ill. I charge you come, and hereafter you shall, if you please, be for

ever delivered from your

"'RUPERT.

"On this letter she went; yet in innocence, for she took her child with her. Could any one doubt that she was betrayed, carried off, the victim of the foulest treachery? No one did doubt it. Police were sent from London, the country searched, the most minute inquiries set on foot. Sometimes it was supposed that a clew was found, but in the end all failed. Month after month passed; hope became despair; pity merged into surmise; and condemnation quickly followed. If she had been carried forcibly from her home, still she could not forever be imprisoned and debarred from all possibility at least of writing. She might have sent tidings from the ends of the earth, nay, it was madness to think that she could be carried far against her own will. In any town, in any village, she might appeal to the justice and humanity of her fellow-creatures, and be set free. She would not have remained with the man of violence who had torn her away, unless she had at last become a party in his act, and lost all right to return to her husband's roof.

"Such suspicions began to creep about--rather felt in men's minds than inferred in their speech--till her husband first, uttered the fatal word; and then, as if set free from a spell, each one was full of indignation at her dereliction and his injuries. Sir Boyvill was beyond all men vain--vanity rendered him liable to jealousy--and, when jealous, full of sore and angry feelings. His selfishness and unforgiving nature, which had been neutralized by his wife's virtues, now, quickened by the idea of her guilt, burst forth and engrossed every other emotion. He was injured there where the pride of man is most accessible--branded by pity--the tale of the world. He had feared such a catastrophe during the first years of his wedded life, being conscious of the difference which age and nature had placed between him and his wife. In the recesses of his heart he had felt deeply grateful to her for having dissipated these fears. From the moment that her prudent conduct had made him secure, he had become another man--as far as his defective nature and narrow mind permitted--he had grown virtuous and disinterested; but this fabric of good qualities was the result of her influence; and it was swept away and utterly erased from the moment she left him, and that love and esteem were exchanged for contempt and hatred.

"Soon, very soon, had doubts of his wife's allegiance and a suspicion of her connivance insinuated themselves. Like all evilly-inclined persons, he jumped at once into a belief of the worst; her taking her son with her was a mere contrivance, or worse, since her design had probably been to carry him with her--a design frustrated by accident, and the lukewarmness of her lover on that point; the letter left behind he looked on as a fabrication, left there to gloss over her conduct. He forgot her patient goodness--her purity of soul--her devoted attachment to her children--her truth; and attributed at once the basest artifice--the grossest want of feeling. Want of feeling in her! She whose pulses quickened and whose blushes were called up at a word; she who idolized her child even to a fault, and whose tender sympathy was alive to every call; but these demonstrations of sensibility grew into accusations. Her very goodness and guarded propriety were against her. Why appear so perfect, except to blind? Why seclude herself, except from fears which real virtue need never entertain? Why foster the morbid sensibility of her child, except from a craving for that excitement which is a token of depravity? In this bad world we are apt to consider every deviation from stony apathy as tending at last to the indulgence of passions against which society has declared a ban; and thus with poor Alithea, all could see, it was said, that a nature so sensitive must end in ill at last; and that, if tempted, she must yield to an influence which few, even of the coldest natures, can resist.

"While Sir Boyvill revolved these thoughts, he grew gloomy and sullen. At first his increased unhappiness was attributed to sorrow; but a little word betrayed the real source--a little word that named his wife with scorn. That word turned the tide of public feeling; and she, who had been pitied and wept as dead, was now regarded as a voluntary deserter from her home. Her virtues were remembered against her; and surmises, which before would have been reprobated almost as blasphemy, became current--as undoubted truths.

"It was long before Gerard became aware of this altered feeling. The minds of children are such a mystery to us! They are so blank, yet so susceptible of impression, that the point where ignorance ends and knowledge is perfected is an enigma often impossible to solve. From the time that he rose from his sick-bed, the boy was perpetually on the watch for intelligence--eagerly inquiring what discoveries were made--what means were used for, what hopes entertained of, his mother's rescue. He had asked his father whether he should not be justified in shooting the villain who had stolen her if ever he met him. He had shed tears of sorrow and pity until indignation swallowed up each softer feeling, and a desire to succour and to avenge became paramount. His dear, dear mother! that she should be away--kept from him by force--that he could not find--not get at her, were ideas to incense his young heart to its very height of impatience and rage. Every one seemed too tame--too devoid of expedients and energy. It appeared an easy thing to measure the whole earth, step by step, and inch by inch, leaving no portion uninspected till she was found and liberated. He longed to set off on such an expedition; it was his dream by night and day; and he communicated these bursting feelings to every one, with an overflowing eloquence, inexpressibly touching from its truth and earnestness.

"Suddenly he felt the change. Perhaps some officious domestic suggested the idea. He says himself, it came on him as infection may be caught by one who enters an hospital. He saw it in the eyes--he felt it in the air and manner of all: his mother was believed to be a voluntary fugitive; of her own accord she went, and never would return. At the thought his heart grew sick within him:--

"'To see his nobleness! Conceiving the dishonour of his mother, He straight declined upon't, drooped, took it deeply; Fastened and fixed the shame on't in himself; Threw off his spirit, his appetite, his sleep, And downright languished.'

"He refused food, and turned in disgust from every former pursuit. Hitherto he had ardently longed for the return of his mother; and it seemed to him that, give his limbs but a manlier growth, let a few years go over, and he should find and bring her back in triumph. But that contumely and disgrace should fall on that dear mother's head--how could he avert that? The evil was remediless, and death was slight in comparison. One day he walked up to his father, and fixing his clear young eyes upon him, said, 'I know what you think, but it is not true. Mamma would come back if she could. When I am a man I will find and bring her back, and you will be sorry then!'

"What more he would have said was lost in sobs. His heart had beat impetuously as he had worked on himself to address his father, and assert his mother's truth; but the consciousness that she was indeed gone, and that for years there was no hope of seeing her, broke in--his throat swelled, he felt suffocated, and fell down in a fit."