darkly brooding over the imagined fate of her own offspring, should it live to see the light; and the children at their sport, having no care of ills to come, naturally engaged her attention.

But these happy children ceased to interest her, when she saw standing at a distance from the group, and apparently looking at it with an eye of envy, a little boy, even better dressed than the rest; who was sobbing violently, yet evidently trying to conceal his grief. And while she was watching the young mourner attentively, he suddenly threw himself on a seat; and, taking out his handkerchief, indignantly and impatiently wiped away the tears that would no longer be restrained.

'Poor child!' thought Adeline, seating herself beside him; 'and has affliction reached thee so soon!'

The child was beautiful: and his clustering locks seemed to have been combed with so much care; the frill of his shirt was so fine, and had been so very neatly plaited; and his sun-burnt neck and hands were so very very clean, that Adeline was certain he was the darling object of some fond mother's attention. 'And yet he is unhappy!' she inwardly exclaimed. 'When my fate resembled his, how happy I was!' But from the recollections like these she always hastened; and checking the rising sigh, she resolved to enter into conversation with the little boy.

'What is the matter?' she cried.--No answer. 'Why are you not playing with the young gentlemen yonder?'

She had touched the right string:--and bursting into tears, he sobbed out, 'Because they won't let me.'

'No? and why will they not let you?' To this he replied not; but sullenly hung his blushing face on his bosom.

'Perhaps you have made them angry?' gently asked Adeline. 'Oh! no, no,' cried the boy; 'but--' 'But what?' Here he turned from her, and with his nail began scratching the arm of the seat.

'Well; this is very strange, and seems very unkind,' cried Adeline: 'I will speak to them.' So saying, she drew near the other children, who had interrupted their play to watch Adeline and their rejected playmate. 'What can be the reason,' said she, 'that you will not let that little boy play with you?' The boys looked down, and said nothing.

'Is he ill-natured?'

'No.'

'Does he not play fair?'

'Yes.'

'Don't you like him?'

'Yes.'

'Then why do you make him unhappy, by not letting him join in your sport?'

'Tell the lady. Jack,' cries one; and Jack, the biggest boy of the party, said: 'Because he is not a gentleman's son like us, and is only a little bastard.'

'Yes,' cried one of the other children; 'and his mamma is so proud she dresses him finer than we are, for all he is base-born: and our papas and mammas don't think him fit company for us.'

They might have gone on for an hour--Adeline could not interrupt them. The cause of the child's affliction was a dagger in her heart; and, while she listened to the now redoubled sobs of the disgraced and proudly afflicted boy, she was driven almost to phrensy: for 'Such,' she exclaimed, 'may one time or other be the pangs of my child, and so to him may the hours of childhood be embittered!' Again she seated herself by the little mourner--and her tears accompanied his.

'My dear child, you had better go home,' said she, struggling with her feelings; 'your mother will certainly be glad of your company.'

'No, I won't go to her; I don't love her: they say she is a bad woman, and my papa a bad man, because they are not married.'

Again Adeline's horrors returned. 'But, my dear, they love you, no doubt; and you ought to love them,' she replied with effort.

'There, there comes your papa,' cried one of the boys; 'go and cry to him;--go.'

At these words Adeline looked up, and saw an elegant-looking man approaching with a look of anxiety.

'Charles, my dear boy, what has happened?' said he, taking his hand; which the boy sullenly withdrew. 'Come home directly,' continued his father, 'and tell me what is the matter, as we go along.' But again snatching his hand away, the proud and deeply wounded child resentfully pushed the shoulder next him forward, whenever his father tried to take his arm, and elbowed him angrily as he went.

Adeline felt the child's action to the bottom of her heart. It was a volume of reproach to the father; and she sighed to think what the parents, if they had hearts, must feel, when the afflicted boy told the cause of his grief. 'But, unhappy boy, perhaps my child may live to bless you!' she exclaimed, clasping her hands together: 'never, never will I expose my child to the pangs which you have experienced to-day.' So saying, she returned instantly to her lodgings; and having just strength left to enter Glenmurray's room, she faintly exclaimed: 'For pity's sake, make me your wife to-morrow!' and fell senseless on the floor.

On her recovery she saw Glenmurray pale with agitation, yet with an expression of satisfaction in his countenance, bending over her. 'Adeline! my dearest love!' he whispered as her head lay on his bosom, 'blessed be the words you have spoken, whatever be their cause! To-morrow you shall be my wife.'

'And then our child will be legitimate, will he not?' she eagerly replied.

'It will.'

'Thank God!' cried Adeline, and relapsed into a fainting fit. For it was not decreed that the object of her maternal solicitude should ever be born to reward it. Anxiety and agitation had had a fatal effect on the health of Adeline; and the day after her encounter on the terrace she brought forth a dead child.

As soon as Adeline, languid and disappointed, was able to leave her room, Glenmurray, whom anxiety during her illness had rendered considerably weaker, urged her to let the marriage ceremony be performed immediately. But with her hopes of being a mother vanished her wishes to become a wife, and all her former reasons against marriage recurred in their full force.

In vain did Glenmurray entreat her to keep her lately formed resolution: she still attributed his persuasions to generosity, and the heroic resolve of sacrificing his principles, with the consistency of his character, to her supposed good, and it was a point of honour with her to be as generous in return: consequently the subject was again dropped; nor was it likely to be soon renewed; and anxiety of a more pressing nature disturbed their peace and engrossed their attention. They had been three months at Richmond, and had incurred there a considerable debt; and Glenmurray, not having sufficient money with him to discharge it, drew upon his banker for half the half-year's rents from his estate, which he had just deposited in his hands; when to his unspeakable astonishment he found that the house had stopped payment, and that the principal partner had gone off with the deposits!

Scarcely could the firm mind of Glenmurray support itself under the stroke. He looked forward to the certainty of passing the little remainder of his life not only in pain but in poverty, and of seeing increase as fast as his wants the difficulty of supplying them; while the woman of his heart bent in increased agony over his restless couch; for he well knew that to raise money on his estate, or to anticipate the next half-year's rents, was impossible, as he had only a life interest in it; and, as he held the fatal letter in his hand, his frame shook with agitation.

'I could not have believed,' cried Adeline, 'that the loss of any sum of money could have so violently affected you.'

'Not the loss of my all! my support during the tedious scenes of illness!'

'Your all!' faltered out Adeline; and when she heard the true state of the case she found her agitation equalled that of Glenmurray, and in hopeless anguish she leaned on the table beside him.

'What is to be done,' said she, 'till the next half-year's rents become due? Where can we procure money?'

'Till the next half-year's rents become due!' replied he, looking at her mournfully: 'I shall not be distressed for money then.'

'No?' answered Adeline (not understanding him): 'our expenses have never yet been more than that sum can supply.'

Glenmurray looked at her, and, seeing how unconscious she was of the certainty of the evil that awaited her, had not the courage to distress her by explaining his meaning; and she went on to ask him what steps he meant to take to raise money.

'My only resource,' said he, 'is dunning a near relation of mine who owes me three hundred pounds: he is now, I believe, able to pay it. He is in Holland, indeed, at present; but he is daily expected in England, and will come to see me here. I have named him to you before, I believe. His name is Berrendale.'

It was then agreed that Glenmurray should write to Mr Berrendale immediately; and that, to prevent the necessity of incurring a further debt for present provisions and necessaries, some of their books and linen should be sold:--but week after week elapsed, and no letter was received from Mr Berrendale.

Glenmurray grew rapidly worse;--and their landlord was clamorous for his rent;--advice from London also became necessary to quiet Adeline's mind,--though Glenmurray knew that he was past cure: and after she had paid a small sum to quiet the demands of the landlord for a while, she had scarcely enough left to pay a physician: however, she sent for one recommended by Dr Norberry, and by selling a writing-desk inlaid with silver, which she valued because it was the gift of her father, she raised money sufficient for the occasion.

Dr. ---- arrived, but not to speak peace to the mind of Adeline. She saw, though he did not absolutely say so, that all chance of Glenmurray's recovery was over: and though with the sanguine feelings of nineteen she could 'hope though hope were lost,' when she watched Dr. ----'s countenance as he turned from the bed-side of Glenmurray, she felt the coldness of despair thrill through her frame; and, scarcely able to stand, she followed him into the next room, and awaited his orders with a sort of desperate tranquillity.

After prescribing alleviations of the ill beyond his power to cure, Dr. ---- added that terrible confirmation of the fears of anxious affection. 'Let him have whatever he likes; nothing can hurt him now; and all your endeavours must be to make the remaining hours of his existence as comfortable as you can, by every indulgence possible: and indeed, my dear madam,' he continued, 'you must be prepared for the trial that awaits you.'

'Prepared! did you say?' cried Adeline in the broken voice of tearless and almost phrensied sorrow. 'O God! if he must die, in mercy let me die with him. If I have sinned,' (here she fell on her knees,) 'surely, surely, the agony of this moment is atonement sufficient.'

Dr. ----, greatly affected, raised her from the ground, and conjured her for the sake of Glenmurray, and that she might not make his last hours miserable, to bear her trial with more fortitude.

'And can you talk of his "last hours" and yet expect me to be composed?--O sir! say but there is one little little gleam of hope for me, and I will be calm.'

'Well,' replied Dr. ----, 'I _may_ be mistaken; Mr Glenmurray is young, and--and--' here his voice faltered, and he was unable to proceed; for the expression of Adeline's countenance, changing as it instantly did from misery to joy,--joy of which he knew the fallacy,--while her eyes were intently fixed on him, was too much for a man of any feeling to support; and when she pressed his hand in the convulsive emotions of her gratitude, he was forced to turn away his head to conceal the starting tear.

'Well, I may be mistaken--Mr Glenmurray is young,' Adeline repeated again and again, as his carriage drove off; and she flew to Glenmurray's bed-side to impart to him the satisfaction which he rejoiced to see her feel, but in which he could not share.

Her recovered security did not, however, last long; the change in Glenmurray grew every day more visible; and to increase her distress, they were forced, to avoid disagreeable altercations, to give the landlord a draft on Mr Berrendale for the sum due to him, and remove to very humble lodgings in a closer part of the town.

Here their misery was a little alleviated by the unexpected receipt of twenty pounds, sent to Glenmurray by a tenant who was in arrears to him, which enabled Adeline to procure Glenmurray every thing that his capricious appetite required; and at his earnest entreaty, in order that she might sometimes venture to leave him, lest her health should suffer, she hired a nurse to assist her in her attendance upon him.

A hasty letter too was at length received from Mr Berrendale, saying, that he should very soon be in England, and should hasten to Richmond immediately on his landing. The terror of wanting money, therefore, began to subside; but day after day elapsed, and Mr Berrendale came not; and Adeline, being obliged to deny herself almost necessary sustenance that Glenmurray's appetite might be tempted, and his nurse, by the indulgence of hers, kept in good humour, resolved, presuming on the arrival of Mr Berrendale, to write to Dr Norberry and solicit the loan of twenty pounds.

Having done so, she ceased to be alarmed, though she found herself in possession of only three guineas to defray the probable expenses of the ensuing week; and in somewhat less misery than usual, she, at the earnest entreaty of Glenmurray, set out to take a walk.

Scarcely conscious what she did, she strolled through the town, and seeing some fine grapes at the window of a fruiterer, she went in to ask the price of them, knowing how welcome fruit was to the feverish palate of Glenmurray. While the shopman was weighing the grapes, she saw a pine-apple on the counter, and felt a strong wish to carry it home as a more welcome present; but with unspeakable disappointment she heard that the price of it was two guineas--a sum which she could not think herself justified in expending, in the present state of their finances, even to please Glenmurray, especially as he had not expressed a wish for such an indulgence; besides, he liked grapes; and, as medicine, neither of them could be effectual.

It was fortunate for Adeline's feelings that she had not overheard what the mistress of the shop said to her maid as she left it.

'I should have asked another person only a guinea; but as those sort of women never mind what they give, I asked two, and I dare say she will come back for it.'

'I have brought you some grapes,' cried Adeline as she entered Glenmurray's chamber, 'and I would have brought you a pine-apple, but that it was too dear.'

'A pine-apple!' said Glenmurray, languidly turning over the grapes, and with a sort of distaste putting one of them in his mouth, 'a pine-apple!--I wish you had brought it with all my heart! I protest that I feel as if I could eat a whole one.'

'Well,' replied Adeline, 'if you would enjoy it so much, you certainly ought to have it.'

'But the price, my dear girl!--what was it?'

'Only two guineas,' replied Adeline, forcing a smile.

'Two guineas!' exclaimed Glenmurray: 'No,--that is too much to give--I will not indulge my appetite at such a rate--but, take away the grapes--I can't eat them.'

Adeline, disappointed, removed them from his sight; and, to increase her vexation, Glenmurray was continually talking of pine-apples, and in that way that showed how strongly his diseased appetite wished to enjoy the gratification of eating one. At last, unable to bear to see him struggling with an ungratified wish, she told him that she believed they could afford to buy the pine-apple, as she had written to borrow some money of Dr Norberry, to be paid as soon as Mr Berrendale arrived. In a moment the dull eye of Glenmurray lighted up with expectation; and he, who in health was remarkable for self-denial and temperance, scrupled not, overcome by the influence of the fever which consumed him, to gratify his palate at a rate the most extravagant.

Adeline sighed as she contemplated this change effected by illness; and, promising to be back as soon as possible, she proceeded to a shop to dispose of her lace veil, the only ornament which she had retained; and that not from vanity, but because it concealed from the eye of curiosity the sorrow marked on her countenance. But she knew a piece of muslin would do as well; and for two guineas sold a veil worth treble that sum; but it was to give a minute's pleasure to Glenmurray, and that was enough for Adeline.

On her way to the fruiterer's she saw a crowd at the door of a mean-looking house, and in the midst of it she beheld a mulatto woman, the picture of sickness and despair, supporting a young man who seemed ready to faint every moment, but whom a rough-featured man, regardless of his weakness, was trying to force from the grasp of the unhappy woman; while a mulatto boy, known in Richmond by the name of the Tawny Boy, to whom Adeline had often given halfpence in her walks, was crying bitterly, and hiding his face in the poor woman's apron.

Adeline immediately pressed forward to inquire into the cause of a distress only too congenial to her feelings; and as she did so, the tawny boy looked up, and, knowing her immediately, ran eagerly forward to meet her, seeming, though he did not speak, to associate with her presence an idea of certain relief.

'Oh! it is only a poor man,' replied an old woman in answer to Adeline's inquiries, 'who can't pay his debts,--and so they are dragging him to prison--that's all.' 'They are dragging him to his death too,' cried a younger woman in a gentle accent; 'for he is only just recovering from a bad fever: and if he goes to jail the bad air will certainly kill him, poor soul!'

'Is that his wife?' said Adeline. 'Yes, and my mammy,' said the tawny boy, looking up in her face, 'and she so ill and sorry.'

'Yes, unhappy creatures,' replied her informant, 'and they have known great trouble; and now, just as they had got a little money together, William fell ill, and in doctor's stuff Savanna (that's the mulatto's name) has spent all the money she had earned, as well as her husband's; and now she is ill herself, and I am sure William's going to jail will kill her. And a hard-hearted, wicked wretch Mr Davis is, to arrest him--that he is--not but what it is his due, I cannot say but it is--but, poor souls! he'll die, and she'll die, and then what will become of their poor little boy?'

The tawny boy all this time was standing, crying, by Adeline's side, and had twisted his fingers in her gown, while her heart sympathized most painfully in the anguish of the mulatto woman. 'What is the amount of the sum for which he is taken up?' said Adeline.

'Oh! trifling: but Mr Davis owes him a grudge, and so will not wait any longer. It is in all only ten pounds; and he says if they will pay part he will wait for the rest; but then he knows they could as well pay all as part.'

Adeline, shocked at the knowledge of a distress which she was not able to remove, was turning away as the woman said this, when she felt that the little boy pulled her gown gently, as if appealing to her generosity; while a surly-looking man, who was the creditor himself, forcing a passage through the crowd, said, 'Why, bring him along, and have done with it; here is a fuss to make indeed about that idle dog, and that ugly black toad!'

Adeline till then had not recollected that she was a mulatto; and this speech, reflecting so brutally on her colour,--a circumstance which made her an object of greater interest to Adeline,--urged her to step forward to their joint relief with an almost irresistible impulse; especially when another man reproached the fellow for his brutality, and added, that he knew them both to be hard-working, deserving persons. But to disappoint Glenmurray of his promised pleasure was impossible; and having put sixpence in the tawny boy's hand, she was hastening to the fruiterer's, when the crowd, who were following William and the mulatto to the jail, whither the bailiffs were dragging rather than leading him, fell back to give air to the poor man, who had fainted on Savanna's shoulder, and seemed on the point of expiring--while she, with an expression of fixed despair, was gazing on his wan cheek.

Adeline thought on Glenmurray's danger, and shuddered as she beheld the scene; she felt it but a too probable anticipation of the one in which she might soon be an actor.

At this moment a man observed, 'If he goes to prison he will not live two days, that every one may see;' and the mulatto uttered a shriek of agony.

Adeline felt it to her very soul; and, rushing forward, 'Sir, sir,' she exclaimed to the unfeeling creditor, 'if I were to give you a guinea now, and promise you two more a fortnight hence, would you release this poor man for the present?'

'No: I must have three guineas this moment,' replied he. Adeline sighed, and withdrew her hand from her pocket. 'But were Glenmurray here, he would give up his indulgence, I am sure, to save the lives of, probably two fellow-creatures,' thought Adeline: 'and he would not forgive me if I were to sacrifice such an opportunity to the sole gratification of his palate.'--But then again, Glenmurray eagerly expecting her with the promised treat, so gratifying to the feverish taste of sickness, seemed to appear before her, and she turned away; but the eyes of the mulatto, who had heard her words, and had hung on them breathless with expectation, followed her with a look of such sad reproach for the disappointment which she had occasioned her, and the little boy looked up so wistfully in her face, crying, 'Poor fader, and poor mammy!' that Adeline could not withstand the force of the appeal; but almost exclaiming 'Glenmurray would upbraid me if I did not act thus,' she gave the creditor the three guineas, paid the bailiffs their demand, and then made her way through the crowd, who respectfully drew back to give her room to pass, saying, 'God bless you, lady! God bless you!'

But William was too ill, and Savanna felt too much to speak; and the surly creditor said, sneeringly, 'If I had been you, I would, at least, have thanked the lady.' This reproach restored Savanna to the use of speech; and (but with a violent effort) she uttered in a hoarse and broken voice, '_I_ tank her! God tank her! I never can:' and Adeline, kindly pressing her hand, hurried away from her in silence, though scarcely able to refrain exclaiming, 'you know not the sacrifice which you have cost me!' The tawny boy still followed her, as loath to leave her. 'God bless you, my dear!' said she kindly to him: 'there, go to your mother, and be good to her.' His dark face glowed as she spoke to him, and holding up his chin, 'Tiss me!' cried he, 'poor tawny boy love you!' She did so; and then reluctantly, he left her, nodding his head, and saying, 'Dood bye' till he was out of sight.

With him, and with the display of his grateful joy, vanished all that could give Adeline resolution to bear her own reflections at the idea of returning home, and of the trial that awaited her. In vain did she now try to believe that Glenmurray would applaud what she had done.--He was now the slave of disease, nor was it likely that even his self-denial and principle benevolence could endure with patience so cruel a disappointment--and from the woman whom he loved too!--and to whom the indulgence of his slightest wishes ought to have been the first object.

'What shall I do?' cried she: 'what will he say?--No doubt he is impatiently expecting me; and, in his weak state, disappointment may--' Here, unable to hear her apprehensions, she wrung her hands in agony; and when she arrived in sight of her lodgings she dared not look up, lest she should see Glenmurray at the window watching for her return. Slowly and fearfully did she open the door; and the first sound she heard was Glenmurray's voice from the door of his room, saying, 'So, you are come at last!--I have been so impatient!' And indeed he had risen and dressed himself, that he might enjoy his treat more than he could do in a sick-bed.

'How can I bear to look him in the face!' thought Adeline, lingering on the stairs.

'Adeline, my love! why do you make me wait so long?' cried Glenmurray. 'Here are knives and plates ready; where is the treat I have been so long expecting?'

Adeline entered the room and threw herself on the first chair, avoiding the sight of Glenmurray, whose countenance, as she hastily glanced her eyes over it, was animated with the expectation of a pleasure which he was not to enjoy. 'I have not brought the pine-apple,' she faintly articulated. 'No!' replied Glenmurray, 'how hard upon me!--the only thing for weeks that I have wished for, or could have eaten with pleasure! I suppose you were so long going that it was disposed of before you got there?'

'No,' replied Adeline, struggling with her tears at this first instance of pettishness in Glenmurray.

'Pardon me the supposition,' replied Glenmurray, recovering himself: 'more likely you met some dun on the road, and so the two guineas were disposed of another way--If so, I can't blame you. What say you? Am I right?'

'No.' 'Then how was it?' gravely asked Glenmurray. 'You must have had a very powerful and a sufficient reason, to induce you to disappoint a poor invalid of the indulgence which you had yourself excited him to wish for.'

'This is terrible, indeed!' thought Adeline, 'and never was I so tempted to tell a falsehood.'

'Still silent! You are very unkind, Miss Mowbray,' said Glenmurray; 'I see that I have tired even _you_ out.'

These words, by the agony which they excited, restored to Adeline all her resolution. She ran to Glenmurray; she clasped his burning hands in hers; and as succinctly as possible she related what had passed. When she had finished, Glenmurray was silent; the fretfulness of disease prompted him to say, 'So then, to the relief of strangers you sacrificed the gratification of the man whom you love, and deprived him of the only pleasure he may live to enjoy!' But the habitual sweetness and generosity of his temper struggled, and struggled effectually, with his malady; and while Adeline, pale and trembling, awaited her sentence, he caught her suddenly to his bosom, and held her there a few moments in silence.

'Then you forgive me?' faltered out Adeline.

'Forgive you! I love and admire you more than ever! I know your heart, Adeline; and I am convinced that depriving yourself of the delight of giving me the promised treat, in order to do a benevolent action, was an effort of virtue of the highest order; and never, I trust, have you known, or will you know again, such bitter feelings as you this moment experienced.'

Adeline, gratified by his generous kindness, and charmed with his praise, could only weep her thanks. 'And now,' said Glenmurray, laughing, 'you may bring back the grapes--I am not like Sterne's dear Jenny; if I cannot get pine-apple, I will not insist on eating crab.'

The grapes were brought; but in vain did he try to eat them. At this time, however, he did not send them away without highly commending their flavour, and wishing that he dared give way to his inclinations, and feast upon them.

'O God of mercy!' cried Adeline, bursting into an agony of grief as she reached her own apartment, and throwing herself on her knees by the bed-side, 'Must that benevolent being be taken from me for ever, and must I, must I survive him!'

She continued for some minutes in this attitude, and with her heart devoutly raised to heaven; till every feeling yielded to resignation, and she arose calm, if not contented; when, on turning round, she saw Glenmurray leaning against the door, and gazing on her.

'Sweet enthusiast!' cried he smiling: 'so, thus, when you are distressed, you seek consolation.'

'I do,' she replied: 'Sceptic, wouldst thou wish to deprive me of it?'

'No, by heaven!' warmly exclaimed Glenmurray; and the evening passed more cheerfully than usual.

The next post brought a letter, not from Dr. Norberry, but from his wife; it was as follows, and contained three pound-notes:--

'Mrs Norberry's compliments to Miss Mowbray, having opened her letter, poor Dr Norberry being dangerously ill of a fever, find her distress; of which shall not inform the doctor, as he feels so much for his friend's misfortunes, specially when brought on by misconduct. But, out of respect for your mother, who is a good sort of woman, though rather particular, as all learned ladies are, have sent three pound-notes; the Miss Norberrys giving one a-piece, not to lend, but a gift, and they join Mrs Norberry in hoping Miss Mowbray will soon see the error of her ways; and, if so be, no doubt Dr Norberry will use his interest to get her into the Magdalen.'

This curious epistle would have excited in Glenmurray and Adeline no other feelings save those of contempt, but for the information it contained of the doctor's being dangerously ill; and, in fear for the worthy husband, they forgot the impertinence of the wife and daughters.

The next day, fortunately, Mr Berrendale arrived, and with him the three hundred pounds. Consequently, all Glenmurray's debts were discharged, better lodgings procured, and the three pound-notes returned in a blank cover to Mrs Norberry. Charles Berrendale was first-cousin to Glenmurray, and so like him in face, that they were, at first, mistaken for brothers: but to a physiognomist they must always have been unlike; as Glenmurray was remarkable for the character and expression of his countenance, and Berrendale for the extreme beauty of his features and complexion. Glenmurray was pale and thin, and his eyes and hair dark. Berrendale's eyes were of a light blue; and though his eye-lashes were black, his hair was of a rich auburn; Glenmurray was thin and muscular; Berrendale, round and corpulent: still they were alike; and it was not ill observed of them, that Berrendale was Glenmurray in good health.

But Berrendale could not be flattered by the resemblance, as his face and person were so truly what is called handsome, that, partial as our sex is said to be to beauty, any woman would have been excused for falling in love with him. Whether his mind was equal to his person we shall show hereafter.

The meeting between Berrendale and Glenmurray was affectionate on both sides; but Berrendale could scarcely hide the pain he felt on seeing the situation of Glenmurray, whose virtues he had always loved, whose talents he had always respected, and to whose active friendship towards himself he owed eternal gratitude.

But he soon learnt to think Glenmurray, in one respect, an object of envy, when he beheld the constant, skilful, and tender attentions of his nurse, and saw in that nurse every gift of heart, mind, and person, which could make a woman amiable.

Berrendale had heard that his eccentric cousin was living with a girl as odd as himself; who thought herself a genius, and pretended to universal knowledge; great then was his astonishment to find this imagined pedant, and pretender, not only an adept in every useful and feminine pursuit, but modest in her demeanour, and gentle in her manners: little did he expect to see her capable of serving the table of Glenmurray with dishes made by herself, not only tempting to the now craving appetite of the invalid but to the palate of an epicure,--while all his wants were anticipated by her anxious attention, and many of the sufferings of sickness alleviated by her inventive care.

Adeline, meanwhile, was agreeably surprised to see the good effect produced on Glenmurray's spirits, and even his health, by the arrival of his cousin; and her manner became even affectionate to Berrendale, from gratitude for the change which his presence seemed to have occasioned.

Adeline had now a companion in her occasional walks;--Glenmurray insisted on her walking, and insisted on Berrendale's accompanying her. In these tête-à-têtes Adeline unburthened her heart, by telling Berrendale of the agony she felt at the idea of losing Glenmurray; and while drowned in tears she leaned on his arm, she unconsciously suffered him to press the hand that leaned against him; nor would she have felt it a freedom to be reproved, had she been conscious that he did so. But these trifling indulgences were fuel to the flame that she had kindled in the heart of Berrendale; a flame which he saw no guilt in indulging, as he looked on Glenmurray's death as certain, and Adeline would then be free.

But though Adeline was perfectly unconscious of his attachment, Glenmurray had seen it even before Berrendale himself discovered it; and he only waited a favourable opportunity to make the discovery known to the parties. All he had as yet ventured to say was, 'Charles, my Adeline is an excellent nurse!--You would like such as one during your fits of the gout;' and Berrendale had blushed deeply while he assented to Glenmurray's remarks, because he was conscious that, while enumerating Adeline's perfections, he had figured her to himself warming his flannels, and leaning tenderly over his gouty couch.

One day, while Adeline was reading to Glenmurray, and Berrendale was attending not to what she read, but to the beauty of her mouth while reading, the nurse came in, and said that 'a mulatto woman wished to speak to Miss Mowbray.'

'Show her up,' immediately cried Glenmurray; 'and if her little boy is with her, let him come too.'

In vain did Adeline expostulate--Glenmurray wished to enjoy the mulatto's expressions of gratitude; and, in spite of all she could say, the mother and child were introduced.

'So!' cried the mulatto, (whose looks were so improved that Adeline scarcely knew her again,) 'So! me find you at last; and, please God! we not soon part more.' As she said this, she pressed the hem of Adeline's gown to her lips with fervent emotion.

'Not part from her again!' cried Glenmurray, 'What do you mean, my good woman?'

'Oh! when she gave tree guinea for me, me tought she mus be rich lady, but now dey say she be poor, and me mus work for her.'

'And who told you I was poor?'

'Dat cross man where you live once--he say you could not pay him, and you go away--and he tell me that your love be ill; and me so sorry, yet so glad! for my love be well aden, and he have good employ; and now I can come and serve you, and nurse dis poor gentleman, and all for nothing but my meat and drink; and I know dat great fat nurse have gold wages, and eat and drink fat beside,--I knowd her well.'

All this was uttered with volubility, and in a tone between laughing and crying.

'Well, Adeline,' said Glenmurray when she had ended, 'you did not throw away your kindness on an unworthy and ungrateful object; so I am quite reconciled to the loss of the pine-apple; and I will tell your honest friend here the story,--to show her, as she has a tender heart herself, the greatness of the sacrifice you made for her sake.'

Adeline begged him to desist; but he went on; and the mulatto could not keep herself quiet on the chair while he related the circumstance.

'And did she do dat to save me?' she passionately exclaimed: 'Angel woman! I should have let poor man go to prison, before disappoint my William!'

'And did you forgive her immediately?' said Berrendale.

'Yes, certainly.'

'Well, that was heroic too,' returned he.

'And no one but Glenmurray would have been so heroic, I believe,' said Adeline.

'But, lady, you break my heart,' cried the mulatto, 'if you not take my service. Mr William and me, too poor to live togedder of some year perhaps. Here, child, tawny boy, down on knees, and vow wid me to be faithful and grateful to this our mistress, till our last day; and never to forsake her in sickness or in sorrow! I swear dis to my great God:--and now say dat after me.' She then clasped the little boy's hands, bade him raise his eyes to heaven, and made him repeat what she had said, ending it with 'I swear dis, to my great God.'

There was such an affecting solemnity in this action, and in the mulatto such a determined enthusiasm of manner incapable of being controlled, that Adeline, Glenmurray, and Berrendale observed what passed in respectful silence: and when it was over, Glenmurray said, in a voice of emotion, 'I think, Adeline, we must accept this good creature's offer; and as nurse grows lazy and saucy, we had better part with her: and as for your young knight there,' (the tawny boy had by this time nestled himself close to Adeline, who, with no small emotion, was playing with his woolly curls,) 'we must send him to school; for, my good woman, we are not so poor as you imagine.'

'God be thanked!' cried the mulatto.

'But what is your name?'

'I was christened Savanna,' replied she.

'Then, good Savanna,' cried Adeline, 'I hope we shall both have reason to bless the day when first we met; and to-morrow you shall come home to us.' Savanna, on hearing this, almost screamed with joy, and as she took her leave Berrendale slipped a guinea into her hand: the tawny boy meanwhile slowly followed his mother, as if unwilling to leave Adeline, even though she gave him halfpence to spend in cakes: but on being told that she would let him come again the next day, he tripped gaily down after Savanna.

The quiet of the chamber being then restored, Glenmurray fell into a calm slumber. Adeline took up her work; and Berrendale, pretending to read, continued to feed his passion by gazing on the unconscious Adeline.

While they were thus engaged, Glenmurray, unobserved, awoke; and he soon guessed how Berrendale's eyes were employed, as the book which he held in his hand was upside down; and through the fingers of the hand which he held before his face, he saw his looks fixed on Adeline.

The moment was a favourable one for Glenmurray's purpose: and just as he raised himself from his pillow, Adeline had discovered the earnest gaze of Berrendale; and a suspicion of the truth that instant darting across her mind, disconcerted and blushing, she had cast her eyes on the ground.

'That is an interesting study which you are engaged in, Charles,' cried Glenmurray smiling.

Berrendale started; and, deeply blushing, faltered out, 'Yes.'

Adeline looked at Glenmurray, and seeing a very arch and meaning expression on his countenance, suspected that he had made the same discovery as herself: yet, if so, she wondered at his looking so pleasantly on Berrendale as he spoke.

'It is a book, Charles,' continued Glenmurray, 'which the more you study the more you will admire; and I wish to give you a clue to understand some passages in it better than you can now do.'

This speech deceived Adeline, and made her suppose that Glenmurray really alluded to the book which lay before Berrendale: but it convinced _him_ that Glenmurray spoke metaphorically; and as his manner was kind, it also made him think that he saw and did not disapprove his attachment.

For a few minutes, each of them being engrossed in different contemplations, there was a complete silence; but Glenmurray interrupted it by saying, 'My dear Adeline, it is your hour for walking; but, as I am not disposed to sleep again, will you forgive me if I keep your walking companion to myself to-day?--I wish to converse with him alone.'

'Oh! most cheerfully,' she replied with quickness: 'you know I love a solitary ramble of all things.'

'Not very flattering that to my cousin,' observed Glenmurray.

'I did not wish to flatter him,' said Adeline gravely; and Berrendale, fluttered at the idea of the coming conversation with Glenmurray, and mortified by Adeline's words and manner, turned to the window to conceal his emotion.

Adeline, then, with more than usual tenderness, conjured Glenmurray not to talk too much, nor do anything to destroy the hopes on which her only chance of happiness depended, viz. the now possible chance of his recovery, and then set out for her walk; while, with a restraint and coldness which she could not conquer, she bade Berrendale farewell for the present.

The walk was long, and her thoughts perturbed:--'What could Glenmurray want to say to Mr Berrendale?'--'Why did Mr Berrendale sit with his eyes so intently and clandestinely, as it were, fixed on me?' were thoughts perpetually recurring to her: and half impatient, and half reluctant, she at length returned to her lodgings.

When she entered the apartment, she saw signs of great emotion in the countenance of both the gentlemen; and in Berrendale's eyes the traces of recent tears. The tone of Glenmurray's voice too, when he addressed her, was even more tender than usual, and Berrendale's attentions more marked, yet more respectful; and Adeline observed that Glenmurray was unusually thoughtful and absent, and that the cough and other symptoms of his complaint were more troublesome than ever.

'I see you have exerted yourself and talked too much during my absence,' cried Adeline, 'and I will never leave you again for so long a time.'

'You never shall,' said Glenmurray. 'I must leave _you_ for so long a time at last, that I will be blessed with the sight of you as long as I can.'

Adeline whose hopes had been considerably revived during the last few days, looked mournfully and reproachfully in his face as he uttered these words.

'It is even so, my dearest girl,' continued Glenmurray, 'and I say this to guard you against a melancholy surprise:--I wish to prepare you for an event which to me seems unavoidable.'

'Prepare me!' exclaimed Adeline wildly. 'Can there be any preparation to enable one to bear such a calamity? Absurd idea! However, I shall derive consolation from the severity of the stroke: I feel that I shall not be able to survive it.' So saying, her head fell on Glenmurray's pillow; and for some time, her sorrow almost suspended the consciousness of suffering.

From this state she was aroused by Glenmurray's being attacked with a violent paroxysm of his complaint, and all selfish distress was lost in the consciousness of his sufferings: again he struggled through, and seemed so relieved by the effort, that again Adeline's hopes revived; and she could scarcely return, with temper, Berrendale's 'good night,' when Glenmurray expressed a wish to rest, because his spirits had not risen in any proportion to hers.

The nurse had been dismissed that afternoon; and Adeline, as Savanna was not to come home till the next morning, was to sit up alone with Glenmurray that night; and, contrary to his usual custom, he did not insist that she should have a companion.

For a few hours his exhausted frame was recruited by a sleep more than usually quiet, and but for a few hours only. He then became restless, and so wakeful and disturbed, that he professed to Adeline an utter inability to sleep, and therefore he wished to pass the rest of the night in serious conversation with her.

Adeline, alarmed at this intention, conjured him not to irritate his complaint by so dangerous an exertion.

'My mind will irritate it more,' replied he, 'if I refrain from it; for it is burthened, my Adeline, and it longs to throw off its burthen. Now, then, ere my senses wander, hear what I wish to communicate to you, and interrupt me as little as possible.'

Adeline, oppressed and awed beyond measure at the unusual solemnity of his manner, made no answer; but, leaning her cheek on his hand, awaited his communication in silence.

'I think,' said Glenmurray, 'I shall begin with telling you Berrendale's history; it is proper that you should know all that concerns him.'

Adeline raising her head, replied hastily,--'Not to satisfy any curiosity of mine; for I feel none, I assure you.'

'Well, then,' returned Glenmurray, sighing, 'to please me, be it.--Berrendale is the son of my mother's sister, by a merchant of the neighbourhood of the 'Change, who hurt the family pride so much by marrying a tradesman, that I am the only one of the clan who has noticed her since. He ran away, about four years ago, with the only child of a rich West Indian from a boarding-school. The consequence was, that her father renounced her; but, when, three years ago, she died in giving birth to a son, the unhappy parent repented of his displeasure, and offered to allow Berrendale, who from the bankruptcy and sudden death of both his parents had been left destitute, an annuity of 300_l._ for life, provided he would send the child over to Jamaica, and allow him to have all the care of his education. To this Berrendale consented.'

'Reluctantly, I hope,' said Adeline, 'and merely out of pity for the feelings of the childless father.'

'I hope so too,' continued Glenmurray; 'for I do not think the chance of inheriting all his grandfather's property a sufficient reason to lead him to give up to another, and in a foreign land too, the society and education of his child: but, whatever were his reasons, Berrendale acceded to the request, and the infant was sent to Jamaica; and ever since the 300_l._ has been regularly remitted to him: besides that, he has recovered two thousand and odd hundred pounds from the wreck of his father's property; and with economy, and had he a good wife to manage his affairs for him, Berrendale might live very comfortably.'

'My dear Glenmurray,' cried Adeline impatiently, 'what is this to me? and why do you weary yourself to tell me particulars so little interesting to me?'

Glenmurray bade her have patience, and continued thus: 'And now, Adeline,' (here his voice evidently faltered,) 'I must open my whole heart to you, and confess that the idea of leaving you friendless, unprotected, and poor, your reputation injured, and your peace of mind destroyed, is more than I am able to bear, and will give me, in my last moments, the torments of the damned.' Here a violent burst of tears interrupted him; and Adeline, overcome with emotion and surprise at the sight of the agitation which his own sufferings could never occasion in him, hung over him in speechless woe.

'Besides,' continued Glenmurray, recovering himself a little, 'I--O Adeline!' seizing her cold hand, 'can you forgive me for having been the means of blasting all your fair fame and prospects in life?'

'For the sake of justice, if not of mercy,' exclaimed Adeline, 'forbear thus cruelly to accuse yourself. You know that from my own free, unbiassed choice I gave myself to you, and in compliance with my own principles.'

'But who taught you those principles?--who led you to a train of reasoning, so alluring in theory, so pernicious in practice? Had not I, with the heedless vanity of youth, given to the world the crude conceptions of four-and-twenty, you might at this moment have been the idol of a respectable society; and I, equally respected, have been the husband of your heart; while happiness would perhaps have kept the fatal disease at bay, of which anxiety has facilitated the approach.'

He was going on: but Adeline, who had till now struggled successfully with her feelings, wound up almost to phrensy at the possibility that anxiety had shortened Glenmurray's life, gave way to a violent paroxysm of sorrow, which, for a while, deprived her of consciousness; and when she recovered she found Berrendale bending over her, while her head lay on Glenmurray's pillow.

The sight of Berrendale in a moment roused her to exertion:--his look was so full of anxious tenderness, and she was at that moment so ill disposed to regard it with complacency, that she eagerly declared she was quite recovered, and begged Mr Berrendale would return to bed; and Glenmurray seconding her request, with a deep sigh he departed.

'Poor fellow!' said Glenmurray, 'I wish you had seen his anxiety during your illness!'

'I am glad I did _not_,' replied Adeline: 'but how can you persist in talking to me of any other person's anxiety, when I am tortured with yours? Your conversation of to-night has made me even more miserable than I was before. By what strange fatality do you blame yourself for the conduct worthy of admiration?--for giving to the world, as soon as produced, opinions which were calculated to enlighten it?'

'But,' replied Glenmurray, 'as those opinions militated against the experience and custom of ages, ought I not to have paused before I published, and kept them back till they had received the sanction of my maturer judgment?'

'And does your maturer judgment condemn them?'

'Four years cannot have added much to the maturity of my judgment,' replied Glenmurray: 'but I will own that some of my opinions are changed; and that, though I believe those which are unchanged are right in theory, I think, as the mass of society could never _at once_ adopt them, they had better remain unacted upon, than that a few lonely individuals should expose themselves to certain distress, by making them the rules of their conduct. You, for instance, you, my Adeline, what misery--!' Here his voice again faltered, and emotion impeded his utterance.

'Live--do but live,' exclaimed Adeline passionately, 'and I can know of misery but the name.'

'But I cannot live, I cannot live,' replied Glenmurray, 'and the sooner I die the better;--for thus to waste your youth and health in the dreadful solitude of a sick-room is insupportable to me.'

'O Glenmurray!' replied Adeline, fondly throwing herself on his neck, 'could you but live free from any violent pain, and were neither you nor I ever to leave this room again, believe me, I should not have a wish beyond it. To see you, to hear you, to prove to you how much I love you, would, indeed it would, be happiness sufficient for me!' After this burst of true and heartfelt tenderness, there was a pause of some moments: Glenmurray felt too much to speak, and Adeline was sobbing on his pillow. At length she pathetically again exclaimed, 'Live! only live! and I am blest!'

'But I _cannot_ live, I _cannot_ live,' again replied Glenmurray; 'and when I die, what will become of you?'

'I care not,' cried Adeline: 'if I lose you, may the same grave receive us!'

'But it _will_ not, my dearest:--grief does not kill; and, entailed as my estate is, I have nothing to leave you: and though richly qualified to undertake the care of children, in order to maintain yourself, your unfortunate connexion, and singular opinions, will be an eternal bar to your being so employed. O Adeline! these cutting fears, these dreadful reflections, are indeed the bitterness of death: but there is one way of alleviating my pangs.'

'Name it,' replied Adeline with quickness.

'But you must promise then to hear me with patience.--Had I been able to live through my illness, I should have conjured you to let me endeavour to restore you to your place in society, and consequently to your usefulness, by making you my wife: and young, and I may add innocent and virtuous, as you are, I doubt not but the world would at length have received you into its favour again.'

'But you must, you will, you shall live,' interrupted Adeline, 'and I shall be your happy wife.'

'Not _mine_' replied Glenmurray, laying an emphasis on the last word.

Adeline started, and, fixing her eyes wildly on his, demanded what he meant.

'I mean,' replied he, 'to prevail on you to make my last moments happy, by promising, some time hence, to give yourself a tender, a respectable, and a legal protector.'

'O Glenmurray!' exclaimed Adeline, 'and can you insult my tenderness for you with such a proposal? If I can even survive you, do you think that I can bear to give you a successor in my affection? or, how can you bear to imagine that I shall?'

'Because my love for you is without selfishness, and I wish you to be happy even though another makes you so. The lover, or the husband, who wishes the woman of his affection to form no second attachment, is, in my opinion, a selfish, contemptible being. Perhaps I do not expect that you will ever feel, for another man, an attachment like that which has subsisted between us--the first affection of young and impassioned hearts; but I am sure that you may again feel love enough to make yourself and the man of your choice perfectly happy; and I hope and trust that you will be so.'

'And forget you, I suppose?' interrupted Adeline reproachfully.

'Not so: I would have you remember me always, but with a chastized and even a pleasing sorrow; nay, I would wish you to imagine me a sort of guardian spirit watching your actions and enjoying your happiness.'

'I have _listened_ to you,' cried Adeline in a tone of suppressed anguish, 'and, I trust, with tolerable patience: there is one thing yet for me to learn--the name of the object whom you wish me to marry, for I suppose _he_ is found.'

'He is,' returned Glenmurray, 'Berrendale loves you; and he it is whom I wish you to choose.'

'I thought so,' exclaimed Adeline, rising and traversing the room hastily, and wringing her hands.

'But wherefore does his name,' said Glenmurray, 'excite such angry emotion? Perhaps self-love makes me recommend him,' continued he, forcing a smile, 'as he is reckoned like me, and I thought that likeness might make him more agreeable to you.'

'Only the more odious,' impatiently interrupted Adeline. 'To look like you, and not _be_ you, Oh! insupportable idea!' she exclaimed, throwing herself on Glenmurray's pillow, and pressing his burning temples to her cold cheek.

'Adeline,' said Glenmurray solemnly, 'this is, perhaps, the last moment of confidential and uninterrupted intercourse that we shall ever have together;' Adeline started, but spoke not; 'allow me, therefore, to tell you it is my _dying request_, that you would endeavour to dispose your mind in favour of Berrendale, and to become in time his wife. Circumstanced as you are, your only chance for happiness is becoming a wife: but it is too certain that few men worthy of you, in the most essential points, will be likely to marry you after your connexion with me.'

'Strange prejudice!' cried Adeline, 'to consider as my disgrace, what I deem my glory!'

Glenmurray continued thus: 'Berrendale himself has a great deal of the old school about him, but I have convinced him that you are not to be classed with the frail of your sex; and that you are one of the purest as well as loveliest of human beings.'

'And did he want to be convinced of this?' cried Adeline indignantly; 'and _yet_ you advise me to marry him?'

'My dearest love,' replied Glenmurray, 'in all cases the most we can expect is, to choose the best _possible_ means of happiness. Berrendale is not perfect; but I am convinced that you would commit a fatal error in not making him your husband; and when I tell you it is my _dying request_ that you should do so--'

'If you wish me to retain my senses,' exclaimed Adeline, 'repeat that dreadful phrase no more.'

'I will not say any more at all now,' faintly observed Glenmurray, 'for I am exhausted:--still, as morning begins to dawn, I should like to sit up in my bed and gaze on it, perhaps for--' Here Adeline put her hand to his mouth: Glenmurray kissed it, sighed, and did not finish the sentence. She then opened the shutters to let in the rising splendour of day, and, turning round towards Glenmurray, almost shrieked with terror at seeing the visible alteration a night had made in his appearance; while the yellow rays of the dawn played on his sallow cheek, and his dark curls, once crisped and glossy, hung faint and moist on his beating temples.

'It is strange, Adeline,' said Glenmurray (but with great effort), 'that, even in my situation, the sight of morning, and the revival as it were of nature, seems to invigorate my whole frame. I long to breathe the freshness of its breeze also.'

Adeline, conscious for the first time that all hope was over, opened the window, and felt even her sick soul and languid frame revived by the chill but refreshing breeze. To Glenmurray it imparted a feeling of physical pleasure, to which he had long been a stranger: 'I breathe freely,' he exclaimed, 'I feel alive again!'--and, strange as it may seem, Adeline's hopes began to revive also.--'I feel as if I could sleep now,' said Glenmurray, 'the feverish restlessness seems abated; but, lest my dreams be disturbed, promise me, ere I lie down again, that you will behave kindly to Berrendale.'

'Impossible! The only tie that bound me to him is broken:--I thought he sincerely sympathized with me in my wishes for your recovery; but now that, as he loves me, his wishes must be in direct opposition to mine,--I cannot, indeed I cannot, endure the sight of him.'

Glenmurray could not reply to this natural observation: he knew that, in a similar situation, his feelings would have been like Adeline's; and, pressing her hand with all the little strength left him, he said 'Poor Berrendale!' and tried to compose himself to sleep; while Adeline, lost in sad contemplation, threw herself in a chair by his bed-side, and anxiously awaited the event of his re-awaking.

But it was not long before Adeline herself, exhausted both in body and mind, fell into a deep sleep; and it was mid-day before she awoke: for no careless, heavy-treading, and hired nurse now watched the slumbers of the unhappy lovers; but the mulatto, stepping light as air, and afraid even of breathing lest she should disturb their repose, had assumed her station at the bed-side, and taken every precaution lest any noise should awake them. Hers was the service of the heart; and there is none like it.

At twelve o'clock Adeline awoke; and her first glance met the dark eyes of Savanna kindly fixed upon her. Adeline started, not immediately recollecting who it could be; but in a moment the idea of the mulatto, and of the service which she had rendered her, recurred to her mind, and diffused a sensation of pleasure through her frame. 'There is a being whom I have served,' said Adeline to herself, and, extending her hand to Savanna, she started from her seat, invigorated by the thought: but she felt depressed again by the consciousness that she, who had been able to impart so much joy and help to another, was herself a wretch for ever; and in a moment her eyes filled with tears, while the mulatto gazed on her with a look of inquiring solicitude.

'Poor Savanna!' cried Adeline in a low and plaintive tone.

There are moments when the sound of one's own voice has a mournful effect on one's feelings--this was one of those moments to Adeline; the pathos of her own tone overcame her, and she burst into tears: but Glenmurray slept on; and Adeline hoped nothing would suddenly disturb his rest, when Berrendale opened the door with what appeared unnecessary noise, and Glenmurray hastily awoke.

Adeline immediately started from her seat, and, looking at him with great indignation, demanded why he came in in such a manner, when he knew Mr Glenmurray was asleep.

Berrendale, shocked and alarmed at Adeline's words and expression, so unlike her usual manner, stammered out an excuse. 'Another time, Sir', replied Adeline coldly, 'I hope you will be more _careful_.'

'What is the matter?' said Glenmurray, raising himself in the bed. 'Are you scolding, Adeline? If so, let me hear you: I like novelty.'

Here Adeline and Berrendale both hastened to him, and Adeline almost looked with complacency on Berrendale; when Glenmurray, declaring himself wonderfully refreshed by his long sleep, expressed a great desire for his breakfast, and said he had a most voracious appetite.

But to all Berrendale's attentions she returned the most forbidding reserve; nor could she for a moment lose the painful idea, that the death of Glenmurray would be to him a source of joy, not of anguish. Berrendale was not slow to observe this change in her conduct; and he conceived that, as he knew Glenmurray had mentioned his pretensions to her, his absence would be of more service to his wishes than his presence; and he resolved to leave Richmond that afternoon,--especially as he had a dinner engagement at a tavern in London, which, in spite of love and friendship, he was desirous of keeping.

He was not mistaken in his ideas: the countenance of Adeline assumed less severity when he mentioned his intention of going away, nor could she express regret at his resolution, even though Glenmurray with anxious earnestness requested him to stay. But Glenmurray entreated in vain: used to consider his own interest and pleasure in preference to that of others, Berrendale resolved to go; and resisted the prayers of a man who had often obliged him with the greatest difficulty to himself.

'Well, then,' said Glenmurray mournfully, 'if you must go, God bless you! I wish you, Charles, all possible earthly happiness; nay, I have done all I can to ensure it you: but you have disappointed me. I hoped to have joined your hand, in my last moments, to that of this dear girl, and to have bequeathed her in the most solemn manner to your care and tenderness; but no matter, farewell! we shall probably meet no more.'

Here Berrendale's heart failed him, and he almost resolved to stay: but a look of angry repugnance which he saw on Adeline's countenance, even amidst her sorrow, got the better of his kind emotions, by wounding his self-love; and grasping Glenmurray's hand, and saying 'I shall be back in a day or two,' he rushed out of the room.

'I am sorry Mr Berrendale is forced to go,' said Adeline involuntarily when the street door closed after him.

'Had you condescended to tell him so, he would undoubtedly have staid,' replied Glenmurray rather peevishly. Adeline instantly felt, and regretted, the selfishness of her conduct. To avoid the sight of a disagreeable object, she had given pain to Glenmurray; or, rather, she had not done her utmost to prevent his being exposed to it.

'Forgive me,' said Adeline, bursting into tears: 'I own I thought only of myself, when I forbore to urge his stay. Alas! with you, and you alone, I believe, is the gratification of self always a secondary consideration.'

'You forget that I am a philanthropist,' replied Glenmurray, 'and cannot bear to be praised, even by you, at the expense of my fellow-creatures. But come, hasten dinner; my breakfast agreed with me so well, that I am impatient for another meal.'

'You certainly are better to-day,' exclaimed Adeline with unwonted cheerfulness.

'My feelings are more tolerable, at least,' replied Glenmurray: and Adeline and the mulatto began to prepare the dinner immediately. How often during her attendance on Glenmurray had she recollected the words of her grandmother, and blessed her for having taught her to be _useful_!

As soon as dinner was over, Glenmurray complained of being drowsy: still he declared he would not go to bed till he had seen the sun set, as he had that day, for the second time since his illness, seen it rise; and therefore, when it was setting, Adeline and Savanna led him into a room adjoining, which had a western aspect. Glenmurray fixed his eyes on the crimson horizon with a peculiar expression; and his lips seemed to murmur, 'For the last time! Let me breathe the evening air, too, once more,' said he.

'It is too chill, dear Glenmurray.'

'It will not hurt me,' replied Glenmurray; and Adeline complied with his request.

'The breeze of evening is not refreshing like that of morning,' he observed; 'but the beauty of the setting is, perhaps, superior to that of the rising sun:--they are both glorious sights, and I have enjoyed them both to-day, nor have I for years experienced so strong a feeling of devotion.'

'Thank God!' cried Adeline. 'O Glenmurray! there has been one thing only wanting to the completion of our union; and that was, that we should worship together.'

'Perhaps, had I remained longer here,' replied Glenmurray, 'we might have done so; for, believe me, Adeline, though my feelings have continually hurried me into adoration of the Supreme Being, I have often wished my homage to be as regular and as founded on immutable conviction as it once was: but it is too late now for amendment, though, alas! not for _regret_, _deep_ regret: yet He who reads the heart knows that my intentions were pure, and that I was not fixed in the stubbornness of error.'

'Let us change this discourse,' cried Adeline, seeing on Glenmurray's countenance an expression of uncommon sadness, which he, from a regard to her feelings, struggled to cover. He did indeed feel sadness--a sadness of the most painful nature; and while Adeline hung over him with all the anxious and soothing attention of unbounded love, he seemed to shrink from her embrace with horror, and, turning away his head, feebly murmured. 'O Adeline! this faithful kindness wounds me to the very soul. Alas! alas! how little have I deserved it!'

If Glenmurray, who had been the means of injuring the woman he loved, merely by following the dictates of his conscience, and a love of what he imagined to be truth, without any view of his own benefit or the gratification of his personal wishes, felt thus acutely the anguish of self-upbraiding,--what ought to be, and what must be, sooner or later, the agony and remorse of that man, who, merely for the gratification of his own illicit desires, has seduced the woman whom he loved from the path of virtue, and ruined for ever her reputation and her peace of mind!

'It is too late now for you to sit at an open window, indeed it is,' cried Adeline, after having replied to Glenmurray's self-reproaches by the touching language of tears, and incoherent expressions of confiding and unchanged attachment; 'and as you are evidently better to-day, do not, by breathing too much cold air, run the risk of making yourself worse again.'

'Would I were really better! would I could live!' passionately exclaimed Glenmurray: 'but indeed I do feel stronger to-night than I have felt for many months.' In a moment the fine eyes of Adeline were raised to heaven with an expression of devout thankfulness; and, eager to make the most of a change so favourable, she hurried Glenmurray back to his chamber, and, with a feeling of renewed hope, sat by to watch his slumbers. She had not sat long before the door opened, and the little tawny boy entered. He had watched all day to see the good lady, as he called Adeline; but, as she had not left Glenmurray's chamber except to prepare dinner, he had been disappointed: so he was resolved to seek her in her own apartment. He had bought some cakes with the penny which Adeline had given him, and he was eager to give her a piece of them.

'Hush!' cried Adeline, as she held out her hand to him; and he in a whisper crying 'Bite,' held his purchase to her lips. Adeline tasted it, said it was very good, and, giving him a halfpenny, the tawny boy disappeared again: the noise he made as he bounded down the stairs woke Glenmurray. Adeline was sitting on the side of the bed; and as he turned round to sleep again he grasped her hand in his, and its feverish touch damped her hopes, and re-awakened her fears. For a short time she mournfully gazed on his flushed cheek, and then, gently sliding off the bed, and dropping on one knee, she addressed the Deity in the language of humble supplication.

Insensibly she ceased to pray in thought only, and the lowly-murmured prayer became audible. Again Glenmurray awoke, and Adeline reproached herself as the cause.

'My rest was uneasy,' cried he, 'and I rejoice that you woke me: besides, I like to hear you--Go on, my dearest girl; there is a something in the breathings of your pious fondness that soothes me,' added he, pressing the hand he held to his parched lips.

Adeline obeyed: and as she continued, she felt ever and anon, by the pressure of Glenmurray's hand, how much he was affected by what she uttered.

'But must he be taken from me!' she exclaimed in one part of her prayer. 'Father, if it be possible, permit this cup to pass by me untasted.' Here she felt the hand of Glenmurray grasp hers most vehemently; and, delighted to think that he had pleasure in hearing her, she went on to breathe forth all the wishes of a trembling yet confiding spirit, till overcome with her own emotions she ceased and arose, and leaning over Glenmurray's pillow was going to take his hand:--but the hand which she pressed returned not her pressure; the eyes were fixed whose approving glance she sought; and the horrid truth rushed at once on her mind, that the last convulsive grasp had been an eternal farewell, and that he had in that grasp expired.

Alas! what preparation however long, what anticipation however sure, can enable the mind to bear a shock like this! It came on Adeline like a thunder-stroke: she screamed not; she moved not; but, fixing a dim and glassy eye on the pale countenance of her lover, she seemed as insensible as poor Glenmurray himself; and hours might have elapsed--hours immediately fatal both to her senses and existence--ere any one had entered the room, since she had given orders to be disturbed by no one, had not the tawny boy, encouraged by his past success, stolen in again, unperceived, to give her a piece of the apple which he had bought with her last bounty.

The delighted boy tripped gaily to the bed-side, holding up his treasure; but he started back, and screamed in all the agony of terror, at the sight which he beheld--the face of Glenmurray ghastly, and the mouth distorted as if in the last agony, and Adeline in the stupor of despair.

The affectionate boy's repeated screams soon summoned the whole family into the room, while he, vainly hanging on Adeline's arm, begged her to speak to him. But nothing could at first rouse Adeline, not even Savanna's loud and extravagant grief. When, however, they tried to force her from the body, she recovered her recollection and her strength; and it was with great difficulty she could be carried out of the room, and kept out when they had accomplished their purpose.

But Savanna was sure that looking at such a sad sight would kill her mistress; for she should die herself if she saw William dead, she declared; and the people of the house agreed with her. They knew not that grief is the best medicine for itself; and that the overcharged heart is often relieved by the sight which standers-by conceive likely to snap the very threads of existence.

As Adeline and Glenmurray had both of them excited some interest in Richmond, the news of the death of the latter was immediately abroad; and it was told to Mrs Pemberton, with a pathetic account of Adeline's distress, just as the carriage was preparing to convey her and her sick friend on their way to Lisbon. It was a relation to call forth all the humanity of Mrs Pemberton's nature. She forgot Adeline's crime in her distress; and knowing she had no female friend with her, she hastened on the errand of pity to the abode of vice. Alas! Mrs Pemberton had learnt but too well to sympathize in grief like that of Adeline. She had seen a beloved husband expire in her arms, and had afterwards followed two children to the grave. But she had taken refuge from sorrow in the active duties of her religion, and was enabled to become a teacher of those truths to others, by which she had so much benefited herself.

Mrs Pemberton entered the room just as Adeline, on her knees, was conjuring the persons with her to allow her to see Glenmurray once more.

Adeline did not at all observe the entrance of Mrs Pemberton, who, in spite of the self-command which her principles and habits gave her, was visibly affected when she beheld the mourner's tearless affliction: and the hands which, on her entrance, were quietly crossed on each other, confining the modest folds of her simple cloak, were suddenly and involuntarily separated by the irresistible impulse of pity; while, catching hold of the wall for support, she leaned against it, covering her face with her hands. 'Let me see him! only let me see him once more!' cried Adeline, gazing on Mrs Pemberton, but unconscious who she was.

'Thou shalt see him,' replied Mrs Pemberton with considerable effort; 'give me thy hand, and I will go with thee to the chamber of death.' Adeline gave a scream of mournful joy at this permission, and suffered herself to be led into Glenmurray's apartment. As soon as she entered it she sprang to the bed, and, throwing herself beside the corpse, began to contemplate it with an earnestness and firmness which surprised every one. Mrs Pemberton also fixedly gazed on the wan face of Glenmurray: 'And art thou fallen!' she exclaimed, 'thou, wise in thine own conceit, who presumedst, perhaps, sometimes to question even the existence of the Most High, and to set up thy vain chimeras of yesterday against the wisdom and experience of centuries? Child of the dust! child of error! what art thou now, and whither is thy guilty spirit fled? But balmy is the hand of affliction; and she, thy mourning victim, may learn to bless the hand that chastizes her, nor add to the offences which will weigh down thy soul, a dread responsibility for hers!'

Here she was interrupted by the voice of Adeline; who, in a deep and hollow tone, was addressing the unconscious corpse. 'For God's sake, speak! for this silence is dreadful--it looks so like death.'

'Poor thing!' said Mrs Pemberton, kneeling beside her, 'and is it even thus with thee? Would thou couldst shed tears, afflicted one!'

'It is very strange,' continued Adeline: 'he loved me so tenderly, and he used to speak and look so tenderly, and now, see how he neglects me! Glenmurray, my love! for mercy's sake, speak to me!' As she said this, she laid her lips to his: but, feeling on them the icy coldness of death, she started back, screaming in all the violence of phrensy; and, recovered to the full consciousness of her misfortune, she was carried back to her room in violent convulsions.

'Would I could stay and watch over thee!' said Mrs Pemberton, as she gazed on Adeline's distorted countenance; 'for thou, young as thou art, wert well known in the chambers of sorrow and of sickness; and I should rejoice to pay back to thee part of the debt of those whom thy presence so often soothed: but I must leave thee to the care of others.'

'You leave her to my care,' cried Savanna reproachfully,--who felt even her violent sorrow suspended while Mrs Pemberton spoke in accents at once sad yet soothing,--'you leave her to my care, and who watch, who love her more than me?'

'Good Savanna!' replied Mrs Pemberton, pressing the mulatto's hand as she returned to her station beside Adeline, who was fallen into a calm slumber, 'to thy care, with confidence, I commit her. But perhaps there may be an immediate necessity for money, and I had better leave this with thee,' she added, taking out her purse: but Savanna assured her that Mr Berrendale was sent for, and to him all those concerns were to be left. Mrs Pemberton stood for a few moments looking at Adeline in silence, then slowly left the house.

When Adeline awoke, she seemed so calm and resigned, that her earnest request of being allowed to pass the night alone was granted, especially as Mrs Pemberton had desired that her wish, even to see Glenmurray again, should be complied with: but the faithful mulatto watched till morning at the door. No bed that night received the weary limbs of Adeline. She threw herself on the ground, and in alternate prayer and phrensy passed the first night of her woe: towards morning, however, she fell into a perturbed sleep. But when the light of day darting into the room awakened her to consciousness; and when she recollected that he to whom it usually summoned her existed no longer; that the eyes which but the preceding morning had opened with enthusiastic ardour to hail its beams, were now for ever closed; and that the voice which used to welcome her so tenderly, she should never, never hear again; the forlornness of her situation, the hopelessness of her sorrow burst upon her with a violence too powerful for her reason: and when Berrendale arrived, he found Glenmurray in his shroud, and Adeline in a state of insanity. For six months her phrensy resisted all the efforts of medicine, and the united care which Berrendale's love and Savanna's grateful attachment could bestow; while with Adeline's want of their care seemed to increase their desire of bestowing it, and their affection gathered new strength from the duration of her helpless malady. So true is it, that we become attached more from the aid which we give than that which we receive; and that the love of the obliger is more apt to increase than that of the obliged by the obligation conferred. At length, however, Adeline's reason slowly yet surely returned; and she, by degrees, learnt to contemplate with firmness, and even calmness, the loss which she had sustained. She even looked on Berrendale and his attentions not with anger, but gratitude and complacency; she had even pleasure in observing the likeness he bore Glenmurray; she felt that it endeared him to her. In the first paroxysms of her phrensy, the sight of him threw her into fits of ravings; but as she grew better she had pleasure in seeing him: and when, on her recovery, she heard how much she was indebted to his persevering tenderness, she felt for him a decided regard, which Berrendale tried to flatter himself might be ripened into love.

But he was mistaken; the heart of Adeline was formed to feel violent and lasting attachments only. She had always loved her mother with a tenderness of a most uncommon nature; she had felt for Glenmurray the fondest enthusiasm of passion: she was now separated from them both. But her mother still lived: and though almost hopeless of ever being restored to her society, all her love for her returned; and she pined for that consoling fondness, those soothing attentions, which, in a time of such affliction, a mother on a widowed daughter can alone bestow.

'Yet, surely,' cried she in the solitude of her own room, 'her oath cannot now forbid her to forgive me; for, am I not as WRETCHED IN LOVE, nay more, far more so, than _she_ has been? Yes--yes; I will write to her: besides HE wished me to do so' (meaning Glenmurray, whom she never named); and she did write to her, according to the address which Dr Norberry sent soon after he returned to his own house. Still week after week elapsed, and month after month, but no answer came.

Again she wrote, and again she was disappointed; though her loss, her illness in consequence of it, her pecuniary distress, and the large debt which she had incurred to Berrendale, were all detailed in a manner calculated to move the most obdurate heart. What then could Adeline suppose? Perhaps her mother was ill; perhaps she was dead: and her reason was again on the point of yielding to this horrible supposition, when she received her two letters in a cover, directed in her mother's hand-writing.

At first she was overwhelmed by this dreadful proof of the continuance of Mrs Mowbray's deep resentment; but, ever sanguine, the circumstance of Mrs Mowbray's having written the address herself appeared to Adeline a favourable symptom; and with renewed hope she wrote to Dr Norberry to become her mediator once more: but to this letter no answer was returned; and Adeline concluded her only friend had died of the fever which Mrs Norberry had mentioned in her letter.

'Then I have lost my only friend!' cried Adeline, wringing her hands in agony, as this idea recurred to her. 'Your only friend?' repeated Berrendale, who happened to be present, 'O Adeline!'

Her heart smote her as he said this. 'My oldest friend I should have said,' she replied, holding out her hand to him; and Berrendale thought himself happy.

But Adeline was far from meaning to give the encouragement which this action seemed to bestow: wholly occupied by her affliction, her mind had lost its energy, and she would not have made an effort to dissipate her grief by employment and exertion, had not that virtuous pride and delicacy, which in happier hours had been the ornament of her character, rebelled against the consciousness of owing pecuniary obligations to the lover whose suit she was determined to reject, and urged her to make some vigorous attempt to maintain herself.

Many were the schemes which occurred to her; but none seemed so practicable as that of keeping a day-school in some village near the metropolis.--True, Glenmurray had said, that her having been his mistress would prevent her obtaining scholars; but his fears, perhaps, were stronger than his justice in this case. These fears, however, she found existed in Berrendale's mind also, though he ventured only to hint them with great caution.

'You think, then, no prudent parents, if my story should be known to them, would send their children to me?' said Adeline to Berrendale.

'I fear--I--that is to say, I am sure they would not.'

'Under such circumstances,' said Adeline, 'you yourself would not send a child to my school?'

'Why--really--I--as the world goes,' replied Berrendale.

'I am answered,' said Adeline with a look and tone of displeasure; and retired to her chamber, intending not to return till Berrendale was gone to his own lodging. But her heart soon reproached her with unjust resentment; and, coming back, she apologized to Berrendale for being angry at his laudable resolution of acting according to those principles which he thought most virtuous, especially as she claimed for herself a similar right.

Berrendale, gratified by her apology, replied, 'that he saw no objection to her plan, if she chose to deny him the happiness of sharing his income with her, provided she would settle in a village where she was not likely to be known, and change her name.'

'Change my name! Never. Concealment of any kind almost always implies the consciousness of guilt; and while my heart does not condemn me, my conduct shall not seem to accuse me. I will go to whatever place you shall recommend; but I beg your other request may be mentioned no more.'

Berrendale, glad to be forgiven on any terms, promised to comply with her wishes; and he having recommended to her to settle at a village some few miles north of London, Adeline hired there a small but commodious lodging, and issued immediately cards of advertisement, stating what she meant to teach, and on what terms; while Berrendale took lodgings within a mile of her, and the faithful mulatto attended her as a servant of all-work.

Fortunately, at this time, a lady at Richmond, who had a son the age of the tawny boy, became so attached to him, that she was desirous of bringing him up to be the play-fellow and future attendant on her son; and the mulatto, pleased to have him so well disposed of, resisted the poor little boy's tears and reluctance at the idea of being separated from her and Adeline: and before she left Richmond she had the satisfaction of seeing him comfortably settled in the house of his patroness.

Adeline succeeded in her undertaking even beyond her utmost wishes. Though unknown and unrecommended, there was in her countenance and manner a something so engaging, so strongly inviting confidence, and so decisively bespeaking the gentlewoman, that she soon excited in the village general respect and attention: and no sooner were scholars entrusted to her care, than she became the idol of her pupils; and their improvement was rapid in proportion to the love which they bore her.

This fortunate circumstance proved a balm to the wounded mind of Adeline. She felt that she had recovered her usefulness--that desideratum in morals; and life, spite of her misfortunes, acquired a charm in her eyes. True it was, that she was restored to her capability of being useful, by being where she was unknown; and because the mulatto, unknown to her, had described her as reduced to earn her living, on account of the death of the man to whom she was about to be married: but she did not revert to the reasons of her being so generally esteemed; she contented herself with the consciousness of being so; and for some months she was tranquil, though not happy. But her tranquillity was destined to be of short duration.