66 Death itself seemed her only remaining wish, and the sooner the better. "I am utterly-utterly wretched," she wrote in pages slurred and blotted with tears. "I have no one to advise or sympathise with me but Father Eustace, and I begin to doubt whether he is a safe and friendly counsellor. Have I sinned in telling you this? in asking for your sympathy, when before this miserable letter reaches you I shall be beyond the reach of help? I have discovered circumstances relating to you, that gratitude made me wish to tell, and Father Eustace has sworn me to secrecy, yet in case of my betraying them, I am to be shut up in a distant convent, where no mortal can communicate with me, and where all my letters will be examined. I have not a moment in which to tell you all now, or I would. Farewell, Miss Farinelli-a long, long farewell! Oh, if I have sacrificed all my earthly happiness, and am yet mistaken! Nothing was wanted to make me utterly wretched, but a doubt whether I did right in leaving home, and now that doubt has come! At this moment there is a vision before my eyes of what might have been my happy lot-the lovely garden of Daisy bank, the cheerful fire-side, the daily prayers, the honoured Bible, the long attached husband, and his kind old father, whom I might have been assisting Robert to nurse! I have been all night in chapel, prostrate on the stone floor, in the form of a cross, repeating my Ave Marias three hundred times, and I thought the image of St. Bridget stretched its arms toward me at last and smiled; yet strange to say I am not consoled. I dread, above all, the sight of Father Eustace. Must I confess to him this letter? Alas, no! There are home feelings that cannot be uttered even to him; and oh! Miss Farinelli, should you see Robert Carre, tell him there is no sorrow he has ever endured at our being parted that is not multiplied ten thousand times over in my wretched heart. I was supported long by the belief that my advisers were all infallibly right, that my merits were to save myself and Robert-you and all who love me, if I revenged my sins on myself by penances; but circumstances make me doubt Father Eustace now, and yet I am in the meshes of a net from which there is no escape. He comes! Farewell for ever." "There shall be an escape for Bessie," muttered Robert between his teeth, which he ground together with an energy that seemed almost insane, after Beatrice had showed him this letter, full of such inexpressible anguish. "Bessie may never now be mine; there is a soul-dividing barrier between us; but I forgive her all the misery she has caused me, and if the power of man can find out where she is shut up and deliver her from imprisonment, it shall be done. If there be a law on earth that can reach within the walls of a convent, I shall trace out the den into which she has been decoyed, and in defiance of all human or inhuman efforts to the contrary, release her." "It is a very generous intention, Robert," said Beatrice kindly; "but be very wary what you say or do when Father Eustace comes in question. He is of a species not yet understood in this country; but if there were a showman qualified to exhibit him in his den, you would hear of habits, feelings, and opinions which it would require the moral courage of a Van Amburgh to defy." "But I do defy him," said Robert in a low deep voice of concentrated emotion. "Honest straightforward Protestantism may be no match for Popish intrigues and falsehood, backed by superstition and conventual prisons, yet I can but try, and let life itself be the sacrifice rather than I should be a coward." CHAPTER XI. "Oh! happiness, our being's end and aim! MANY an hour did Lord Iona now agreeably squander in guessing and imagining what were the feelings and thoughts of Beatrice towards himself, or whether she bestowed either upon him at all. That such speaking eyes must be the interpreters of a heart which might be capable of the deepest and truest affection could not be doubted, but that heart might no longer be her own to bestow. She was evidently not one to lavish her attachment on the first man who asked her for it, and Lord Iona, in his own really modest opinion of himself, thought he might perhaps be the very last on whom she would bestow that treasure of unmeasured and immeasurable worth. It is remarkable how long men may dwell under the same roof with others, and sit at the same table, yet remain alike unknowing and unknown. A veil had fallen from the eyes of Beatrice, and she discovered how completely long absence, long silence, and the consciousness that they were divided in faith and in feeling, had restored her sentiments for Allan to the brother-and-sister terms of their early days; but she had not come to the secret of Lord Iona's long-cherished preference, nor to a suspicion that she herself returned it. Beatrice wandered next day thoughtfully along the river's side gazing at the azure sky, and forming a thousand imaginary images in the drifting clouds, while she sung in a low musing tone the beautiful air of "Bendemere Stream." Occasionally with a feeling of girlish enjoyment she threw a leaf upon the tide as emblematic of some wish, and idly watched in its progress for an omen whether success or failure should be the result; or she dropped the bright pebbles to observe their descent in the crystal flood; when most unexpectedly a voice close behind her took up the tune she sung, and made it a duet. Beatrice started, and looking as timidly round as a frightened hare, felt a blush mount to her cheek on observing Lord Iona, fishing-rod in hand, trailing it rapidly along that he might overtake her; and as soon as he was quite within conversible distance he said, "You seem just in the sort of idle humour that I am myself, Miss Farinelli, when even a man and monkey with a hurdy-gurdy would be a resource; so let me do my best to divert your ennui." "Perhaps I have no ennui to be diverted," said Beatrice smiling archly, while the delicate pink on her cheek became a bright carnation. "You are a true quack doctor, pretending to have discovered |