CHAPTER VI. I will be brief, And shrink not from confessing how the love My unsuspecting heart; nor me alone, But him, before whom, shining as he shone, I was as dust and ashes. SOUTHEY. PHILIP WALDEGRAVE, ESQ. was gone; but, like Sir Peter Teazle, he left his character behind him. And Roxana and Statira, at length, raised their drooping lily heads, and looked at each other. But the expression of their countenances was different; Miss Aylmer's possessed deep decision, and fixed determination, whilst Lady Oglander's vacillated between the wish to hold her tongue, and the necessity there was of speaking. And it was a long and simple story she had to tell. She began by saying she would not, for the world, it should have happened, but that she had seen the carriage depart through the park, and, thinking it all safe, she had immediately hurried down to pay Miss Aylmer the compliment of coming in the drawing-room to sit with her. At times, her simple diction would return to her, as she recounted her tale of bygone days. She had begun the world with no other relative but a brother. "We was born," she said, "of respectable parents; " and, from their dying early, they had been left to struggle through the world by themselves; dearly loving each other, and never contented, unless they shared all the good they got together. "He came to see me one day, and says, ‘I have got a place, sister.' And where is that, John? says I, little dreaming the consequences that were to follow our good fortunes! And then, it seemed, he was never at rest until he had got her into the same place with him. And then, as was natural, the young squire was kind to him; and John would recount it all, as, for a spare moment, he would lean in at her window at which she worked, and relate it all to her, filling her beaupot, at the same time, with the best flowers. And then, by degrees, the squire would come and lean in, when John was out of the way, quite away, and steal flowers from her nosegay, and would talk of heartsease and lovelies-a-bleeding, and would ask her, why she looked so grave? and once he took her hand, and she said she would tell John; and then he turned it off, by saying, he only meant to make her prick her fingers. There was a melancholy innocence in her manner as she proceeded. Her eyes were fixed on Rosalind, but their pretty twinkle was gone; and they seemed to be looking back to the days of her lost innocence. One day, when he came to help himself to her flowers, he had told her she was pretty. She had marked down the day, and the month, and the year, and the hour! and she took out the little worn bit of dirty paper, to show Miss Aylmer, from a smart green velvet pocketbook, the gift of Sir Francis. It somewhat surprised Rosalind, to see that twenty-six years had passed since all this had happened; and she said, after a pause, and some reflection on her part, "I think, Lady Oglander, if I am not mistaken, I have something to tell you that will give you comfort." But Lady Oglander was now lost in poor Betty Bracken; and she shook her head, and, putting her pocket-handkerchief in a desponding way from one hand to the other, said, "There is no comfort for one who has lost all that makes a poor girl to be respected!" And John, she continued, soon began to ask her what made her look so pale? and said she sat and worked too much. And then he thought it was the smell of the flowers. And then he proposed to put by a part of his wages, to give her a holiday. But all holiday, it seemed, for her was gone, except in the few moments that the squire talked with her in at the window. "You think him, I dare say, very handsome now, Miss Aylmer? but, if you had seen him then!" and a flush of triumph, followed by a gush of tears, for the first time came into her eyes, as, placing her elbows on her knees, she convulsively hid her face with her hands, and continued, "If you could have seen him, as I have seen him, so lofty, yet so kind! you would not wonder that, poor girl as I was, I should have fallen his victim. |