CHAPTER XV. "For such goodness can I return nothing But some hot tears that sting mine eyes? Some sighs, TRIFLES "light as air," are sometimes magnified into affairs of great "pith and moment." Louisa Detaval was once accidentally overtaken on the King's highway by a cavalier, to whom she happened to be known, and she again met the same individual by appointment. Out of these meagre facts proceeded a full-grown, bloated calumny. The cavalier was her suitor; he was worthless; and she was about to elope with him; or, in the elegant phrase of Miss Elmer, "to throw herself away, and to disgrace her family." It is now our province to tell the plain unvarnished tale. The traveller was De Clifford -he was passing on to a distant county without knowing that he was in the neighbourhood of Sir George Delaval's estate; his brow was clouded with care; and his business appeared to be urgent. When Louisa crossed his path, he could scarcely believe the vision to be real, and she was equally surprised when he accosted her in the language of familiar recognition. Eagerly she inquired after Mrs. Wilmington, and the Evelyns; and having received satisfactory answers, with an anxious penetrating glance, she questioned him as to the object of his present journey, and the point of his destination. He simply informed her, that his object was to serve VOL. II. 18 a dear and intimate friend of hers-that he was on his way to an estate which was once her property, but which was now lost to her for ever. "He was desirous," he said, " of securing a few family pictures, and some other things of little intrinsic value, but which their late owner highly esteemed. That individual," he added, 66 was no other than Mrs. Dormer, with whom he had been slightly acquainted during the time he had connected himself with the fashionable world, and whom he had since occasionally met in his late sojourn in town." The intelligence thus unexpectedly communicated, pierced the heart of Louisa, who, anxious to know all the particulars of this distressing case, and to ascertain De Clifford's success in the generous purpose of his journey, requested that he would call upon her on his return. This he promised to do, and the interview took place in the manner we have already described. Prior to her leaving town, Louisa was deeply grieved to witness the growing wretchedness of her once sprightly and animated friend. Sometimes, while indulging in her usual style of playful badinage, the tears of sorrow would steal down her cheeks, and more than once, overpowered by her feelings, she had been obliged to retire. Her gaiety excited pain, because it was no longer natural. It was too evidently a fruitless effort to conceal the wound which was festering in her stricken heart. Even to Louisa, she never could disclose the sources of her woe, nor was it necessary; -they were seen and felt by all who knew her. For several months, she had been in that delicate situation in which women "wish to be who love their lords," and which demands from them the most unwearied and devoted attentions. But, unhappily, the being to whom she had confided her destiny, was equally devoid of principle and feeling; he had obtained her fortune, and was perfectly different to her person. After the detection of the criminal intrigue which had endangered his worthless life, though Emily never once upbraided him; but was constantly at his side to soothe his pains, and to anticipate his wishes, he was utterly insensible to her kindness. For a few days, indeed, he' made a fulsome parade of his gratitude, and talked as if he felt it; but the very semblance soon passed away, and again he launched forth on the ocean of dissipation; spending his days in folly, and his nights in gambling. When unsuccessful at play, he generally returned home to vent his brutal rage upon his unoffending wife. As Vice is rapidly progressive, the shades of his character deepened every day; while the gulf of ruin yawned and widened at his feet. Fortune, which had once favoured, now capriciously forsook him. Every venture was a failure; and he was constantly involving both his own estate and that which he possessed in the right of Emily. Maddened thus to desperation, he resolved to set his life upon a cast; to rise or fall for ever, by the hazard of a single die. Among those who appeared the most eager to win his money, and who generally encountered him with success, was an individual who wore a singular disguise, and who was unknown to the regular practitioners of the black and detestable art, in the mysteries of which he seemed to be perfectly initiated. His constant attendance among them, and his indifference to every game in which Dormer was not a party, filled them all with surprise. Dormer viewed him as the dæmon of his destiny, and under the infatuation we have described, resolved to stake with him the last shilling of his fortune. The stranger accepted the challenge; and, in one fatal moment, his antagonist was hurled from comparative affluence to absolute beggary. In an agony of despair, he hurried home ;it was morning, and he threw himself on a sofa ; but a thousand dæmons seemed to haunt him. Alive to the full horror of his situation, he yet dreaded to realize it. He slumbered; and the injured form of Emily rose before him;-he awoke in dismay-he loved her not, yet he feared to meet the silent reproach of her eye, an indignant glance from which sometimes revealed to him his own contemptible nothingness. But he had only dreamed-yet the phantom must soon become real-he must meet the woman he had ruined; and, at this moment, his courage utterly failed him. He felt that he could not now resort to his usual expedient-his fierce insolence would not silence her complaints; and his Stoical apathy would not avail to mock the upbraiding of her tears. Besides, the world would espouse her cause. Yes! his own despicable associates would brand him as a villain; and how was he, pennylêss and friendless, to encounter the loud denunciations of an indignant world. For the first time in his life, something like thought and reflection was awa kened in his breast; something between compunction and shame rankled within him. It was not penitence. It was not the anguish of a generous and noble spirit, wrecked by temptation and passion, and accusing itself with reproachful vehemence as the desperate author of its own ruin, more afflicted by its moral degradation than by all the outward misfortunes which 'might be the consequences of its guilt. It was rather the pusillanimous wailing of a wretch, whose wickedness was no farther a matter of regret than as it brought its own punishment with it. Wrung with these emotions, he slunk from the house which was no longer his, and left his wife to read the discovery of her wrongs in the affected condolence or the averted looks of her heartless acquaintances. The fact soon become notorious. Innumerable creditors poured in their claims. Dormer was arrested; and every remaining vestige of his possessions doomed to the hammer. De Clifford happened to be in town when the dire calamity visited the intimate associate of Louisa, the best, the dearest friend of his departed Julia. He casually learnt Mrs. Dormer's predilection for certain articles of furniture in her distant estate, and without apprising any individual of his purpose, he took the journey we have mentioned, and happily succeeded in its object. It was likewise, in this hour of anguish and hopeless despair, that Emily received a visit from Mrs. Dorothy Dormer, the maiden aunt of her unfeeling husband, whose Methodism and oddities, as they were termed by the world of fashion, had precluded her from the acquaintance 18* VOL. II. |