When Emily received and laid this letter to her heart, she felt nothing in common with the spirit which it breathed. With that quick transition and inconstancy of feeling so common in women, and which is as fre quently their safety as their peril, her mind had already repented of the weakness of the last evening, and relapsed into the irresolution and bitterness of her former remorse. Never had there been in the human breast a stronger contest between conscience and passion;—if, indeed, the extreme softness (notwithstanding its power) of Emily's attachment could be called passion: it was rather a love that had refined by the increase of its own strength; it contained nothing but the primary guilt of conceiving it, which that order of angels, whose nature is love, would have sought to purify away. To see him, to live with him, to count the variations of his countenance and voice, to touch his hand at moments when waking, and watch over his slumbers when he slept-this was the essence of her wishes, and constituted the limit to her desires. Against the temptations of the present was opposed the whole history of the past. Her mind wandered from each to each, wavering and wretched, as the impulse of the moment impelled it. Hers was not, indeed, a strong character; her education and habits had weakened, while they rendered more feminine and delicate, a nature originally too soft. Every recollection of former purity called to her with the loud voice of duty, as a warning from the great guilt she was about to incur; and whenever she thought of her child-that centre of fond and sinless sensations, where once she had so wholly garnered up her heart-her feelings melted at once from the object which had so wildly held them riveted as by a spell, to dissolve and lose themselves in the great and sacred fountain of a mother's love. When Falkland came that evening, she was sitting at a corner of the saloon, apparently occupied in reading, but her eyes were fixed upon her boy, whom Mrs. St. John was endeavouring at the opposite end of the room to amuse. The child, who was fond of Falkland, came up to him as he entered: Falkland stooped to kiss him; and Mrs. St. John said, in a low voice, which just reached his ear, "Judas, too, kissed before he betrayed." Falkland's colour changed: he felt the sting the words were intended to convey. On that child, now so innocently caressing him, he was indeed about to inflict a disgrace and injury the most sensible and irremediable in his power. But who ever indulges reflection in passion? He banished the remorse from his mind as instantaneously as it arose; and, seating himself by Emily, endeavoured to inspire her with a portion of the joy and hope which animated himself. Mrs. St. John watched them with a jealous and anxious eye she had already seen how useless had been her former attempt to arm Emily's conscience effectually against her lover; but she resolved at least to renew the impression she had then made. The danger was imminent, and any remedy must be prompt; and it was something to protract, even if she could not finally break off, a union against which were arrayed all the angry feelings of jealousy, as well as the better affections of the friend. Emily's eye was already brightening beneath the words that Falkland whispered in her ear, when Mrs. St. John approached her. She placed herself on a chair beside them, and, unmindful of Falkland's bent and angry brow, attempted to create a general and commonplace conversation. Lady Margaret had invited two or three people in the neighbourhood; and when these came in, music and cards were resorted to immediately, with that English politesse, which takes the earliest opportunity to show that the conversation of our friends is the last thing for which we have invited them. But Mrs. St. John never left the lovers; and at last, when Falkland, in despair at her obstinacy, arose to join the card table, she said, "Pray, Mr. Falkland, were you not intimate at one time with ****, who eloped with Lady ***?" "I knew him but slightly," said Falkland; and then added, with a sneer, the only times I ever met him were at your house." Mrs. St. John, without noticing the sarcasm, continued "What an unfortunnte affair that proved! They were very much attached to one another in early life-the only excuse, perhaps, for a woman's breaking her subsequent vows. They eloped. The remainder of their history is briefly told: it is that of all who forfeit every thing for passion, and forget that of every thing it is the briefest in duration. He who had sacrificed his honour for her, sacrificed her also as lightly for another. She could not bear his infidelity; but how could she reproach him? In the very act of yielding to, she had become unworthy of, his love. She did not reproach him-she died of a broken heart! I saw her just before her death, for I was distantly related to her, and I could not forsake her 66 · utterly even in her sin. She then spoke to me only of the child by her former marriage, whom she had left in the -years when it most needed her care: she questioned me of its health-its education-its very growth: the minutest thing was not beneath her inquiry. His tidings were all that brought back to her mind the redolence of joy and spring.' I brought that child to her one day: he at least had never forgotten her. How bitterly both wept when they were separated! and she-poor, poor Ellenan hour after their separation was no more!" There was a pause for a few minutes. Emily was deeply affected. Mrs. St. John had anticipated the effect she had produced, and concerted the method to increase it. "It is singular," she resumed, "that the evening before her elopement, some verses were sent to her anonymously-I do not think, Emily, that you have ever seen them. Shall I sing them to you now?" and without waiting for a reply, she placed herself at the piano; and with a low but sweet voice, greatly aided in effect by the extreme feeling of her manner, she sang the following verses : TO *** 1. And wilt thou leave that happy home, 2. The Bird may rove, and still regain 3. If wandering o'er a world of flowers, 4. Recall thy youth's unsullied vow The past which on thee smiled so fair; 5. No hour, no hope, can bring relief To her who hides a blighted name; 6. And when thy child's deserted years 7. When on thy name his lips shall call, (That tender name, the earliest taught!) Thou wouldst not Shame and Sin were all The memories link'd around its thought! 8. If Sickness haunt his infant bed, Ah! what could then replace thy care? As if a mother's soul was there? 9. Enough! 'tis now too late to shun The bitter draught thyself wouldst fill ; Thy bark is in the haven still. 10. If doom'd to grief through life thou art, It were vain to attempt describing Emily's feelings when the song ceased. The scene floated before her eyes indistinct and dark. The violence of the emotions she attempted to conceal pressed upon her almost to choking. She rose, looked at Falkland with one look of such anguish and despair that it froze his very heart, and left the room without uttering a word. A moment more-they heard a noise-a fall. They rushed out-Emily was stretched on the ground, apparently lifeless. She had broken a blood vessel! FALKLAND. BOOK IV. FROM MRS. ST. JOHN TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ. AT last I can give a more favourable answer to your letters. Emily is now quite out of danger. Since the day you forced yourself, with such a disinterested regard for her health and reputation, into her room, she grew, (no thanks to your forbearance,) gradually better. I trust that she will be able to see you in a few days. I hope this the more, because she now feels and decides that it will be for the last time. You have, it is true, injured her happiness for life: her virtue, thank Heaven, is yet spared; and though you have made her wretched you will never, I trust, succeed in making her despised. You ask me, with some menacing and more complaint, why I am so bitter against you. I will tell you. I not only know Emily, and feel confident, from that know. ledge, that nothing can recompense her for the reproach. es of conscience, but I know you, and am convinced that you are the last man to render her happy. I set aside, for the moment, all rules of religion and morality in ge neral, and speak to you, (to use the cant and abused phrase,) "without prejudice," as to the particular instance. Emily's nature is soft and susceptible, yours fickle and wayward in the extreme. The smallest change or caprice in you, which would not be noticed by a mind less delicate, would wound her to the heart. You know that the very softness of character arises from its want of strength. Consider, for a moment, if she could hear the humiliation and disgrace which visit so heavily the offences of an English wife? She has been brought up in the strictest notions of morality; and, in a mind not naturally strong, nothing can efface the first |