"It has done so already! My gloomy old towers shall ring again with echoes of human happiness and sounds of grateful devotion. Their Protestant master shall become a model husband, when united by the dearest link in the chain of human sympathies with his model wife. Believing as I do that there is but one in the world who could make me happy, and that by the greatest good fortune I have secured her, may we not hope that our lives shall be adorned by much of the real poetry of life, and even by a little of its romance, though, at the same time, built of the most durable materials? "There's a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told, When two that are link'd in one heav'nly tie, With heart never changing, and brow never cold, Love on through all ills, and love on till they die." — Moore. "Ten years hence, I shall inquire whether your opinion is still the same, and if so, then I shall begin to be vain," said Lady Anne, striking away a piece of gravel with the point of her parasol. "Yet, Sir Allan, can you and I ever dream of happiness again, after all we have both suffered ?" "Of course we can! I wish all the world were as happy as you and I at this moment! I feel now as if every castle in the air of my former life were becoming realized in solid stone and lime. All that I ask or expect is perfect felicity for the rest of our lives. With me you shall not be able to help feeling happy: I shall hate myself if I cannot make you So. The dark hour of life has passed away from us, and the daylight has dawned. It was truly said that the post of honour is a private station well supported; and such a home as ours shall be a scene of well regulated enjoyment. "Oh to be thus and thus day after day, To sleep and wake, now find it yet a dream !'" "I hope we shall not find the assertion true, that life is at first all poetry and at last all prose," said Lady Anne, smiling; "but I remember hearing the beautiful Lady Porchester say of herself lately, I began life with being considered a perfect fairy, and now I end it looking like a perfect witch.' How will you stand such a change as that in me, for I cannot promise not to grow old and ugly soon,—perhaps even peevish and cross." "Well, I would rather be miserable with you than happy with any one else. You will not be so bad, I hope, as Lady Porchester, who beats her Abigail when she is irritated. She was heard lately praising herself as a perfect pattern of conjugal excellence, and ended by saying, 'Long as Porchester and I have been married, I never yet struck him!"" “Well, you do not promise yourself too much, I see," replied Lady Anne, with a look of comic humour. "My faults, and they are many, shall become in your partial eyes like the spots on ermine-fur, the greatest embellishments. We must have a flight of happiness quite beyond the reach of ordinary wings." "Now that I am to "stand prostrate at your feet for life, let us have something more than common to boast of," said Sir Allan, breaking into a smile. "We must have a perfect flitch-of-bacon honeymoon; and we must show the world that, having been rescued from a life of deathlike solitude and insane austerities, we can, without any Popish caricature of religion, serve God faithfully, while energetically doing the work of this world, and gratefully enjoying its pleasures, in all the homely simplicity of domestic happiness." "Apropos of nuns, monks, and solitary cells," exclaimed Lady Anne, eagerly; "it is most unaccountable that for weeks I have watched the tiresome postman in vain, expecting he would bring me a letter from sister Agnes-ci-devant Miss Turton. No doubt she would give the ears off her head—the only possession she has left herself to un-sister-Agnes herself again; but I have written to her incessantly, begging to know if she is endurably comfortable, and got no answer. Can she have changed her mind?" "You wished to know, I suppose, how Miss Turton prospered, like those who are shivering on the first step of a bathing-machine, and ask those who preceded them if they do not find it cold," replied Sir Allan. "But you know her letters and yours must all be inspected. Miss Turton is now, in every sense but the breath of life, dead. Every tie being relinquished, she must speak even of your long-tried friendship as passed for ever away: 'I had a friend once: I had wealth; I had books;' but now she cannot even have a drawer or box with a key to it. There must be no obstacle to that system of complete espionnage which might put a detective policeman to shame. I know all, for I have experienced it all." "Still, I should not like that any harm happened to my poor, deceased, well-meaning idiot of a governess," exclaimed Lady Anne, with a look of good-humoured, pretty wilfulness. "We agreed that if she died, a lock of her poor, dear, iron-grey hair should be sent to me. They cannot, surely, have shut up Miss Turton as insane? Odd and absurd as she was, it cannot possibly be come to that! How well I remember that dreadful lunatic cell, the door of which my governess and I laughingly passed some few weeks ago! Really, Sir Allan, though not usually fanciful, I shall be unable to banish from my imagination the picture of that unfortunate Miss Turton, locked up in her solitary cell, tearing her hair-or rather with none to tear, for they shaved her head." "Have you not often watched a jockey breaking in a horse?" asked Sir Allan, gravely. "It is done by making the animal go round, and round, and round the same weary circle, till he is broken in to mechanical, unthinking obedience. If he be a fine, high-spirited animal, he is merely condemned to take a few more rounds, and a few severer lashes, but the result is invariably similar. The high-mettled racer, or the dull, plodding hack, are equally broke in to be ridden or driven, as their masters please. So it was with me. My guardian uncle, availing himself of his legal and relative authority, threw the lasso over my neck, and from that day, life's dull round went invari..bly on without sleep, food, or liberty, while at first I had not the power, and at last not the will to rebel. Thus le souffle des hommes éteint ce que le souffle de Dieu a ranimé. " "And you, worthy man, thinking no evil, could not be persuaded to believe in any evil intentions against yourself," added Lady Anne, archly. 'I am afraid the next time Father Eustace meets me, now that the fetters he had prepared for us both are shivered to atoms, he will say like Hamlet, 'If thou dost marry, I'll give thee the plague for thy dowry!' Perhaps I may be the greatest plague in life to you." "I shall take my chance of that, Anne," continued Sir Allan, fervently. "I consider love such as ours the most glorious gift remaining amidst the wreck of buman happiness. Father Eustace would have persuaded us that this world's affections are only a snare and a delusion; but we shall consecrate them by a life of diligent and enlightened piety, in which love shall be second to devotion. There are finger-posts enough on the path of life to direct us aright, if we do not prefer going on in darkness, and if we do not break our heads against them." "Allan, with you for a companion, the whole road of life before me seems drenched in sunshine, and strewed with flowers," replied Lady Anne, in a low tone of emotion. "I was blighted by a night-wind, but now the morning sun shines on me, and I am restored. "Though fortune frown, or falser priest betray, Should all be changed, to find thee faithful still.'” |