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Title: The libertine; vol. 3 [of 4]

Author: Charlotte Dacre

Release date: August 22, 2026 [eBook #79427]

Language: English

Original publication: London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1807

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79427

Credits: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIBERTINE; VOL. 3 [OF 4] ***

CHAPTER. XVIII., XIX., XX., XXI., XXII., XXIII., XXIV.

THE

LIBERTINE.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

W. Flint, Printer,

Old Bailey.

THE

LIBERTINE;

BY

CHARLOTTE DACRE,

BETTER KNOWN AS

ROSA MATILDA,

AUTHOR OF

Hours of Solitude, Nun of St. Omer’s, Zofloya, &c.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

If one by one you wedded all the world,

Or from the all that are, took something good

To make a perfect woman; she you kill’d

Would be unparallel’d.

SHAKESPEARE.

... Are not these strange self delusions, and yet attested

by common experience?

SOUTH.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, STRAND.

1807.

THE

LIBERTINE.

CHAP. XVIII.

TIME crept on, and all hope of discovering their child faded gradually and sorrowfully from the minds of the parents. Felix had attained his tenth year, and on him alone rested now their fond expectations. But the mind of the mother would often revert with a sigh of bitter regret to the probable fate of her beloved Agnes, who would now have been for her so sweet a companion, and filled up with delight many moments that were necessarily devoted to solitude; for Felix was more the companion of his father than her, and though a lovely and engaging youth, he needed that urbanity, softness, and docility of manner which fondly, she imagined in the gentle creature she had lost. The idol of his father, it was not unfrequently that she beheld insufficient her mild and rational controul to restrain the impetuosity of his manners, the wildness, and often serious impropriety of his conduct. But Angelo, who contended that all this was but the ardour and spirit of youth, and that it would yield to the soberer influence of judgment and increase of years, loved not that she should check the boy; for in the fulness of a proud self-love he would remember, that his son resembled what he himself had been at his age.

Thus by the mismanagement, and oftentimes imprudent interference of Angelo in his presence, many errors were suffered to take deep and fatal root in the heart of Felix, which the anxious vigilance and salutary reproofs of his mother might have timely extirpated, but would at all events have rendered of little influence in his future general character. Still she entertained hopes that unremitting perseverance on her side, and the ultimate prevalence of increasing reason over early folly, on his, would correct the imperfections of his present disposition, and render him all that her anxious love desired to behold him as a man.

The hopes of Gabrielle were however doomed to be frustrated, for the conduct of Felix, his inattention to her counsels, and disobedience of her commands, originated in a source deeper far than any of which she was aware; for while she considered as the wandering of the head merely, the errors of her child, they sprang from a heart corrupted and contaminated by the baneful influence of surrounding circumstance.

In the domestic establishment of Angelo, was a female named Milborough; she had been originally hired to attend exclusively upon the infant Felix, and to keep a guard over him, excepting when under the eyes of his parents. As Felix grew older however, and required no longer the vigilant care of a nurse, Gabrielle conceiving a regard for the woman on account of the attention she considered her to have bestowed upon her charge, retained her still in the family to officiate as a personal attendant upon herself. Nothing could be more gentle, modest, and unassuming than the general conduct of Milborough, nothing more treacherous, base, and diabolical than her heart: nothing could equal the propriety of her deportment but the depravity of her principles; nor any thing the conciliating anxiety she evinced to obey the smallest of Gabrielle’s desires, but the secret, malign, and unprovoked hatred which she bore her.

Possessed of a profligate intriguing spirit, she veiled it with the profoundest art, and under the guise of an inoffensive placidity, concealed a mercenary and deceitful soul; all she said, and all she did, bore the stamp of candour and disinterestedness; her countenance was never ruffled by impatience at reproof, she heard all with submission, but felt with rancour, and revenged with bitterness.

Soon after her introduction to the family, by an unfortunate accident, but one too easy of occurrence in a situation not strictly conformable to propriety and virtue, this woman had discovered that marriage was not the tie which bound in a union apparently so indissoluble those persons who gave her bread; and far from closing her eyes and ears, as duty dictated to a menial like herself, against a secret thus betrayed, she spared no opportunity of endeavouring to confirm, by prying curiosity, and unobserved remark, the truth of what at first had been but vaguely made known to her. She soon gained, or conceived that she did, proof sufficient to convince her. From that moment, those bad principles with which her soul was imbued were called into action; she no longer bore towards Gabrielle the smallest respect, viewing her no more in the light of a superior, though she still appeared to do so; for it is an invariable maxim with vulgar minds, when they discover aught amiss in those above them, immediately to place themselves upon a level with them, to consider all inequality at an end, and establish their own claims to distinction, merely upon a comparative view with their errors. Thus was it with Milborough, who not taking into her narrow conception the superior birth, merits, or high qualities of Gabrielle, saw simply an unjust difference in their present stations, and imagined when she beheld her unpolished figure in the glass, that her title to rank and opulence was in no way inferior to that of her mistress. This ignorant and presumptuous idea laid the foundation of a train of evils at once mighty and incalculable.

The commands of Gabrielle, now that she beheld her in a light so humiliated, no more enforced obedience from her as a duty; consequently she obeyed reluctantly, for they galled and offended her; and she made herself amends for her condescension by every means in her power. Being from her situation (which her interest would not permit her to resign) so placed as to be necessarily subordinate to Gabrielle, she from first thinking herself degraded by obeying her, ultimately hated her who commanded; yet this low born upstart presumed to consider Gabrielle a mark for envy, therefore for hatred; and in proportion as her high and superior virtues manifested themselves, supported by a steady dignity, the result of conscious nobility of mind, as well as birth, the hatred of this reptile increased with every foul aggravation which low minded malice could conceive, venting itself in secret, unsuspected, but dreadful mischief.

Though at the period of her entering the service of Angelo, Felix tenderly loved his mother, yet Milborough, from being constantly with him, acquired a sort of second love in his heart, which soon usurped the place of the first,—an undue and irrational influence on his mind likewise, such as vulgar cunning suggests, may be easiest obtained over youth and inexperience. It was by yielding ever to his follies and caprices, acquiescing with a smile in his wildest sallies; by indiscriminate indulgence, improper temptations to disobey the anxious or rational injunctions of his mother; flattery, inducing him to commit faults for the purpose of raising her consequence in his eyes by concealing them, and gaining his confidence and affection through the channel of a perverted gratitude.

Felix grew fond of his nurse; his boyish mind preferred her society to that of his mother, who content to see him happy, was never displeased at his anxiety to return to Milborough after being a short time absent from her; and from being merely induced to think from that circumstance that she treated the boy with kindness, continually bestowed on her marks of her gratitude and satisfaction; thus unconsciously cherishing a snake, who was stinging her in the tenderest point. When Felix, still very young, had committed one day a slight error for which Gabrielle considered it necessary to reprove him, but did it in the mildest and most gentle manner, Felix burst into tears, and sought his flattering nurse, who perceiving her pretended favourite weeping bitterly, took him immediately in her arms, and inquired the cause of his distress. Felix, certain of being pitied and soothed, informed her, while his tears redoubled; when giving vent to her secret malice, Milborough exclaimed,

“Indeed!—but she has no right to be angry with you, Felix.”

“Oh yes,” cried the boy, instantly checking his tears, and looking up in her face, struck as it appeared by so base an insinuation.—“Certainly my mother has a right to be angry with me.”

“Indeed she has not, Felix,” answered Milborough, with a lip of contempt, “your father has a right, but she is nobody.”

“Nobody! Milborough,” cried Felix, looking at her indignantly,—“my mother nobody? I do not understand you,” and, instinctively as it were, he withdrew her arm from round his neck.

“Why, Felix, you are too young to understand indeed, so let us say no more about it.”

But the curiosity of youth is not so easily appeased; this the artful Milborough reckoned on, and when a few minutes after Felix required an explanation of what she had meant by saying his mother was “nobody,” her eyes sparkled with the exultation of malice, and her base heart rejoiced at the thought of the revenge she was taking upon the excellence, and imagined happiness of Gabrielle, which she died to frustrate.

“Why then,” with pretended hesitation she replied—“I will tell you,—but first promise me never to mention it to any one, but above all, not to your mother.”

“Oh, but my mother says I must never have any secrets from her,” answered Felix.

“Pho, nonsense,” returned Milborough, putting her arm round him again, which action, his curiosity now on the stretch, he did not again repulse.—“Now listen.”

The little Felix opened his ears to drink in the base pernicious communications of the abandoned Milborough; and she availing herself of the deep attention with which he listened, made as clear as she possibly could to his childish capacity, that there was a certain ceremony called marriage, which if not duly and regularly performed between two persons deciding to live together, the female lost all consequence in society, and was regarded as an unfit companion for other females, honourably married; that the children, likewise, were never considered by the world as entitled to any distinction, but on the contrary; and that therefore they were not obliged to honour or obey a mother whom no one honoured or esteemed, and who had so little considered in her conduct their future welfare or estimation in society. “Thus, Felix, you perceive I was right,” she concluded, “in saying that your mother was nobody.”

Felix was silent, his mind was confused, he felt something like painful conviction, and this conversation made a deep impression. Above all, he remembered a sensation of uneasiness which he had experienced at that part of Milborough’s discourse wherein she had made an observation respecting the opinion which the world entertained of children situated as he now understood himself to be.

A frequent recurrence to that most infamous insinuation produced a baleful effect upon his character: he endeavoured, child as he was, to divest himself of all pride, conceiving from what Milborough had said, he had no right to possess any, and in so doing unfortunately divested himself of that pride which is the foundation of every virtue, the pride of principle. As he grew older, the destructive effect of this idea produced daily more lamentable consequences. He lost all self respect, all solicitude for proper conduct; he said to himself, “However good, honourable, or virtuous I may be, no one will look at me, or think me worthy notice.” Thus is it but too true, that however injurious may be an excess of pride, to be wholly devoid of it is to be devoid of every virtue; for when we despise ourselves, we are indifferent to the approbation of others, to the noble distinction of superior worth, and all that gives consideration to the man.

Unhappily for Gabrielle, she knew not the corruption that had been engendered in the heart of her son; she knew not the dreadful sentiments that there had taken root, or her anxious counsels, her just and animated representation of that wherein true virtue and dignity consist, depending solely on the mind, and on the heart, towering singly and unaided, neither to be raised or depreciated by surrounding circumstances, but making in itself the nobility of the individual; had she but been aware, she might have destroyed the evil in its germ, and applied the remedy ere it had proved in vain.

Her who had been the nurse of his childhood, as Felix advanced to maturer years became the friend, the adviser of his youth, the faithful depositary, and often partaker of his secret follies and intentions; he now understood perfectly, from the frequent questions he had proposed to Milborough, and which she ever answered with unwearied readiness; from combining in his naturally intelligent mind such ideas as presented themselves, from observation, or an inquisitiveness of spirit, all which at first he had found it difficult to comprehend. From the joint operation of these circumstances his respect for his mother gradually decreased; with it decreased his love likewise, and involved with the dereliction the finer and better qualities of his soul; for filial love and respect cannot causelessly quit the young mind without depriving it of some of its best and brightest virtues.

The abandoned Milborough rejoiced in the train of mischief she was secretly laying, which in time she hoped to see explode, causing dreadful and unspeakable havoc. The boyish partiality of Felix for her increased rather than diminished with his years—she was so gentle, so yielding, so ever ready to acquiesce in all his wishes however difficult to be atchieved; she appeared too so happy when she could compass for him any point he desired, so delighted to favour or oblige him. Being frequently the companion of his father, he would sometimes in the plenitude of youthful exhiliration speak of her in terms of highest praise. Angelo would listen with a smile; he was not surprised at the fondness of a young boy for the woman who had been a kind nurse to him in his childhood, but he was wholly incompetent to judge of the merits of Milborough; she did not come within his sphere, and he had scarcely ever bestowed on her a moment’s attention. Induced at length by the reiterated observations of the youth in her favour, he one morning, when she entered the room where he was sitting with Gabrielle, raised mechanically his eyes to her face.—He beheld there an expression of modesty and ingenuousness which pleased him, and sufficient attraction to obviate the charge of ugliness, an attraction which, though devoid of youth or beauty, boasted a sort of charm independent of either.

Felix, who had remarked with pleasure that his father had noticed Milborough, seized the first opportunity of their being alone to ask him if he did not think Milborough handsome.

“Not particularly so,” was the reply of Angelo; “but since she has deported herself so well towards you, tell her from me, that whenever she chuses to marry, I will give her a sufficient portion to ensure the good-will of her husband.”

Felix, delighted at the idea of having so pleasing a communication to make to Milborough, and hoping that it would infinitely raise his consequence with her, hastened when he left his father to impart it to her. Scarce had Milborough heard him to an end, ere an idea flashed across her mind which tinged her cheek with the fire of exultation; she beheld in the munificent promise of Angelo, not merely what it proposed, but far more that it implied; disguising her joy however, she with an apparent modesty and humility entreated Felix to return her most grateful thanks to her lord, but with an air of embarrassment added, that she had no intention of ever marrying.

That night, sleep was a stranger to the eyes of Milborough; visions of aspiring hope floated before her; extravagant presumptuous calculations filled her brain, and she wondered at her dulness in having so long failed to see the road which lay most open for her to opulence and grandeur, but above all, to compass that destruction in which unceasingly she had longed to involve her envied hated mistress. The casual notice of Angelo, and the intimation sent her by him through Felix, formed the basis of her present golden dreams. Since he had deigned to listen to her praises, and so far acquiesced in their justice as to send her a special embassy proving his disposition in her favour, what might she not in reason expect? Well she knew she could not appreciate too highly the estimation in which she was held by Felix. He possessed an unlimited influence over his father, it was only therefore to render him voluntarily or involuntarily, no matter which, the medium of introducing her more fully to the observation of Angelo, and her most sanguine anticipations might be easily fulfilled.

Pursuant to this idea, she redoubled her attention towards the son, and threw herself, as much as her department in the family would allow, without suspicion, in the way of the father; she endeavoured by every artifice compleatly to estrange the affections of Felix from his mother, and to court him from her society to her own. For this purpose she filled her apartment with entertainment for him, drawing materials, with subjects more amusing than instructive, from which to copy, books, pernicious rather than edifying, musical instruments and songs that she accompanied him with, calculated from their tendency to corrupt the heart and mislead the imagination. Milborough, who had not an indifferent voice, one evening carelessly and with a smile observed to Felix, after concluding a song, “Do you not think, Felix, that my lord would like to hear some of our songs?”

“I am certain he would,” answered Felix eagerly, “but you would not sing before my mother, Milborough.”

“How simple you are,” returned Milborough; “certainly not.”

“Shall I ask my father then to come and hear you?” said Felix.

“Oh, not for the world,” returned Milborough laughing, “I am certain I could not sing a note in the presence of my lord.”

“Well, but if you did not see him?” cried Felix, smiling archly and looking at Milborough.

“Oh, perhaps I might then,” answered the artful Milborough, catching his idea.

“To-morrow evening I will bring my father to hear you, as if by accident, and he shall remain in the next room to you.”

“But he must not know,” interposed Milborough, “that I have any knowledge of his being there.”

“He shall not, indeed.”

“Well, upon those terms,” said Milborough with a musing air, but secretly rejoiced, and desiring to have the air of submitting to an arrangement of which she had been the first instigator, “upon those terms I think I have no objection.”

“It is decided,” cried Felix: “now let us have another song, and then I must leave you.”

The next evening Felix proposed to his father to be an unseen auditor of Milborough’s singing. Angelo, who had not the least anxiety to hear such vulgar harmony as he conceived hers must be, at first directly refused, but yielding to the entreaty of his son, he at length consented, and promised, laughing, that he would accompany him to the room adjoining hers for that purpose, at the time mutually agreed on. When the hour arrived, Angelo had forgotten his promise, but at the vexed remonstrance of the impetuous youth, he yielded acquiescence, and followed him to the appointed spot. A small glass window fixed in the door which separated the two rooms, was usually covered with a curtain, but the scheming Milborough, whose plan was artfully laid, had drawn this curtain the least degree possible aside, yet sufficiently, while it appeared the work of accident, to give an insight into the chamber. There accurately drest, that is modestly, though to the highest advantage, she awaited the moment when by a little signal previously agreed on between her and Felix, she should be informed of their entrance, and know when to begin her song. No sooner had she received from the unthinking boy the necessary hint, than she commenced by carelessly humming an air, not without taste, which at intervals she interrupted, as more intent upon her employment, which was embroidering flowers in a frame; then gradually she entered on the song of the air she had been humming. The subject was simply interesting and artfully chosen. It related to the concealed love of a maid in lowly station for a lord of high rank, and it painted her secret anguish in mournful expression, and melancholy tone, to which she managed to give peculiar effect, and concluded with the death of the maid from her hopeless passion, in consequence of the marriage of her lover with another.

While she sang, so apparently unconscious that any human being was nigh, Angelo, whose expectations she had completely surpassed, for he had attributed the praises of Felix merely to his want of taste in the science, found himself first involuntarily drawn towards the artfully contrived aperture, better to catch the notes of her voice, and next rivetted there, by the well arranged figure and pleasing countenance which displayed itself to his view. He continued gazing near a minute after the song was ended, and was only roused from his intentness by the gentle voice of Felix, who pulling him by the arm, in the spirit of boyish mischief whispered, “Let us break suddenly in upon Milborough, my lord, and tell her we have heard her song,—she will look so frightened and confused!”

“No, no, Felix,” replied Angelo, laughing, “what folly!”

“Oh, to oblige me, my lord—to oblige me, my dear father; do not refuse, I entreat you,” said Felix; and dragging his father forward, half reluctant, half careless, he with his foot burst open the door which led into her room, and both stood suddenly before her, Felix laughing immoderately at her confusion and alarm, so well affected as to deceive even himself. But since Angelo had for the first time entered her apartment, she was desirous to avail herself of the auspicious moment. On their sudden entrance the frame had fallen from her hand, she started up, and appeared in the greatest perturbation; now she trembled violently, seeming unable to sustain herself, attempted to catch at a chair for support, and failing, staggered and fell to the ground.

Angelo, somewhat flushed with wine, had given inconsiderately into the frolic of his son; but now seriously sorry for the terror he had occasioned a weak and timid female, he instinctively attempted to raise her from the ground, in which Felix, no longer gay and laughing, most earnestly assisted. At length Milborough appeared to recover, she was raised from the ground, but seeming suddenly to perceive that it was the hand of Angelo which held hers, to assist her, she swiftly withdrew it with a slight exclamation of alarm, and glanced on him a look, in which love struggling with apprehension, and pleasure with trembling timidity, were artfully contrasted. Angelo observed the expressive look; though past his youthful day, his natural character remained unchanged, at least in principle; ever open in a degree to the blandishments of women, he had not yet learnt to contemn them, and his vanity was still susceptible of being flattered by their admiration, as his heart to be influenced by their charms.

Thus Milborough, whose look had penetrated immediately to his self-love, began to wear additional attractions in his eyes; he now fancied there was meaning in the expression of her song, and while vanity faintly whispered that she dared to entertain an affection for him, self-love extenuated her presumption, and bade him pity, rather than despise her.

Honour and propriety would have dictated to Angelo at this imagined discovery, an unvarying countenance, excepting of increased coolness, and a speedy departure from her chamber, which if not expressive of his disgust, must have convinced her at least of the total impossibility of his supposing that such a look directed to him, could contain the slightest meaning. But no, true to the latent principles of his nature, of a character that wanted energy, firmness, and decision, that was ever acted on by the influence of circumstance, or the moment, and was devoid of the dignified fortitude which can resist adventitious temptation, he suffered more softness to be visible in his looks, more interest in the tone of his voice, more tenderness in the assistance he gave; but all this was urged by pity, and by the delicacy which a woman commands from a man, who discovers that she unhappily cherishes an imprudent passion for him. Instead of hastening from her room, as soon as possible, his stay was prolonged; nor did he quit her till he beheld her perfectly recovered, and then with the hope, expressed in the gentlest accents, that by the following day she would suffer no ill effects from the alarm she had experienced. Milborough seeming overpowered with confusion, scarcely lifted her eyes from the ground; and when Angelo rose for the purpose of departing, she arose likewise, for he had compelled her to sit in his presence, and seemed incapable, from a sense of the honour conferred upon her, of returning her faltering acknowledgments for such condescension.

CHAPTER XIX.

WHO would not have believed, after so long a period of constancy and perseverance in the right path, that the follies of Angelo were for ever at an end? Far otherwise; the errors of the libertine are too frequently so imbued with the character, as to be invincible to the operation of time, experience, conscience, or reason, and to end but with the life of the wretched being they tyrannize over.

And on what had depended hitherto the virtue of Angelo? on what the peace of the unhappy Gabrielle? On accident alone; no meteor presenting itself to his eyes, no attraction offering, he walked directly forward, nothing occurring to lead him astray; he sought not temptation, if it sought not him, but if it did he became its slave. Ill fated Gabrielle, rejoice in the slender portion of happiness thou hast experienced, dream it o’er in imagination, for never more shalt thou experience its reality.

Novelty, in the form of Milborough, presented itself to Angelo, and he was incapable of resisting the attraction: it is not age that checks the career of folly in the libertine—no, his follies then became vices, they degenerate into depravity; his feelings become vitiated, and he possesses no longer that choice delicacy of taste attendant on the pride of youth. Thus, from having been in an unguarded moment, by the influence of an idle boy, induced to pay a slight share of attention to a presumptuous menial, he found himself involuntarily interested, drawn frequently upon various pretexts to her apartment, and each time of seeing her, that she occupied, when out of her presence, an increased portion of his thoughts. Her artful demeanour tended greatly to strengthen those at first vague impressions; in it he saw, or fancied that he saw, a deep concealed love struggling with the profoundest respect, and most invincible timidity. If he entered suddenly, she started, blushed, and trembled, forgot her employment, hesitated, and knew not whether to stand or sit. If she chanced to meet him, which she likewise endeavoured to do as frequently as possible, she stood still, seeming undecided from confusion whether to pass him, or turn back. Angelo was convinced by these appearances, and while he compassionated an unhappy love, he involuntarily thought with tenderness of her who loved.

Mean time the conduct of Milborough towards Gabrielle was widely different from the respect she evinced for Angelo, and from what it had formerly been to herself; it was such precisely as a vulgar mind, impudently elate in anticipated good fortune, must manifest to one, whose high superiority it had presumed to envy. Gabrielle, mild as she was, became incensed at this change in the manners of a domestic, who had so much reason to persevere in a proper line of conduct, and she taxed her with her presumption in terms, for her, unusually severe. At her just reproof, the countenance of Milborough wore an audacious expression, between a sneer and a smile of triumph, and she deigned not to utter a sentence in mitigation of her faults.

It was the aim of this intriguing woman to bring as early as possible her plans to bear; she desired to provoke Gabrielle to dismiss her from her service, and while, to induce this result, she sought by the most unqualified insolence and offensive demeanour to try her patience beyond endurance, she caused Felix to represent to his father that she felt such symptoms of indisposition, as announced premature decay; at the same time artfully intimating to the youth that she wished her communications to be kept secret from all but himself, lest Gabrielle, who had become less kind to her than formerly, should insist on her removal; and then, with false tears, lamenting death only as it would deprive her of the happiness of seeing her dear Felix a man.

This was sufficient to hasten Felix, who for this worthless being possessed an affection far greater than for his amiable mother, to disclose to his father her most important secret. Angelo, with a momentary flutter at his heart, saw it was for him she pined—he felt interested; and half determined in his mind, that if Gabrielle, who was incapable of so unworthy an act, should dismiss the poor creature on account of ill health, to make it a point to do all that humanity required of him to promote her comfort. Thus did he seek ever to blind himself to the real motives that in certain particulars actuated his conduct. He formed immediately a pretext for paying her a visit, and in the plenitude of a deceiving self-love, he conceived, on regarding her, that her cheek looked paler, and her form reduced. This idea gave an additional victory to that slow undermining power she was gaining over his heart, and caused him, when he discovered the increasing interest which he felt for her, to excuse himself with the vain reflection, that she was a female formed for a higher station than the one in which fortune had placed her.

While her mean and treacherous influence was thus gaining ground in the mind of Angelo, her conduct became daily more insufferable to the pride and feelings of Gabrielle. She at length determined to dismiss her, but in consequence of her having been, as she believed, a tender nurse to Felix, she decided, first to inform Angelo of the various causes she had received from her of provocation, and to ask his concurrence in her intention. Accordingly she took the first opportunity of introducing the subject, expressing at the same time her regret that the ingratitude of the woman at so late a period of her service, should have induced her reluctantly to entertain an ill opinion of her heart. Ere she had half concluded, Angelo interrupted her, and while his conscience smote him for the thought he cherished, he hastily exclaimed, “Why not at once discard her?”

“I intended to have informed you such was my wish,” observed Gabrielle.

“Why ask my concurrence, upon such a trifle,” he faltered with a slight blush:—“do it—do it this instant, if you choose.”

Gabrielle, who could see in this nothing but most ready acquiescence in her proposal, (for though she had sometimes been obliged to think severely of Angelo, she had never yet thought humbly of him,) dropped the subject as unworthy further discussion, simply resolving to put her purpose in immediate execution. Thus in a few hours Milborough received orders to quit the house; she only smiled at the mandate, and prepared to obey with alacrity. While she was busily employed, Angelo, led by one of those impulses he never knew how to resist, entered her apartment. Milborough, who had fully expected this visit, nevertheless affected surprise, forgot as usual in what she was engaged, and in the utmost agitation stood still. Angelo, scarcely conscious of the purport of his visit, regarded her with some embarrassment; he felt humbled, and ashamed of the situation in which he found himself, yet knew not how to retract. Milborough saw that an impellant was necessary; she raised her eyes to those of Angelo, and casting them hastily down again, burst into tears. This was sufficient for him, man becomes reassured when he perceives that the confusion of a woman is greater than his own; he approached Milborough, took her hand, and inquired the cause of her distress.

“Oh, my lord, do not ask me,” she cried; “am I not going to quit my beloved Felix? to quit you—your service, my lord?”

“And do you so much regret that, Milborough,” said Angelo, in a soothing voice. The tears of Milborough redoubled, but she did not speak, for she knew when to be silent. Angelo’s heart was softened by her seeming anguish; he raised to his lips the hand he held, unworthy Angelo! and causing Milborough to be seated, he said in the low voice of a man who is conscious that he is saying what he ought not, “Grieve not, Milborough; be assured, that although you quit this house, I shall ever remember you with gratitude for the—the tenderness you have evinced towards my son, and—and—”

“Talk not of gratitude to me, my lord,” cried Milborough with a sigh.

“Of love then, Milborough,” cried Angelo, with a smile. “But whither do you go from hence? inform me at once, for I hear Felix coming towards us.”

“I hear him too, my lord,” said Milborough with a timid glance; “and since—since you deign to ask me of my destination—I go to my sister, who resides at——” Felix drew nearer. Angelo approached his ear, and the rest of her communication was whispered; when, unwilling that just at this moment Felix should behold him with Milborough, he glided hastily through the door that led into the apartment where first he had become debased by attending to her. Miserable Angelo! how art thou sunk, when even from the presence of thy child, thou fliest in confusion!

Triumphing in the folly of the one, and the misery she was preparing for the other, the worthless Milborough quitted the house of her benefactors, where for years she had possessed all the comforts of polished life, and been cherished as the humble friend and well wisher of the family; in return she had insulted the wife, seduced the husband, and corrupted the child. Such too often is the return of the depraved and mercenary vulgar for favours received, on whom benefits make no impression beyond the moment, and in the vocabulary of whose sensations the feeling, gratitude is not admitted.

A new æra of folly, or rather of vice, in the life of Angelo, now presents itself; the vice no longer of youth either, but of maturer years, the most unworthy, the most inexcusable, of all his former vices. If in the seduction of Gabrielle might be pleaded an impetuous love, excited by her manifold perfections; if in forsaking such excellence, might be pleaded his natural fickleness, allured by the sprightliness and affected simplicity of an Oriana; if further outraging a love and sentiments of which he was unworthy, he could presume to offer in extenuation the ravishing beauty, youth, and seeming innocence of a Paulina; what could he urge, when neither youth, grace, mind, nor manners, could be adduced as the attraction? What but a cureless depravity of taste, which being satiated by that which is good, seeks to excite anew a sickly appetite, by a reference to that which is bad?

Milborough possessed nothing, impartially considered, to charm or to allure; she was neither beautiful nor young, nor from her birth and education could she possibly be even elegant; in all probability she would for ever have passed unnoticed by Angelo, had she not introduced herself to his attention by flattering his vanity. Instantly he discovered in her a thousand charms, which she possessed not, and which, but for that single inducement, he never would have conceived her to possess. Now he became weary of the sameness of being virtuous, though he was only negatively so, and longed again for the meretricious pleasures of guilt.

Thus then, after the departure of the worthless Milborough, his feet wandered from home towards her habitation; her joy at beholding him, though decorously she desired to veil it, scarcely could be concealed from his view. The first decisive step once taken, the successive ones were easy, and followed rapidly; visit produced visit; from frequency, grew familiarity, from familiarity a fixed and settled intercourse that ultimately involved the most terrible consequences.

For a time Milborough continued to pay court to the weak side of Angelo, which her keen vulgar cunning had discovered to be an inordinate vanity: this mode of conduct had first drawn him towards her, and now rivetted him, and when at times his own polished education, refined knowledge of customs, and propriety, would discover to him the gross inaccuracies of Milborough, he would excuse himself for being pleased with her society in the fancied conviction of her possessing an excellent heart, and in the flattering belief that if he were to abstain from seeing her, she would die of grief. But when once a vulgar mind gains an ascendancy over a weak one, its obsequiousness ends, and the fawning flatterer becomes a most insufferable tyrant; its requisitions are those of profound folly, ignorance, and boundless presumption; and such trammels are more difficult to be shaken off than those of wisdom or of virtue.

Such was Milborough: she waited patiently till she beheld her empire secure; that it was so she ascertained by increasing gradually her demands upon Angelo; and finding each time that they were complied with without a single remonstrance, although she well knew at the time, they were such as he must find it difficult to compass; for example, among other things, she once desired him to procure for her some jewels which she remembered to have seen Gabrielle wear, promising that she would return them immediately that she had used them once, and he might then replace them from whence he took them, ere Gabrielle could perceive that they were missing. The imprudent Angelo complied with this most insolent demand, when to his confusion she afterwards laughingly refused to resign them, and observing his embarrassment, vowed like a fury that she was determined to keep them, or never see him more.

Angelo, in the true spirit of the libertine, who requires a zest even to what he loves, was terrified at this threat; for though he might have endured a separation with indifference, had he found she trembled at the thought, yet when she became the instigator, he discovered in her charms which he had never seen before. But what resource had he in the dilemma in which he had unwarily involved himself? Unwilling to lead Gabrielle into the error of suspecting any one unjustly, unwilling to appear or to acknowledge himself a thief in her eyes, he had then only this alternative. He caused a set precisely similar to those he had deprived her of to be formed in paste, and replaced them in her cabinet ere, domestic and unadorned as she ever was, she had missed them. Oh! passion, when indulged for a worthless object, to what degradation wilt thou hurry man!

Mean time Gabrielle who had been for some time in ignorance of this disgraceful connexion, and who could not possibly suspect it, from having been accustomed to appreciate too highly the pride and dignity of Angelo, now heard of it from all with whom she had any acquaintance, who scarcely even imagined it a secret from her; her own servants were fully informed of the odious truth, and though they seemed indignant at the infamy of Milborough, and treated their mistress with increased respect, it was perhaps more from envy (which ever exists among the vulgar against each other) at the good fortune of the former, than sincere and generous sympathy in the outrage offered to the latter.

Indeed, the low minded Milborough did her utmost to impress upon the mind of Gabrielle, that these reports were far from being unfounded: she had an elegant establishment, and she disguised from no one, that it was the Count D’Albini who enabled her to support it; she had an equipage emblazoned with his arms, servants wearing his livery, and with these her base and insensible soul led her to parade in unblushing triumph past the door of her former mistress, in hopes of at some period attracting her attention. Sometimes she even carried her shameless audacity so far as to force into the seat beside her, the weak, degraded Angelo, who, fearing to refuse, was borne along to catch the view of her he was so cruelly insulting, yet not unblushing, but trembling like a culprit who hides his head, with shame, from the glance of a just judge.

Gabrielle saw, in silence saw, the career of Angelo, at a period of life when the wild horses of folly slacken their course, and reason, becoming powerful, calls them from the chace; when the soul desires to rest from vain and ignoble pursuits, and experiences in the calm of a reformed and virtuous life, more happiness than was ever found in the palling irrational excesses of youth. She lived in the firm and pious hope, that each day would convince him more deeply of his misconduct, and that better reason must speedily prevail over what she considered the last ebullitions of expiring error.

Bitter adversity, frequent disappointment, had so rationalized as it were the firm mind of Gabrielle, that she now considered events rather in a philosophical point of view, as resulting from an inevitable necessity, and not therefore to be deeply or vainly lamented. In the pride of her youth and beauty, bitterly had she felt the derelictions of Angelo; but now with a humility that rendered her but more exalted, placing the rich treasures of her mind from the question, and estimating her personal charms even far below their real standard, she remembered that she was no longer so young or so attractive as formerly, and that the passions, tastes, and inclinations of men outliving, from their habits and mode of education, those of women, would sometimes lead them to pursue to a late period of life the means of indulging or gratifying them, and that therefore they were not to be too severely arraigned for faults almost implanted in their nature. Thus did she endeavour to excuse in Angelo, not only to herself, but to others, a conduct for which all who knew her despised and condemned him; and this she did, still cherishing hope, that her patience, toleration, and forbearance, must have ere long its effect over a good and honest heart, which still, spite of his errors, she believed Angelo’s to be. Neither could she think, as at first she could not credit who it was that had attracted Angelo, that an object so every way despicable could continue to detain him in the path of evil.

But when at length hope faded from her bosom, and still she perceived that his degradation continued; heart-sick and wretched, she shut herself up in her chamber; and a native pride which few could understand, and which she inherited from her noble father, made her refuse to see any one whose pity must have humbled, and whose unfeeling condolence she would have deemed an insult. The unhappy Gabrielle perceived too soon, that in flattering herself the dreadful misconduct of Angelo would be but of short duration, she possessed not a just knowledge of human nature; for the errors of later years are far more inveterate than those of youth. She perceived likewise that what little decorum he had for a time thought fit to observe towards her, and which had been with her indeed a strong ground of hope (for naturally, argued she, he is ashamed, and will not therefore persevere in what gives a feeling of humiliation) gradually wore off, and a bold insensibility of demeanour succeeded, not more cruel and unworthy, than it was offensive to delicacy and propriety. He was now seldom at home, he avoided as much as possible the sight of the injured Gabrielle, but if accidentally they met, he seemed impatient, and his manners were constrained, or coldly polite. What alternative for her under circumstances so hopeless? She still remembered she had a son; at some future period she might be assured that she had still a daughter; she decided then at once to remain unshaken, to bear and to forbear with the father for the sake of his children.

Such was her resolution, a resolution, as she conceived, of duty and necessity. But soon she found that even on this principle she might be justly exonerated from further endurance of the treatment of Angelo, from the sacrifice of her best and tenderest feelings at the shrine of that duty which had ever been the invariable motive of all her actions, and to which she was still willing to become a martyr.

The young Felix, who, as has been already observed, entertained for his superior mother but little affection, bestowed all of that sentiment which he was capable of feeling on the abandoned Milborough, for whom he pined in secret, and whom since her departure from the house he had not seen. In vain did the unfortunate mother seek in the eyes of her son for some shadow of respectfully tender commiseration; in them she beheld, often a restless roving expression, but at all times an indifference to her. There was no eloquent sympathy in the tone of his voice; in his manners, no soothing gentleness; from him too was she compelled to turn with a deep drawn sigh of anguish, but in that sigh remembered that though unhappily he loved her not, he was her son.

Such became the boundless and audacious extravagance of the worthless Milborough, whose aim it was as much to reduce Angelo to beggary, to destroy Gabrielle, as to enrich herself, that the magnitude of her demands sometimes anticipated, and even exceeded the receipts of Angelo. In his absence she kept the lowest society, such as was most consonant to her birth, ideas, and former station, and indulged with them in the most expensive and riotous carousals. As a man is rarely singly vicious, that is, vicious in a single point alone, Angelo, to support and gratify the unlimited profusion of this woman, found an excuse for resorting with increased ardour to what had ever been a favourite pursuit of his, the vice of gaming: success had attended him often, when as a pleasure merely he yielded to the propensity, but now that he resorted to it as a mean, while Milborough was draining him on one hand, this was impoverishing him on the other. Loss succeeded to loss, and his perpetual failure, so far from inducing him to withdraw, ere certain ruin should ensue, rendered him desperate, and caused him to persevere, in the delusive hope, that one fortunate throw would speedily retrieve all. He was mistaken however; fortune, fickle like himself, repaid him in kind, and fled from him when most he courted her.

It now remained only for the artful Milborough, who had found the pliant Angelo acceding, whether remonstratingly or otherwise, but still acceding to her every request, to propose to him one which in insolence and depravity should far exceed any which she had hitherto proposed. It was not enough for her, that by the most ruinous excesses, and shameless profligacy, she was shortening the life of Gabrielle, as she was abridging her means of existence, but she desired to injure her in a deeper degree, or rather to destroy her at once.

Aware that though she had weaned the love of Felix from his mother, yet aware likewise of her extravagant fondness for him, and considering that while he was no longer in the sphere of her attraction, nor capable of being contaminated by her influence, nature and the exquisite goodness of his unhappy parent might prevail in his heart, she determined to deprive Gabrielle of him, whom groundlessly she feared might prove a consolation to her in her misery; and for this purpose she demanded of Angelo, in that flattering fawning tone in which she usually solicited favours of him, and which, strange to say, seldom failed of producing its effect, that he would permit, as the highest gratification he could confer on her, that the boy Felix might visit her for one day, adding, “I know you will not refuse me, my dearest Angelo: you never look so captivating as when you grant my requests.” Angelo, with a pleased smile, while he absolutely considered her the most engaging female he had ever known, replied that he would think of what she required, secretly determining in his mind, without the smallest compassion for the feelings of the insulted Gabrielle, that he would surprise her that very evening with the sight of her favourite Felix.

Nothing could equal the sycophantic insidiousness of Milborough, when she wished to gain a point with Angelo, nothing her base deceit; she could be compared only to the snake, which gently coiling round the victim it wishes to destroy, twists tighter and more tight till its firm grasp can be no more disputed, and agonizing death ensues. Possessed of no internal dignity, no high-mindedness, the most abject meanness of conduct conveyed no unpleasant feeling to her heart: she flattered, and fawned, and crouched, when desiring a favour; she was arrogant, and daring, and insufferable, when she had obtained it—passing rapidly from the extreme of slave to tyrant. But if by a most unusual chance she did not immediately obtain it, if Angelo dared to hesitate, then she had another line of acting in reserve; she ranted, stormed, and threatened that if he did not instantly comply, she would quit him suddenly, and he should never hear of her more; thus artfully bringing before him as a misfortune, that which would have been for him the greatest good that could have befallen.

Faithful to his intention, the degraded Angelo left her for the purpose of returning to her with Felix. As the youth was frequently a companion in his rambles, to the edification neither of his head nor heart, his going with him from home excited no remark from Gabrielle, but pleased her rather, from the so natural conviction that he could not be going to Milborough.

Felix neither asked nor cared whither he was going; he was going from home, from under the same roof with his ever melancholy mother, and his vivacity speedily revived, thoughtless and wild. Angelo made no observation with respect to the object he had in view, till they arrived at the door of an elegant habitation; as soon as they gained admittance, he ran up stairs, bade Felix follow, and in a moment he was in the presence of Milborough, who receiving him with open arms, scarcely knew how to express the exuberance of her joy.

Felix was now happy, he was with Milborough; he thought indeed she appeared less handsome, because less easy than in her homely attire, but she was more sprightly than his melancholy mother, and towards him at least was unaltered. Too young accurately to understand, he yet surmised something of the truth, and easily perceived that his favourite Milborough was likewise, as he had often wished her to be, a favourite with his father; he looked upon her as his indulgent mother, who never exerted over him any authority like his severe one, as he had been taught to consider the mild and gentle Gabrielle, and who, if she could see him happy, would never disapprove of the means by which he became so.

The education of the youth, independently of his little application, was, through the eternal procrastination and carelessness of Angelo, but very slightly improved; he feared to damp his young energies by ponderous and oppressive study, he remembered that he himself had never been pestered with school learning, and that he had parents (to the full as inconsiderate towards him as he was now towards his own son,) who would not suffer him to quit home, or to clog his sprightly genius, but procured for him a private tutor, under whom he made sufficient progress to qualify him for the rank and situation he was to hold in society; while from his mother he learnt affability and sweetness of manners, from his father, polite and elegant demeanour. Such then he insisted should alone be the education of Felix. Thus is error transmitted from father to son, and frequently perpetuated to the destruction of successive generations. A private tutor, Angelo observed, might be always obtained; mean time he could himself impart to his son some necessary instruction, and it was useless to deprive himself so precipitately of an entertaining companion and pleasing associate, of whom he was so extravagantly fond.

Thus, then, on Gabrielle devolved the task of fitting his young mind for future study, by imbuing it with a love of science and thirst of further knowledge. The stores of her own rich and elegantly fraught mind, fraught by the delicate and careful hand of a father, she desired to impart to her son, and fully adequate was she to the task: but Felix soon perceiving that no one but her attempted to restrain him, (for Angelo, unmindful even of his own arrangement, had no leisure as yet to give instructions which he could at any time impart,) and that his avocations with his mother detained him frequently from a pleasurable excursion with his father, or from some entertainment prepared for him by Milborough, conceived, from the imprudence and improper conduct of those around him, a disgust for study, which, at the insinuations of the domestic traitor, Milborough, who might have differently exerted her influence, was easily transferred into a dislike of her who taught. Thus, from the peculiarly unfortunate situation in which she was placed, Gabrielle perceived by slow degrees, and with an anguish inexpressible, her power over the mind of her son on the wane; he no longer attended to her implicitly, or if she succeeded in rivetting him for a moment, Angelo would too frequently call him off for some more agreeable, but more unprofitable pursuit. Felix by these means was induced rather to shun than court her society; and, in dismay at finding herself the only tyrant of the youth, her firm perseverance relaxed, for she felt that those instructions must be useless which were never received but with reluctance. Thus was a fine field left open for the suggestions of ignorance and depravity; for where wisdom and virtue were not suffered to take root, the weeds of error sprang up apace.

Milborough had asked of Angelo that he would permit Felix for once to visit her; but her request only literally granted, would not have answered her purpose; she therefore having obtained possession of the youth, would no more suffer him to depart, but assured Angelo laughing, that having long this idea in view, she had had an apartment in readiness for him, for some time past. Angelo was confounded; he declined entering into any dispute with Milborough before his son, but flattered himself that he should easily prevail upon her to give up so indecorous and extravagant a caprice at another opportunity.

Mean time Felix, rejoiced to excess, was permitted to remain, and the abandoned Milborough carried as usual her point.

CHAPTER XX.

THE unhappy Gabrielle, immured almost always in her solitary chamber, worn out, and nearly heart-broken with ceaseless suffering and disappointment, felt that with her intellectual energy so long upheld, (but now rapidly sinking) her physical strength was decaying likewise, and that long thus she could not continue to exist. The few who, attracted by her singular worth and merits, had made it a point to call themselves her friends, captivated more by the desire of appearing liberal and high minded than from any real admiration they were capable of feeling, she had from the humiliating dereliction of Angelo refused to see, for they had been his friends before they had professed themselves hers; and her genuine sense of delicacy and honour shrunk from the impropriety of hearing animadversions passed upon him on her account, or from the contemptible meanness of seeking to inspire pity by the gentle resignation with which she endured insults, that she could have wished unknown for ever to any but herself.

Thus, she was almost isolated. Angelo she scarcely ever saw, and Felix when in her presence appeared not employed by any thought so much as that of escaping from it. Now, of beholding even him sometimes, she suddenly found herself deprived; where could he be? A dreadful idea glanced across her mind, he must be with his father—should she condescend to inquire of the servants if he had returned and departed again alone?—No, to no eye could she voluntarily betray her grief, and mortifying ignorance of the movements of those so near to her. She determined then to preserve silence, but vigilantly to watch for the moment when Felix should make his appearance, and question himself as to whither he had been.

But in vain she was silent, in vain she watched. Felix appeared no more. The anguish of her mind became intense, she felt almost certain where he lingered, and had half determined to address Angelo by letter upon this dreadful subject, when with his usual constrained air he suddenly appeared before her.

“Angelo,” exclaimed she, starting up, the moment she beheld him, incapable of restraining her emotion, while he cooly bowed; “Angelo, oh! let us wave all idle ceremonies for the present, I am too sick to attend to them, tell me, and tell me truly I beseech you, where is my son?—your son—?”

“Really, Gabrielle, this is such an extraordinary salute that—that I,”—he stopped embarrassed.

“Oh! Angelo,” cried the distracted Gabrielle, seizing him by the arm—“away with this mockery, and answer me at once—This suspense is worse than the most dreadful certainty; tell me what have you done with Felix?”

“This conduct is so singular, madam, that really—”

“Oh God!” interrupted Gabrielle, clasping her hands, and bursting into tears “is it thus then that you treat me, Angelo!—But no matter,” she pursued, endeavouring to throw firmness into her voice, and to collect herself; “inform me only of my son—I claim a right, sir, to be informed upon that subject.”

Angelo was awed, and shrank into himself; he felt that Gabrielle had justice on her side, and that he had not. Like a culprit summoned before a judge, comes to defend a bad cause, and seeing his accuser before him is struck dumb by the power of conscience—so Angelo, when he raised his eyes to the accusing form of the injured Gabrielle, felt how truly guilty he was, and remained silent. Gabrielle, uttered no reproach; she determined not to utter any, for she felt their inutility, since he who is not just from inclination, will never be rendered so by the voice of reproof; but finding that he still preserved a confused silence, she in a firm voice repeated her question.

“He is under my care,” at length stammered Angelo.

“Not at present,” observed Gabrielle.

“He is safe,” said Angelo.

“Convince me,” answered Gabrielle.—

“My word is surely sufficient.”

“Not in the present case; you will not, my lord, lay your hand upon your heart, and say that you consider him at this moment where he ought to be.”

Angelo was silent; he looked aside. Gabrielle fixed on his varying countenance her sad, yet searching eyes, and uttered in a voice of solemn anguish,

“He is with Milborough.”

Angelo started, as if in horror that it should be so—so true is conscience. He made no reply.

“Your silence is sufficient confirmation,” pursued she in the same impressive tone: “now then, Angelo, ere it be too late, return him to me.”

“That cannot be,” said Angelo.

“Cannot be!—cannot be!” shrieked Gabrielle, again overpowered by the violence of her feelings—“Oh Angelo, Angelo,” she continued, falling on her knees, and raising her clasped hands towards him, “I conjure you, not by your present love, but by the love you once had for me,—I conjure you for the future welfare and happiness of your child,—if you consider aught that is most valuable to him in existence—I implore, I beseech you, let him not remain with that woman:—destruction, yes eternal destruction must ensue, not only of present but of future life—his soul will be sacrificed. Angelo, I implore you listen to my prayer, return him to me ere he be lost beyond redemption.”

The heart of Angelo throbbed violently—he was affected by her solemn adjuration, but he desired not that she should perceive it; he looked at Gabrielle for a moment, he durst not longer,—he endeavoured to raise her from the ground as with averted face he said, “In aught else command me, Gabrielle; but the boy must remain where he is.”

“Then!” cried Gabrielle, springing from her knees with a countenance of fire, and looking sternly upon Angelo, “Then his destruction be upon your head; remember, that at a future day, you will curse yourself for this!—remember—remember—that he will curse you likewise!”

“Frantic woman!” cried Angelo, roused to a consciousness of guilt, and therefore of rage, at her awful prophecy, “Frantic woman! he is my son—I have a right to do with him as I will, and who dare dispute my pleasure?”

“His mother,” answered Gabrielle in a firm voice, “she dares—sir, he is my son as well as yours, and I have as dear an interest in him!”

“Yes,” interrupted Angelo, with a bitter, smile, “more than he has in you!”

“The more my misfortune! the more my misfortune!” cried the wretched Gabrielle in a voice of anguish, and bursting into tears, “Cruel Angelo, I little expected this reproach from you; but still I will spare you.”

Angelo, shocked at the observation that had escaped him, detesting himself for his unworthy cruelty, found his feelings of bitterness increased by his self-contempt, and hastily cried, “Well, madam, this scene is unnecessarily prolonged, I have other avocations.”

“Ah yes, too well do I know that you have; but hear me a moment,” she pursued, endeavouring to subdue her suffocating emotion, “hear me but a moment. Since I may not be permitted to claim my son, to be considered as the mother of my child, grant me but this, for surely you will not deny me all. Suffer me once more to behold him, let me take of him a last farewell, it may enable me to exist a little longer under this most cruel misery.”

“Well,” said Angelo, who though he had not been generous enough to concede for his past unfeeling insinuation, yet desired to make some amends. “Well, be it so then; I will bring him to you presently.”

“Let me see him alone.”

“Promise me then that you will not attempt to tamper with the boy.”

“I tamper with him!”

“That you will not offer to detain him then.”

“I promise,” said Gabrielle, while a tear struggling from its confinement, fell hastily down her cheek, “I promise that he shall do nothing unwillingly.”

“Well, that conditional promise will do,” observed Angelo, while the inconsiderate remark conveyed an added pang to the lacerated heart of the mother. Angelo prepared to depart; she sought not to detain him, and he left the room, promising that she should presently behold her son.

Slight was the hope which Gabrielle ventured to cherish from this promised interview; her sole dependance was on the power she might possess of working on the feelings of the youth; though he loved her not, she determined to leave no means untried to snatch him from destruction; the cruel remarks of Angelo, indeed, left no room for sanguine reliance, and while her conscience proudly whispered to her, that she had done every thing to deserve the fondest affection of Felix, she felt that even the consciousness of virtue abates not the pang which is inflicted on the heart of a mother by a child’s ingratitude.

The slavish and degenerate Angelo, returning to Milborough, almost feared to inform her of the promise into which he had entered; but at length he found courage carelessly to insinuate that Felix must return home with him immediately. No sooner had he spoke than he beheld all the fury gathering in the countenance of Milborough; she repeated the word “home” contemptuously, and vowed that the youth should not be suffered to quit her presence, even for an instant.

But the word of Angelo was pledged, and subject as he was, he resolved to abide by it, and for once even to assert himself; he therefore retorted upon Milborough, expressing that his pleasure should be obeyed, who had immediate recourse to her usual violence upon all occasions when Angelo presumed to oppose her. In a passion of rage he exclaimed, that as she had obtained possession of the boy by fraud and artifice, she should not be permitted to detain him by presumption and violence, and that if she persisted in her present opposition, he would not only depart with him immediately, but she should never behold him more.

No sooner had Angelo spoken thus, than the fury sunk into tame submission; she wept, and attributed her warmth, as she termed it, to the ardent affection which she bore the youth, and her fears of trusting him out of her presence, lest by some unforeseen event she should be deprived of him for ever; she concluded by imploring of Angelo, that if he determined to fulfil his purpose, he would first suffer her to be a few minutes alone with her beloved Felix. To this the imprudent Angelo readily assented. The youth, who had witnessed the altercation respecting him, and who secretly hoped that Milborough would prove triumphant, accompanied her with alacrity from the room.

She employed the moments allowed her by Angelo in steeling him to the dreaded influence of his mother, and exhorting him not to be seduced by her pretended fondness and eloquent speeches; for the wretched Milborough was well aware of her own vulgar incapacity, and that every triumph she gained over the heart of Felix was obtained by means most vile and reprehensible. “Do not, my dear lovely Felix,” added she in her illiterate jargon, “let yourself be prevailed upon by fair promises and fine acting to live again with your mother, for you know well how she used to damp your spirits, and check you, my dear boy, till my heart bled for you, and she could never bear to see you happy. It would be all the same again in a little time, and you would wish yourself in your grave before the end of a month. Nobody, my dearest Felix, loves you as I do, and nobody never can, not even your father;—all my happiness is to see you happy.” She pursued in a faltering voice, and calling in the aid of tears, which she suffered to trickle down her cheeks, that their effect might not be lost upon the youth, “and I am certain if you do not return to me, I shall die of grief; I feel it.”

The youth embraced her with an affection due only to a mother, and vowed that he would return to her, loving her as he did a thousand times better than his natural parent: indeed his sentiments were too much in unison with those of his infamous adviser; she had taught him to consider his mother, not only with the utmost disrespect, but as a severe and implacable judge, from whom it was requisite to conceal the innocent indulgences which she bestowed upon him; as a harsh overseer of every pleasure, which as requiring none herself, she thought unnecessary for youth; he was taught, in short, to regard her as an enemy, rather than a friend, and a capricious tyrant, rather than an anxious mother. Above all, the vile Milborough failed not to impress upon his mind, what she had so often laboured to effect, that his mother was no more entitled to his veneration, from the purity of her conduct, or her esteemed rank in society, than she was to his affection, for her kindness or indulgence; adding, that she was now far inferior, even to herself, inasmuch as the Count D’Albini no longer considered her as his wife. Thus prepared with hypocritical caresses, and manifestations of regret, she suffered him to depart with Angelo, who had begun to grow impatient, purely from the desire of getting rid of an affair, in which he now regretted to have involved himself. He accompanied the youth to the door of his insulted mother, without making to him any other observation than that when she permitted him to depart, he should expect to see him again, where of late he had resided. To this remark, Felix promised acquiescence, with an eagerness that embarrassed and somewhat shocked even Angelo: then, faithful to his agreement, of not being present at the interview, when the door opened he waved his hand, and left him.

Felix walked leisurely up stairs, forgetting, in the indifference or rather reluctance with which he performed his task, the animation so natural to youth. Gabrielle who had been passing the intermediate space in the most painful anxiety, had heard his arrival, and heard his subsequent slow step upon the stairs, which struck upon her ear as the knell of death, and nearly deprived her of the slight portion of hope and firmness which she had been endeavouring to acquire.

The door opened, the youth bowed slightly and advanced. Gabrielle half rose from her chair, to meet him, but his cool and settled countenance, his unaffectionate air, checked her instantly, and again she sank down, merely stretching forth to him her trembling hand, which partaking the agitation of her whole frame, was covered with a cold dew. Felix approached, and took her hand; he retained it for a moment; he neither pressed nor carried it to his lips, but remained standing beside her, though with an air embarrassed, yet devoid of the least symptom of tenderness or sensibility.

The anguished mother fixed her eyes upon his youthful countenance, so youthful yet so hard to her,—upon that countenance on which so often she had gazed with fond delight, so fair, so health blooming, surrounded in graceful luxuriance by bright auburn curls, while her’s, sad contrast, was pale as death itself; an unwiped tear rested upon her frozen cheek, she resembled a broken down lily upon which some remains of the torrent that bowed it to the earth still hangs. Her son raised his eyes to that face in which sadness and despair were so vividly depicted; he raised his eyes, but cast them down again slowly—his heart was unmoved.

“Felix, my dear child,” said the anguished mother, in a low voice, for she durst not grant it its usual latitude, “will you not speak to me?”

“I thought it was you, who desired to speak with me,” returned Felix.

“But, my dear love, after so long an absence, have you not any thing to say to me?”

“Not so very long an absence,” returned the youth with an insensible smile, which was answered by a deep-drawn sigh from the heart of the mother, she endeavoured to command herself, however and said—

“Have you been happy then, my dear Felix, since the time appears so short to you?”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” replied Felix, his vivacity returning, “I was never so happy before.”

“And could you not be equally happy with me?”

Felix was silent.

“Could you not be happy, my child, with a mother who tenderly loves you?”

“You are always so melancholy.”

“But I would endeavour to be cheerful,” answered Gabrielle, waving, in her anxiety to detach her son from his present ruinous situation, his unfeeling remarks upon herself.

“Ah! but,” said Felix, “Milborough,”—he stopped, confused, having involuntarily uttered her name, which a certain feeling convinced him he ought not to have done.

“Well, what of her?” said Gabrielle in an irregular voice, yet affecting not to notice his confusion.

“Why she,” answered Felix, venturing to look up, “—she is always so kind.”

“She was a kind nurse to you, my child, but she has not those claims upon you that I have. Do you not remember, before you even knew her, when you were extremely young, how fond you were of me? the care I took of you, how I studied your happiness, your pleasure?” Tears hindered her from proceeding, for at that moment she remembered the bleak wintry night when, wandering about with him in her arms, famishing herself that he might be sustained, supporting him from the wet ground when having scarcely strength to support herself, how he smiled upon her, and caressed her as in fond gratitude for her kindness, now to look upon her so changed! so insensible! turning aside from her, who had endured so much for him—him who had been her primary care, her object in every movement. Scarce could she persuade herself that she beheld before her this cherished darling son, disputing for his love with a hired mercenary wretch, whom unblushingly he acknowledged to prefer to her! The thought was agony, was horror, and she wept aloud.

Felix observed her intense anguish, but he made no effort to allay it; so estranged was his heart from her, that he knew not how, nor did he feel a sensation sufficiently strong to induce him to make the attempt; he experienced impatience only, at witnessing a grief by which he was unaffected, and which cast a gloom over moments that might have been more pleasingly employed.

“Great God!” cried Gabrielle, as she gazed on him through her tears, and marked his stubborn averted countenance, and eye which roved around, “great God! how has the heart of this child become thus hardened towards his mother?—what fiend-like influence can have corrupted him thus in so short a time? for no human power could have worked a change so rapid and prodigious.”

Unhappy Gabrielle! she knew not that this had been no work of a moment, nor that his love, respect, and filial feelings towards her had been for years undermining by the base intrigues of a remorseless destroyer. Grief, anguish, compassion, were the predominant sensations of her mind; she felt not anger, but acute regret at witnessing the unyielding insensibility of the youth, and as he still stood beside her, she threw her arms around him, and shed over him tears too bitter to be the portion of a mother! Felix did not struggle to withdraw himself from her embrace, neither did he return it—she looked at him, but his eyes were tearless, while on his cheek, wet only with those she had shed, mantled a faint conscious blush.

Gabrielle now felt the full hopelessness of her struggle, she relaxed in despair her fond embrace, for she perceived by his faint blush that though he was sensible to his conduct, he still persevered in it: yet suddenly she exclaimed, “Yes, you must; you shall remain with me, Felix! it is for your good that you should, it is my duty to command it, it is yours to obey. This cruel reserve, this insensibility towards a mother will subside: my anxious care, my love, shall make it! My dearest child, say you will remain with me; you shall have no cause to repent.”

“But you say it is my duty,” observed Felix, the poison of Milborough’s base principles fermenting in his mind: “it is not my duty.”

“Well then, my love, forget the term, be it inclination,” cried Gabrielle, regarding him with tearful eyes, willing upon any terms to save him from compleat destruction.

“But it is not my duty,” pursued the unhappy child, “more to remain with you, than with Milborough.”

“Certainly, my child, more with me; she was only your nurse, I am your mother; she is not wedded to your father, she is not”——

“Neither are you!—she says,”—cried Felix interrupting her.

This was too much; the heart-stricken Gabrielle, uttering a faint exclamation, sprang up, her pale cheek glowing with the deepest crimson; her soul shook within her, and though scarcely had she the power to stand, with a desperate effort she summoned her receding strength and rushed half frantic from the room. Scarce had she gained her own apartment ere she fell prostrate on the floor, and kind insensibility gave a temporary relief to nature from pangs which with life it could not long have borne.

Felix, whose feelings were not refined either by nature or education, did not conceive, when he saw his mother rush from the room, that what he had last uttered could have produced such an effect. His stubborn silence had been now broken, and he rather expected from her some reply; for a short time he remained in the apartment she had so abruptly quitted, supposing that she would speedily return, and fearing to go unbidden lest he should be again subject to a future similar interview. When however he found that she neither returned, nor sent any one to him, he considered himself at liberty to depart, and without further hesitation running down the stairs, though he had only walked up, he felt, when from beneath the roof of his injured mother, his constraint vanishing, and his vivacity returning; while the joy with which he rushed into the house of Milborough, formed a forcible contrast to the reluctant step with which he had entered hers.

The abandoned Milborough received him with an exultation that she could not disguise; he related to her the issue of his visit, and all that had passed during its continuance; for the conduct he described himself to have pursued, he received from her profuse caresses, and unbounded expressions of gratitude, for preferring her to his mother, and for having so faithfully kept his promise of returning to her.

CHAPTER XXI.

A LITTLE time elapsed, and the changeful Angelo, steady only in his fickleness, became gradually less bigotted to the society of the uneducated Milborough, and more addicted to his favourite habit of gaming, and which, as has been before observed, in consequence of his boundlessly increased expences, he now resorted to, as much for profit as pleasure. But fortune grew daily more unkind; she still fled, he still pursued, and in the true spirit of a gamester, he determined that he would not desist from the chace while he retained the power of continuing it, or if he felt his courage on the wane, he recruited it by plentiful libations to the rosy god.

One night, having lost to a considerable amount, goaded on by rage, by a despairing hope, and that resistless impulse which ever actuates the real gamester, he drank off a bumper of the Tuscan juice, and then, inspired with a false courage, determined in a phrenzy, to push fortune to the utmost, and not to quit the table whilst a possibility of staking aught remained, till he had endeavoured at least to cover the whole of his losses. He persevered, he was resolute, and his resolution cost him dear; he staked to the amount of every guinea he possessed, he followed it up by all he could call his, the house in which Gabrielle still continued to drag on her lingering existence, his equipages, horses, plate, &c. and it was not till he discovered that nothing more remained which he had a right to stake, (for the house in which Milborough resided was not his,) that he recovered his senses to lose them again almost immediately in madness of a different description, and to rush a pennyless beggar from the abode of ruin which late as that very night he had entered in comparative affluence.

The chief of his property had been lost, or rather transferred to one person—that person his dearest and most intimate friend, one with whom he had sometimes played with success, but more frequently to manifest disadvantage; he was steady, politic, and cool, and found it no difficult matter generally to come off conqueror from one who was rash, inconsiderate, without sufficient judgment to direct, and without patience to abide by the little he possessed. This friend, who, though a man of the world, possessed some feeling, perceiving the confusion and horror of Angelo painted in his countenance, seized him by the hand, and cordially shaking it, bade him not let dame Fortune obtain a victory over the spirit of his soul, adding that he might settle the affair between them at his leisure, as it was furthest from his wish to trouble or inconvenience him.

Such the language of the world, such the consolation of their friendship; and even Ellesmere; the successful gamester, possessed a greater share of feeling than usually belongs to that class of beings, who not only remorselessly strip each other of all they possess, but attempt neither to hide their exultation nor speak a word of consolation, however vain, to the wretch they have driven to ruin and desperation. In a state of madness, such however as left him of sense sufficient to feel his woe, Angelo reached the only spot which strictly speaking he might presume to enter, the abode of Milborough; he rushed into the room, where she was sitting carelessly singing an air with Felix; one hand he pressed to his burning forehead, the other was stretched wildly towards them, as bidding them cease; his glazed eyes wandered around, his cheek glowed with a feverish red, his brow was writhed, his hair dishevelled, his vest torn open, and his whole appearance the wildest image of frenzy and despair, personified in the ruined gamester;

“For Heaven’s sake, what has happened, Angelo?” exclaimed Milborough, starting up. Angelo made no reply, but gazing on her, burst into a convulsive laugh.

“Good God! he is certainly mad,” cried the unfeeling Milborough, rushing toward the bell.

“Stay, Milborough,” he exclaimed, violently seizing her arm, roused by her remark, and the action which accompanied it, “I am not yet quite mad, but I soon shall be; I am ruined, stripped of every guinea I possess; I have not,” he cried, raising his voice to frenzy, “no, I have not wherewithal to procure bread for to-morrow,”—and at the horrible conviction, his eyes rolled wildly round.

At this explanation the countenance of Milborough suddenly changed, her selfish terrors gave place to other ideas, but no less selfish; had Angelo spoken for ever, he could not have said more to her than was confirmed in the few words he had uttered in the short sentence, “I am ruined!” After the pause of a moment, her countenance again underwent a change, she drew near him; and taking his hand she said, “Is this all, my dearest Angelo?”

“All!—all!” interrupted Angelo, “is it not enough?”

“Certainly it is dreadful, but not sufficient to throw you into despair. One lucky cast might yet retrieve all, perhaps.”

“Woman!” raved Angelo, “have I not told you that I am beggared! that I have no longer a claim to the chance of another cast!—or—or do you think I would, like a coward, have retreated?” added he, breathing the desperate defiance of the gamester.

“Well, well, my dearest Angelo, compose yourself, a glass of wine will do you service. Fly, Felix, and procure some wine for my lord.”

Angelo with a desponding groan threw himself into a chair; wine was brought, Milborough poured him out a full goblet, and presenting it to him, entreated that he would drink; fevered with heat, and his mouth parched, mechanically he took the wine, and swallowed it.

By dint of persuasion she prevailed on him to drink a second glass, a third and fourth then rapidly followed: from the madness of despair, Angelo was passing fast into the madness of intoxication! his cares began to assume an aspect less terrific, and the exhilirating hope which is inspired by wine, caused the future to appear less gloomy; by degrees his moody despondency vanished, and, as had been the secret aim of Milborough, he applied spontaneously to the bottle for that seducing influence, which sweetly blinded him to the frightful reality of his situation.

Milborough now ventured carelessly to revert to it: “But, my dear Angelo,” she observed, “surely every thing is not as bad as you think; you have sufficient, I trust, to cover all; then you might retire upon a little.”

“Upon nothing, you mean! I can never redeem myself.”

“But, my lord,” cried Felix, “could you not collect all you have at present in your possession, and make your escape to the Continent?”

Angelo, nearly intoxicated, irritable, and still alive to a certain sense of honour, looking fiercely at his son, seized him by the arm, and for the first time in his life inflicted on him a blow, and inflicted it unjustly, for assuredly it was no fault in the youth, that education had not instilled into him proper principles, or given him correct ideas.

He did not speak; his young heart swelled with indignant fury, he looked at his father with flashing eyes, and face of fire; it was the first correction he had ever received; it was violent, and he had never been accustomed to any; he knew not how to endure it, he was bursting to resent! a feeling of fear alone restrained him, and tears of impotent rage rushed to his eyes! Milborough glanced at him significantly, and affecting not to notice the violence of Angelo, observed, “But you have money to a large amount in the house, that you received from your banker the other day, that surely may be saved, and at all events will——”

“I must have that too; all will be insufficient.”

“But you forget how much it is; lend me the key of your cabinet, and I will bring it to you.”

“Do you suppose it has increased since I placed it there?” cried Angelo, throwing down the key, “I know too well that all will be insufficient.”

“Well,” said Milborough, carelessly taking up the key, which she twisted around her finger, “it will at all events be a satisfaction to calculate;” so saying she went towards the door, when suddenly returning, she exclaimed, “But I forgot, I must not leave you, Angelo, I shall have you getting gloomy again; come, take another glass of wine, and banish care.”

Angelo heaved a sigh, and hastily drank off the wine; then leaning his head upon his hand, he remained absorbed in gloomy silence: he had returned, harassed, fatigued, exhausted, at an unusually late hour; it was now getting dawn; his eyes were closed, his ideas became confused, his heavy head dropped from his hand, and he fell into a profound slumber.

No sooner did Milborough perceive that the wine had taken its desired effect on him, than silently she rose and beckoned Felix, (who was sternly brooding over the blow he had received,) from the room. Rising, involuntarily with caution, he followed her out.

“Go,” said Milborough in a whisper, “if any of the servants remain up, tell them they may retire, afterwards come to me to the chamber of your father.”

Felix left her, to act as she had desired, while she, hastening to the chamber of Angelo, remained at the door waiting his return. In a few moments Felix appeared; Milborough placed her finger on her lip, and in a low voice he said, “I found only one servant up, and he was in so deep a sleep that I could not awake him.”

“I am sorry you attempted it,” said Milborough, hastening as lightly as she could down the stairs to the room where Felix informed her the servant was sleeping; and then gently locking the door upon him, retraced her steps to the chamber of Angelo, still accompanied by Felix. Having entered, she closed the door; approaching his cabinet, she coolly unlocked it, and taking thence all the gold she could find, together with jewels to a considerable amount, among which were those that had appertained to Gabrielle, and which she had obtained from Angelo by fraudulent artifice, she gave them into the hands of Felix, saying, “Let us at all events secure these from the Count’s creditors; it would be a pity they should obtain all: as for these jewels they are mine, and they have no right to them.”

Felix acquiesced readily in her idea, and accepted the things from her hands. “Now then,” said she, “Felix, be light and cautious; descend the stairs—for we quit this house for ever.”

“Whither to go?” inquired Felix.

“Far from hence, but where we shall be safe.”

“And my father?” cried Felix, half anxiously, half resentfully.

“He will follow us, perhaps: but did he not strike you just now, without provocation? why inquire about him? trust to me, my dear boy, and let us go at once.”

Felix frowned, and blushed with indignant shame, at the recollection. “It was without provocation,” said he, and hesitated no longer.

Milborough stepped lightly towards her chamber; she wrapped herself in a cloak which covered her entirely, and divested her dress of all attraction; she then proceeded down stairs with almost breathless caution. Felix followed; they reached the hall; Milborough remained a moment to secure about her own person the jewels with which she had loaded him, then silently unlocking the door she closed, without venturing to shut it, and proceeded with rapid pace along the street.

As it was the height of summer, and perfectly light at an early hour, they passed along completely unnoticed and unopposed. The object of Milborough was to get by the quickest possible conveyance to Dover, to arrive ere suspicion could surmise her route, and from thence embarking for the Continent, her fears of pursuit would be at an end. In all she had proposed, she succeeded even beyond her most sanguine speculations; she reached Dover early, and without interruption, and a little time after found herself in perfect safety on the shores of France. Here, for a time, with her youthful and misguided companion, let us leave her, and return to the wretched but justly punished Angelo.

A few hours after the departure of Milborough, he was awakened by a violent noise; opening his heavy eyes, he found himself lying on the floor, and the expiring flame of a taper burning in the socket and emitting a faint irregular light through the closed apartment.

The noise which had roused him still continuing, he instinctively started up, and hastened towards the spot from whence it seemed to proceed: it was a loud knocking, and appeared to come from the lower offices of the house; he followed the sound, and soon discovered that it was occasioned by his servant, who awaking in alarm, and endeavouring to quit his situation for the purpose of retiring to bed, found his intention frustrated by his inability to open the door, which had been fastened upon him; in consequence of this discovery, conceiving robbers were, or had been in the house, in the greatest trepidation he had essayed his utmost to make himself heard. Angelo having emancipated him, began to recover his senses; he now clearly remembered that he had not been in bed for the night, but could by no means reconcile to himself why he should have been suffered to remain asleep upon the ground, alone too, and not have been conveyed to bed. His whirling head informed him that he had drank inordinately, and he concluded, that overpowered with sleep, he had fallen on the floor. But as this was a circumstance by no means unfrequent with him, and he was in such cases always attended carefully to bed, why had he been now abandoned with this most singular neglect and indifference?

Rage began to kindle in his bosom, and hastily he sought the chamber of Milborough, to upbraid her in the severest terms for the impropriety of her conduct, and the want of regard she had evinced for him. He had questioned the servant with respect to his confinement, but receiving from him only the most unsatisfactory replies, that he neither knew nor could surmise, he dismissed him with intemperate revilings for his stupidity, and hastened to the chamber of Milborough, expecting from her explanation of this circumstance and of her own apparently unfeeling neglect.

Entering her room, with an exclamation of reproach on his lips, he perceived immediately that she was not there, nor had even been in bed! For a moment, he stood amazed, then swiftly retreating, sought his own apartment, unknowing what to expect. There the first and only object which struck him, was his cabinet open, and its assemblage of drawers dragged out to their fullest extent, and completely empty! At this alarming sight involuntarily he struck his forehead with his clenched hand, as an idea, too dreadful to indulge, glanced like lightning through his brain! He rushed trembling towards the cabinet, examined it nearer, brought every drawer completely forth, and cast them on the ground, as if he desired some stronger confirmation than visual sense could give him of the dreadful view which presented itself! It was but too true; he found indeed that he had been plundered of all they contained, and, aghast with horror, he stood for a moment unable even yet to credit that he was perfectly awake.

All his gold, his jewels, even to a far greater amount, had vanished! his dreadful situation, stern and unrelenting, was revealed before him, and with a bitter cry, rushing from the room, he flew into every apartment, loudly vociferating the name of Milborough, and hoping still, in the midst of his despair, that in some remote corner of the house he might yet discover her, even though manacled, and dying perhaps for assistance; all, anything, but that she should have fled in a moment like the present!

In vain he called, in vain he searched, Milborough answered not; his fears then reverted to his son; he sought his chamber, he was not there either, he replied not to his agonized repeated call; then sinking overpowered on a chair, he clasped his hands in horror; the whole truth, the fearful truth, broke without mercy and without reserve upon his mind; no longer could he doubt Milborough was his plunderer, his son the companion of her flight!

While thus he remained, the servant he had with anger so unjust dismissed, rushed into the room, and with a countenance of terror, observed that he had discovered the door of the hall to be open, that he apprehended the worst, but had not courage to search the house alone. “Go, go—I know,” cried the sick and fainting Angelo, “I know all—retire.”

The wild abstraction of his air alarmed the servant, who precipitately obeyed, and left the room. Gloomily musing, he still remained immoveable; ruin was certain, it could not be accumulated, nothing now could make it more than ruin, and he felt in that state, when the mind, conscious it has reached the climax of woe, is incapable from that dreadful consciousness of dreading aught as an increase.

Such are the retributions the guilty experience from the guilty, such the rewards of the libertine for yielding up his soul to meretricious allurement, and expecting an unfeigned love and gratitude from her, whose smiles, like the butterfly in summer, are only for the sunshine of prosperity, and who looks forward to the hour of adversity as the season of her harvest! on that she seizes, and faithful only to her interest, remorselessly abandons the deluded victim on whom she has entailed destruction.

Some time did the wretched Angelo continue thus tottering as it were on the verge of madness, yet struggling to be reasonable; now wildly his thoughts dwelt on Felix, his boy so fondly yet so injuriously loved. Why had the monster robbed him of his son, his dearest treasure? Confused, bewildered, as he was, the suggestion was obvious. She had made Felix the companion of her flight, to evade the probability of pursuit; for with that vile artifice peculiar to such as her, justly and cunningly had she calculated, that however Angelo, aroused from his infatuation by her conduct, might determine to pursue her with justice, when he reflected that by so doing he must implicate his son, who must of necessity have been privy to the transaction, of which too she could adduce proof, he would abstain altogether from the attempt, anxious rather, however deep a sufferer he might have been, to give as little publicity as possible to the event; besides, he might hope by his forbearance towards her, to induce her to remand voluntarily the youth to him; whereas if he listened only to his revenge, she might not only secrete him for ever, but through him bring dishonour upon his name.

Suddenly Angelo started up from the supineness of despair; he remembered the obligations under which he existed, and the necessity there was for his seeing Ellesmere that day. It was requisite he should impart to him the whole of what had happened. With this idea pressing on his mind, he hastily rushed from the house, but scarcely had he gained the street than it was displaced by another, which preserved the ascendancy; his first purpose was forgotten, the image of the unfortunate Gabrielle stood before him. Should Ellesmere, as he was certainly entitled to do, have waved courtesy, and promptly insisted upon his right, she might at this moment be even destitute of a home.

Something like a sensation of horror and remorse shot through his heart; quick as lightning he directed his steps towards the spot where she had continued to linger, and arriving at the house, with impatient violence assailed the door. The instant it was opened, he flew past the servant without an inquiry, and bounding up the well known long deserted stair-case, sought unannounced the apartment where Gabrielle usually sat. She was not there, and he heard the voice of the servant behind him, who informed him she was in her chamber; thither he hastily proceeded, and bursting open the door, with wild disordered look he stood before her.

Gabrielle, pale, emaciated, the image of settled hopeless melancholy, lay extended upon a couch, almost too feeble to move. At the sight of Angelo, so long estranged from her eyes, and with air and countenance that spoke some dire ill, her weakened nerves were nearly overpowered, a hectic blush of terror and agitation flushed her hollow cheek; not that she dreaded for herself an accumulation of sorrow, of insult, or of outrage, for that was impossible, but she apprehended, she knew not what, and made an attempt to rise from her recumbent posture.

“Stay, stay,” cried Angelo with a frenzied look, laying his hand upon her shoulder, “where would you go? remain—remain, while yet you may.”

“What!” cried the enfeebled Gabrielle, with a wild indignant look, while the tears rushed to her eyes,—“do you come to drive me hence? Well, well, be it so, I am ready.”

“I!—no, no; but do you not know? have you not seen Ellesmere? this house is no longer mine.”

“What mean you, Angelo? or is this but an unworthy subterfuge to drive me hence? Say—say openly—since it is your will; I shall endeavour to gain strength,—to die elsewhere!”

She rose, and leaning on the back of the couch, like a pale spectre she stood immoveable.

“Hear me! hear me, Gabrielle!” cried Angelo; and in the effort he made to explain to her the truth, reason a little recovered her empire, “I have no longer a house, nor you a home; I am become a beggar! you are so likewise! This house, together with all I once possessed, last night became forfeit, and now appertains to Ellesmere! Say then, have you no pity for me, Gabrielle! can you not feel?—Pity, did I say! ah, what would it avail to a wretch like me, ruined, ruined, past redemption!” He sank into a chair beside him, devoid of energy, and his senses again began to wander.

Gabrielle became sensible of renovated strength, her firm elastic mind rose beneath oppression, with towering dignity; her faintly throbbing heart beat quicker, her languid pulse with accelerated motion; she was no longer feeble; with steady step she approached the nerveless Angelo, and laying her burning hand upon his arm, she said, “Tell me, Angelo, why in this moment have you thought of me? what have you done with Milborough? where is my son?”

“Why question me thus?” returned Angelo without raising his eyes from the ground, “but if you would know—where one is, there is the other likewise; learn moreover, and triumph—both have plundered me of all, and fled!”

Gabrielle spoke not; she raised her eyes, and lifted her fair hands to Heaven, while the expression of her fine countenance was, “God! thou hast punished him enough; now is it for me to sooth!” The loss of her child conveyed an acute pang to her heart; but the youth loved her not, and, all excellent, all amiable as she was, it was not in nature for this reflection to be wholly without effect. Angelo she beheld before her, in a state such as implored oblivion of his errors; her noble soul forgave that unconquerable yet unjustifiable pride imbued in his very nature, which, guilty as he must feel himself, had not yet permitted him to acknowledge his culpability and sue for pardon at her feet; she knew well his was a mind which required to be softened, rather than reproached into submission.

In the moment of adversity, he had thought of her; she was now all he possessed, and cruelly as he had outraged her, he did justice to the magnanimity of her mind and feelings. He had appeared before her a wretch weighed down with crime and misfortune. He might have yielded to a sense of shame, and shunned her still; but no, he had humbled himself in her sight, by permitting her to behold him thus punished, his conduct to herself avenged, and had beseeched the pity of her whom most he had injured.

These noble sentiments, these liberal constructions, too liberal indeed towards Angelo, whose weakness in the hour of adversity, requiring the aid of firm and energetic friendship, had had equal, if not superior share in precipitating him into her presence, awakened her heart in his favour; and with the benignity of a pitying angel she bent over him in compassion; consolation appeared to her to have become a duty, and in a sweet soothing voice she said,—“Angelo, arouse yourself, despair is impious; since your situation is such as you have described, let us consider only what remains to be done.”

Angelo raised his lurid eyes, and fixed them upon Gabrielle; he beheld a countenance which resembled that of a sorrowing Madona, his heart was acutely touched: “And is it from you then, oh, ill-fated daughter of Montmorency!” he cried, “is it from you that first I hear the voice of consolation? Oh, Gabrielle! injured Gabrielle,” he added hastily, “unless you would annihilate me at once, unless you would drive me to distraction, speak to me in another voice! look on me with other eyes! let your words be daggers to my heart, and let your glances be stern!”

“No, Angelo,” replied Gabrielle, “at this moment I can cherish against you no feeling of bitterness. I am myself a wretch meriting severest punishment, my crimes exceed yours, and I hail misfortune as salutary chastisement, as a proof that God has not wholly abandoned me, but would purify me for future life, of which otherwise I should be too unworthy! If I grieve, Angelo,—if I grieve, it is—that you should be the instrument of my punishment.” Again her pale face, her humid eyes were raised to Heaven, and she seemed wrapt in the fervour of her divine conceptions.

“Oh, spare me! spare me, heavenly being!” cried Angelo, glancing upon her countenance, and hastily withdrawing his conscious eyes; “sink me not thus low, but be merciful as you are above me! Deign only to reproach me,” he added in a voice of bitter anguish, and bursting into tears.

Gabrielle was recalled to earth; she gazed upon her first love, upon the destroyer of her youth, upon the murderer of her father, upon him who had blighted his honourable hopes and her fair prospects—but she beheld only his tears of agony—his wild dishevelled form!—she forgave her injuries, and pressed his burning head to her bosom.

Angelo sprang from his attitude of despair to throw himself at her feet; he embraced her knees, and kissed them with frantic ardour, and raising his eyes to her countenance, he cried, “Gabrielle, I have betrayed, destroyed, and brought your fair youth to destruction!—I have now become a wretch in misery as well as crime, beggared in every present and future hope! Dare I then say it—it is only now I feel that fully I appreciate your exalted virtue! it is only now, when such appreciation is but mockery to you, that it breaks upon my benighted soul, as the sun first sheds his dazzling rays upon the sight of him who has been for long in dreary blindness! Here then solemnly I swear to Heaven, that I will dedicate to you the residue of my worthless existence. Gabrielle, look down upon me, now sunk into most abject misery; I pledge myself in the sight of the God whom through you I have offended, to make you mine at his holy altar, should you even yet deign to accept me. I pray that he may visit me in all the thunders of his wrath, if ever more I deceive, abandon, or betray you.”

“Rise, Angelo,” cried Gabrielle in a mournfully solemn voice; “I accept your penitence, and would rather become yours at this moment, than in the height of your prosperity. But hear me, I am now childless, I have no dear interests superior to my own that require my consideration; above all I feel that though I should to-morrow become your wife, Heaven would not grant me long to enjoy a title that once would have sounded so sweetly in my ears!—I feel,—yes, I feel, that the death of my father will be, by a just Providence, avenged upon me!—I too am dying of a broken heart.”

Angelo uttered a loud cry; his breast became filled with remorse, and penitence dawned upon his soul.

“Angelo!” said Gabrielle, in that tone of voice which is firm from the long accustomed conviction of having nothing to hope, “Angelo, be composed; since you are once again returned to me, I shall not yet die.”

Angelo could not restrain his tears; he sobbed, but Gabrielle could no longer weep; she made no effort to check the tears of Angelo, for she conceived that they preserved him from despair.

In the midst of this scene, the door opened, and a servant announced the name of Ellesmere; on Angelo it operated like a thunder-clap, but Gabrielle bade that he should be instantly admitted.

He entered with that gay and smiling air usually worn by beings of the world, who never by any chance attempt to anticipate even a moment of the future, enjoying and thinking only of the present. Gabrielle arose at his entrance, and involuntarily awed by the dignified grace of her appearance, he bowed profoundly to her, and advanced to Angelo, whom he seized familiarly by the arm. “D’Albini,” he cried, shaking him, “I am sorry to see you thus crest-fallen; I was in hopes you knew me better than to compare me to a vulgar creditor, I came only now for the very purpose of observing that I had no desire to incommode you. But this house is extremely elegant,” glancing on Gabrielle, “tastefully arranged, the pictures all from Italy, I suppose,—ah! I recognise the vivid landscapes of Claude Lorrain!—the masterly pencil of Correggio!—the brilliant colouring of Domenichino!—the——”

“Sir,” cried Gabrielle, interrupting him, indignant at his loquacity, and the apparent want of feeling displayed by Ellesmere, “the Count D’Albini is indisposed; I have only to observe therefore for him, in return for your polite attention that this house and all that appears to meet your approbation, will be at your disposal by the evening.”

“Oh, by no means,” cried the man of the world, still carelessly looking round upon the pictures, “oh, by no means; nothing on earth would tempt me to inconvenience one of the softer sex, and particularly so fair a creature as yourself,” bowing significantly.

“Sir,” replied Gabrielle, turning aside with dignity from his bold expressive stare, “our arrangements are made; by this evening the house will be yours, wholly yours,—will you for the present permit it to be ours?”

Ellesmere was what is termed a polished gentleman; he perfectly understood the hint of Gabrielle; and he had wit enough to perceive that idle compliments and presumptuous admiration might offend, but could not flatter her; bowing respectfully therefore, he moved towards the door, and as he opened it, he said, “D’Albini, we remain friends, I hope, in spite of what has happened!—Ah, willingly would I give all Fortune’s favours,” directing his eyes towards Gabrielle, “to be even now situated as you are.”

Angelo endeavoured to command his voice, his pride came to his aid, and he replied, “Undoubtedly we remain friends, why not?”

“Give me then your hand,” cried Ellesmere, “in token of amity.”

With a sick smile, Angelo stretched forth his hand, and the friend who had rendered him a beggar, shook it as cordially as though he had been asking him to dinner, bade him adieu with precisely the same smile as he would have worn to congratulate him on some good fortune, and would have felt as much interest in the one, as he now felt regret at the other.

No sooner had Ellesmere departed, than Gabrielle, with that prompt energy which had ever marked her youthful character, determined to employ the few hours that remained till evening, in the service of him who now possessed on earth no friend but herself. For him she forgot anguish long endured, whose baleful effects were for ever remediless, feebleness, pain, indisposition, and this with only the most desolate prospects before her, as the reward for her highest exertion. She persevered nevertheless, and with an alacrity no way inferior to what his best conduct might have claimed, adopted such measures as she conceived best calculated for a speedy and prudential arrangement.

From Angelo she now enquired more particularly of an affair that had been as yet but vaguely related, when it clearly appeared to her that in saying he had lost all, he had not exaggerated. Under these circumstances it was only to submit with patience to what was unavoidable; and while Angelo, plunged anew into despair, by the detail of the ruinous transaction in which he had been engaged, remained incapable of action, Gabrielle, a powerful instance of the superiority of mind over matter, was busily employing herself, feeble as she was in body, in hastening the means of final settlement, and departure from an abode, which no longer considering their’s, her pride revolted at remaining in.

Since the desertion of Angelo, she had retained only a couple of domestics in her own service; these she found herself empowered to discharge to their satisfaction, and without their having a wish to remain where gloomy desolation had spread her pinions and prodigality no longer reigned. Her next consideration was to seek some shelter for the night; it was impossible immediately to procure a situation, such as might suit with their present circumstances; she therefore determined to postpone this attempt till the morrow, and to avail themselves for the present of some temporary accommodation, since to remain where they were an hour beyond the appointed time was too repugnant to her feelings.

Thus, ere the arrival of evening, her vigorous management had arranged every necessary step, and they were enabled to take their departure from an abode which she at least could not view with aught of tender regret, from a recollection of the happy hours she had of late passed within its walls.

CHAPTER XXII.

WE now behold Angelo ruined, and unnoticed by his worldly friends, pillaged and deserted by an abandoned mistress, forsaken even by the child he loved, forgotten and shunned in his adversity by all, save Gabrielle, by all save her whom in his prosperity he had insulted, injured, and betrayed. She, and she alone, was his firm sheet anchor in the storm; his friend, his comforter, she accompanied him to a wretched abode, far, far different indeed to those he had been accustomed to, an abode, such as would have excited the contempt of ephemeral friends, and which none would have entered who loved him not for himself alone.

Gabrielle entered it, and smiled like his guardian angel upon the desolate walls; her smile was a ray of light through his bosom, it revealed at once comfort and despair, for it showed him to himself unworthy of the bliss of calling such a creature his!

Yet in justice to the superior soul of Gabrielle be it said, that all benignant as she was, the compassion which she showed towards Angelo was no longer in any degree the effect of an idolatrous love, neither could former duties longer influence her, but it sprang from a native and transcendent generosity; tender, forbearing and patient as she was, she possessed a proud mind.

The primary source of her endurance in unparalleled suffering, was not in a mean, selfish, or ignoble passion, which crouched most abject beneath ill treatment, and which no indignities, no cruelty could alter; not in such source did it originate, but in her duty to her children; to bear and forbear, for them, she deemed not disgrace, but glorious martyrdom! Fatal and unforeseen events had exonerated her from this sacred and painful duty, fraught throughout with bitterness and severest trial.

Firm and unshrinking she had bared her bosom to the darts levelled against it; now she beheld him who had loaded her with remorse and anguish, beheld him distressed, agonized, humbled to the dust. It was not surely in the most abject nature still to love! it could belong only to the most noble still to pity! Such was Gabrielle’s, she could cherish neither hate nor revenge against him she had loved once, neither could she still love when her firm mind had received conviction that the object was at heart unworthy—but this precluded not pity, and she felt it a duty incumbent on her to perform from that, all that the profoundest and most invincible love could have dictated. Exalted was the soul of Gabrielle, and beautiful her religion, which taught her charity towards every one’s errors but her own.

Thus then the unhappy Angelo received from her unwearied attention; she sought as much as possible to detach his mind from dwelling on his situation, and exerted herself to cheer and to soothe him by such reasoning as was suggested by the divine influence of fervent piety, that looks not with a vain sorrow upon the afflictions of this life, but extracts from them the sacred hope of future better existence, for which sorrow best purifies the soul!

All was however vain: Angelo possessed not the towering mind of his comforter, he could not rise superior to the influence of situation, he felt himself a wretch within and without, surrounding circumstances filled him with dismay, and his conscience loaded him with reproach.

Nature by degrees became overpowered, he sunk into an alarming malady, and incapable of opposing by energy or reason that useless regret and ceaseless repining which aggravated his disorder, he was compelled to resort to his bed, from whence never more he expected to arise. Mean time Gabrielle, who laboured under a malady far more dangerous than that of Angelo, the malady of the heart, who had been for long supported by her energies alone, now found it necessary doubly to exert herself, and to become the nurse and attendant of Angelo, as she was his only stay and hope.

It was requisite however to call in medical aid, and this, together with the additional expences incurred by his illness, began to shew the alarming probability that such calls might ensue as she would be unprepared to answer.

During the desertion of Angelo her expenditure, never prodigal, had been considerably abridged; it was owing to this circumstance that she had been hitherto enabled to compass the difficulties that had occurred, and to assist Angelo when he no longer possessed resources for himself. Her rational and anticipating mind, had not failed to suggest to her, that in order to preserve themselves from future dreadful embarrassment, it would be necessary that some plan should be resorted to, to prolong their present trifling means of subsistence.

The whole treasure they mutually possessed were the jewels of Gabrielle, and a small sum in specie. These of themselves could not long suffice, and hence the necessity conceived by Gabrielle of concerting some plan for future support, ere the present means should be entirely exhausted. The illness of Angelo, however, deranged and frustrated her intentions; already she had found it requisite to part with a few of her most inconsiderable ornaments; and learning from the physician she had employed for him, that he conceived him in a state which would render it prudent to call in other advice, she perceived there would exist an inevitable occasion for parting immediately with the most valuable ones.

The recovery of Angelo being a primary object, she determined that every consideration should yield to it, whether of calculating prudence or otherwise. As soon therefore as the physician who, after visiting him declared his opinion to Gabrielle, had departed, she returned into the chamber of Angelo, and approached his bedside.

With that eager anxiety, which in sickness is naturally manifested towards one whom experience has proved to be the only earthly being interested in their welfare, Angelo, soon as he saw her, stretched forth his feverish hands, and in a faint voice exclaimed, “Oh, Gabrielle, tell me, am I to live or die?”

“Live, assuredly,” she replied with a celestial smile, and tenderly taking his hand. The indisposition of Angelo was chiefly occasioned by the indulgence of a useless and consuming grief, which he had neither fortitude nor energy to repel, rather than any real bodily ailment. It was a strong affection of the nervous system, accompanied by deep depression of spirits and extreme irritability, which rendered his malady more alarming than dangerous.

Frequently trifles would overcome him so much that he would burst into tears; thus the feebleness of his mind increased his physical debility, and rendered him incapable of the smallest exertion.

Now that he beheld Gabrielle standing beside him, and looking upon him with that tender benignant countenance, he was suddenly struck with the remembrance of the evils he had brought upon her, and could not avoid contrasting his conduct with the generosity and magnanimity of her’s toward him; the impression was too strong for his disorganized feelings, tears rushed to his eyes, and incapable of restraining his emotion, he sobbed aloud. Gabrielle, infinitely affected, sat beside him, and endeavoured her utmost to sooth: by degrees she succeeded, and when she observed him calm, she said, “Angelo, it will be requisite that for a short time I should leave you; will you promise me that you will endeavour to sleep? I shall then have the satisfaction of knowing that you will not want any thing during my absence.”

“What, are you going to desert me too at last?” cried he, in a mournful voice.

“But I will return immediately; will you not trust me, Angelo?”

“And if I should die in your absence, who will care for the wretched Angelo? who will visit his cold corpse?—no one, no. Ah! who would ever have thought such could have been my fate?” At this he shed bitter though silent tears, while Gabrielle almost wept to perceive such lamentable imbecility of mind; but fearing to increase by joining in this vain depression, she subdued her emotion, and cried, “Oh, my dear Angelo, you must conquer these melancholy ideas; believe me it is a weakness, wholly unworthy you. If you desire that I should not quit you at present, most certainly I will not; yet if for a few moments you could permit, I should rather, for sooner or later I must;—I will procure you an attendant during my absence.”

“An attendant!” exclaimed Angelo, “what! would you leave me to the mercy of hired wretches?—Oh, my God! let me die at once, if such is to be my lot.”

Gabrielle, who had arisen, now patiently resumed her seat beside him; she thought it useless and improper to irritate him by further argument, and secretly determined that if, as she hoped, he should fall into a slumber, she would seize that opportunity of escaping to dispose of her jewels, and return home with all the speed in her power. Angelo remained silent for a considerable time; Gabrielle flattered herself he was asleep, and to ascertain, she made a gentle movement to rise. Immediately Angelo with a violent start drew the curtains aside; his face was pale as death, over which his dark hair hanging dishevelled, gave him an air of wildness.

“Gabrielle! for God’s sake do not leave me yet,” he cried; “I think I shall be better in a little time, and able to bear your absence; but will you not inform me where you are so desirous of going?”

From the air of alarm visible in his countenance, the idea now first struck Gabrielle that he really apprehended she intended if possible to escape from him, and desert him. Feeling for the horror with which such an idea must impress his weakened mind, and anxious that for a moment even he should not continue to indulge it, she decided rather to acknowledge to him the real object of her mission abroad, though under other circumstances she would infinitely have preferred the concealment of it, lest it should give to his heart a pang she could spare him. Looking at him with a smile therefore, she said, “Since you are so desirous of knowing my motive, I will not disguise it from you, and then I hope you will have no further hesitation at parting with me for a few moments. I have some jewels, which are altogether useless to me, in our present state—my object is to dispose of them, as—as I have occasion for money.”

Angelo with a sudden spring raised his weak frame in the bed; he fixed his eyes upon Gabrielle with a wild stare, his features were convulsed, and in a faltering voice he said, “What—what jewels do you mean?”

“I will shew them to you,” answered Gabrielle, wishing to divert his emotion, which she attributed solely to the sad necessity she had inferred of parting with her jewels, and rising, she approached a small trunk in the room, from which she took those she had intended to dispose of, and brought them to Angelo. The instant he cast his eyes upon them he uttered a groan of anguish, his lips quivered, he clasped his hands together, and sinking back, he faintly murmured “They are false!—they are false!”

“False!” cried Gabrielle, who beheld with horror, if Angelo spoke reason, her best hopes destroyed; “False, said you?”

“Oh! yes, yes,” groaned the agonised Angelo, “I robbed you of yours, and placed those in their stead! I——” Overcome by his terrible feelings, he made a frenzied attempt to spring from the bed, and cast himself upon the floors the feeble strength of Gabrielle opposed itself to his, she with difficulty retained him in bed, and in a state of insensibility his beating head fell heavy upon the pillow.

Alone, unaided, Gabrielle applied herself to his restoration; by degrees he recovered from apparent death, but it was only to vent in delirium his weakened powers; he raved aloud—he inflicted blows upon his shattered frame; and the overpowered Gabrielle, finding it longer impossible to cope with him, beheld herself under the painful necessity of calling in other aid; and absolutely exhausted, Angelo at length fell into a sleep, deep and profound as the sleep of the tomb.

Gabrielle seized that opportunity of leaving the room for a moment, and without quitting the house, found she could procure for him an attendant, one of those persons who, in offering their services for the sick, have no other idea than of the emolument to be thus derived, and whose sources of livelihood are in the misfortunes, sickness, and distress of others. This being, Gabrielle was however glad upon any terms to hire, and every step she took convinced her more and more of the necessity there existed of obtaining some speedy means of compassing her encreased expences.

As the mind of Angelo could not at this juncture be considered in a state of sanity, the introduction of a stranger into his apartment could excite no unpleasant feelings.

With a heavy heart, Gabrielle then proceeded to gather together such other ornaments as she still possessed, and made a selection from them of those she considered most valuable, and capable of supplying present exigencies. Reluctantly then resigning to the care of the attendant the still sleeping Angelo, she hastily departed to dispose of them the best she could.

Unfortunately for her, however, she discovered that the worst possible period of attempting to obtain money, is precisely that in which it is most needed. Those to whom she applied, easily perceived, that though she wished to obtain for her jewels the utmost that she could, in default of obtaining what she wished, she must of necessity take what she could procure; this was enough, the extremity so dreadful for her, was their harvest, and that advantage was unfeelingly reaped from her distress, which perhaps had not otherwise been thought of; for one half of the world lives and flourishes by the misfortunes or follies of the other half. Thus she was compelled to accept a fourth part only of what she had flattered herself with easily obtaining, and returned to her chearless home with a heavier heart than she had left it, and her mind filled with gloomiest forebodings of the future.

At length the physicians who had been called in, either in compassion for the evident embarrassment of her situation, or under apprehension that their attendance and advice must ultimately remain unpaid, informed her that they had ascertained the malady of Angelo to arise solely from an undue irritation of the nerves, that it was more of the mind than of the body, consequently irremediable by the art of medicine, and that they therefore could be of no further service.

Such being the decision of the physicians, Gabrielle was once more determined to undertake alone the charge and restoration of Angelo; she dismissed, therefore, the attendant she had temporarily hired, (who in daily expectation of his death had anticipated from the anguish of Gabrielle, and her consequent indifference to worldly matters, no inconsiderable booty, of which she was thus disappointed,) and enacted herself at once into nurse, physician, and attendant, and by her judicious management and tender care had soon the happiness of beholding Angelo in a gradual state of amendment.

He recovered perfectly his reason, and his body being so much debilitated by sickness, he was no longer subject to paroxysms of delirium. In a short time he became enabled to quit his bed for several hours in the course of the day, and ultimately to forsake it altogether. But this change was not produced by magic, it cost the patient persevering Gabrielle infinite pain, distress of mind, and the privation of almost every comfort in existence; her care was unremitting, indefatigable, she scarcely slept by night, or rested during the day, and intent on procuring for Angelo every nourishment that might restore his strength, she almost forgot to take any for herself, and remembered to do so only, when her failing powers informed her, that in order to support him, it was necessary she should support herself.

But the time was now arrived when the sufferings of Gabrielle were to exceed all she had hitherto experienced. Till this period, though want had gleamed in perspective upon them, and well she knew that it must approach, if some means of keeping it at a distance were not devised, still want in perspective, and immediate want, are widely different, for the one is only imagined, while the other is felt; one excites apprehension, and the other despair.

Gabrielle had now parted with every article of value she possessed; next she had parted with all which the most rigid necessity did not compel her to retain, and now having nothing more left which might be bartered for subsistence, she with a shudder beheld that the gaunt fiend was rapidly approaching, and that if exertion were not instantly made to elude its fell grasp, soon it would overpower them.

Yet it was not for herself that Gabrielle felt or shuddered; to her, death would have been but a transition from perpetual misery to eternal peace, she would have hailed it with joy, embraced it with eagerness; but for the sufferings of another, she had not fortitude to die! all her anxiety was for Angelo, all her indifference for herself.

As Angelo was however now so much restored both in mind and body, he would permit her to leave him sometimes, and even with patience endure her absence. Thus when Gabrielle beheld that their means were so rapidly decreasing, and that ere long they must completely cease, she one day quitted him with the resolution of not returning till she had obtained some mean of certain subsistence, and to shrink from nothing, not in itself dishonourable, that might enable her yet a little longer to support with the forsaken Angelo the burthen of existence.

With this purpose therefore settled in her mind, though undecided as to the mode of pursuing it, she wandered along the populous streets, musing as she went, unobserved, or if observed, unnoticed; for her air bespoke unhappiness, and her attire poverty, appearances not calculated certainly to attract the pleasure-seeking eyes of the world. Who, indeed, need apprehend officious observation that under such circumstances wanders forth!

Passing a print shop, accidentally she raised her eyes; she beheld in the window a various assortment of drawings, so placed as to strike the beholder to the best advantage; involuntarily she stopped, for she had an exquisite taste in drawing, which the departed Montmorency had delighted to cherish and improve, and an idea had flashed across her mind that induced her hastily to approach the window: she inspected the prints, and a modest sense of her own superior powers in designing and colouring such subjects as were before her, consisting chiefly of flowers, caused her pale cheek to mantle with a conscious blush, and yielding to the sudden impulse which actuated her, timidly she entered the shop.

The cold money-getting face of the man within damped in an instant her rising hopes and deranged her ideas. She was aroused however by the complaisant inquiry of what she desired, and forcing herself by an effort to overcome the emotion of shame, so naturally felt by a noble mind when for the first time it beholds itself in the novel situation of dependance, she faltered out an intimation that she would be happy to be employed in that branch of his merchandise which consisted in flower painting. She stopped, and the unusual throbbing of her heart informed her, that for the first time she had asked a favour!

From the obsequious, kind and smiling countenance of the man who sells his goods, and receives for them money, this person’s changed suddenly to the proud, consequential, and imposing countenance of the man who purchases, and gives money; for there is a wide difference with beings of this description, between the act of receiving even the merest trifle, and that of giving it; the first still leaves them in the rank of the person obliged, the latter places them in the important and unusual light of having conferred a favour.

Of these opposite positions the person whom Gabrielle addressed was perfectly sensible; he therefore in a careless and familiar tone replied that he had no objection to oblige her if she was in distress, though he had already more applications than he could attend to, and more hands than he knew how to employ; he concluded by observing that the difficulties of the times were great, and that he could not undertake to promise any great consideration for the very best style of painting.

All this the proud daughter of Montmorency bore, for she felt that her purpose was good: the difficulty of compassing that which required to be done, always strung her energies anew; she acceded therefore to the hard terms and mercenary stipulations of the shopkeeper, with an anguished smile, and returned home with employment sufficient for several days.

Gabrielle was again in a novel situation, that of labouring for a livelihood; still she acquitted herself, as hitherto she had done, to admiration. “Oh! spirit of my father!” would she ejaculate, “could’st thou look down from thy bright abode, thou would’st not disapprove; this would not have vexed thy mortal pride to heart-breaking, for in this there is no dishonour!”

As she reflected that had she at this juncture been reduced to absolute want without the means of procuring even the morrow’s meal, Providence would thus have assisted her, and warded the horrors of such a day; she felt her heart glow with gratitude to the throne of beneficence, and with a pleasure such as for long she had not experienced.

Thus are we ever the creatures of immediate predicament; the circumstance which at one time to anticipate might have overwhelmed with despair, proves in its occurrence at another a source of rejoicing; events take their hue from the moment, and are only good or bad according to their comparative relations. Who could have imagined that the talents of Gabrielle, cultivated beneath the tender care and elegant instructions of her father, would ever have availed her as a mean of livelihood, or that she should consider herself fortunate in procuring with difficulty the opportunity of rendering them such? Yet thus it was, though only a few years back she would have viewed the bare possibility of present certainty with horror almost staggering belief.

Reaching home, Gabrielle applied with alacrity to her task, and, such is the divine effect of energy, felt even her mind lightened by such application, though confessedly for bread, and diverted from the contemplation of surrounding ills. But Angelo was incapable of emulating her, incapable even of attempting to do so; he could only gaze with wonder and admiration, without being animated by a portion of her heavenly fire; so true it is that great minds only can bear adversity. Gabrielle, though thus she laboured and exerted herself more for the benefit of the unhappy imbecile Angelo than for herself, endeavoured, with her genuine delicacy, to disguise that it was absolutely for support that she did so; she worked with cheerfulness, and sought rather to impress upon his mind that it was chiefly for amusement she thus occupied herself.

She dreaded he should feel that he depended upon her for subsistence, and her superior soul shrank from weighing him down with such a sense of obligation, and from a gratitude that, far from pleasing, would have distressed and shocked her.

But Angelo could not be for ever thus deceived; he beheld the incessant toil of this noble but unfortunate being; he beheld too that it was for him she toiled; the sense of his own unworthiness pressed heavy on his heart, and while it filled him with a profound melancholy, still further incapacitated him from what he would have considered a fruitless exertion to cope with or join his efforts to hers.

Often would he gaze upon the downcast, pale, and fading countenance, to which the gay flower she was painting and decking with all the animation of nature, formed, as it bloomed beneath her hand, a garish contrast. Often would he consider that while calling into artificial life by the magic of her pencil the frailest productions of nature, she was herself withering fast into real decay, perishing while she bade them bloom. Often then would he burst involuntarily into a passion of tears, throw himself at her feet, seize her wan hands, kiss them, and regard her with an anguish that defied the power of words.

In the mean time, however, the most active exertions could not balance her expences: as Angelo appeared still declining, she could not resist the desire of procuring for him every delicacy that she conceived likely to tempt or allure his sickly appetite, and though she lived upon the coarsest fare, and would not allow herself even a sufficiency of that, still daily she found her means becoming more and more inadequate, for though a miser, she was such to herself alone.

One evening that she was as usual busily employed, she felt a sudden weakness coming over her, her eyes grew dim, her head giddy, her trembling fingers relaxed their hold of the pencil, and unable to conquer the overpowering sensation, she sunk back in her chair.

Angelo, terrified, flew to her assistance; she made an effort, and with a languid smile entreated him not to be alarmed; scarce had she uttered the words, ere her heavy head, in which a thousand bells seemed jingling, dropped upon his shoulder, and her senses fled.

Now was Angelo compelled to exert himself; he took her in his arms and placed her on the bed, chafed her sunken temples and cold hands, shed over her torrents of tears, and in bitter anguish accused himself of having murdered the most angelic being upon earth; but had he known the true cause of Gabrielle’s indisposition, what then would have been his sensations, what his self-reproaches? The truth was, that intent as usual upon Angelo, and regardless of herself, she had expended almost the whole of the trifling sum she had in the morning obtained, in the purchase of a delicacy of which she knew Angelo to be extremely fond; it was however expensive as it was rare, and Gabrielle determined not to partake of it, that the gratification might be prolonged to Angelo.

Yet how evade his earnest persuasions? The idea suggested itself of affecting that she had taken refreshment while abroad, and was incapable of accepting more, though at the same time nothing had been further from her intentions, as such she would have deemed wanton expenditure, after having already gone far beyond what her slender means might authorize; and she promised herself that she should find no inconvenience in dispensing with an occasional meal, as long as by so doing she could procure some indulgences for Angelo.

But Gabrielle, neither apprehending, nor respecting the delicacy of her nature, acted more in conformity to its spirit than to its strength. In considering only the first, she over rated the last, and from dispensing in the commencement with one meal less a day, and sensible of no immediate injury, she next dispensed with two, and ultimately often with any. This was one of those days on which she had not tasted food, and had been without from an early hour on the day preceding. She had walked, exerted herself, added by various efforts to her exhaustion, and had ventured without allowing herself the smallest refreshment, to resume, as soon as other cares had been completed, her occupation. Nature however was no longer capable of enduring such cruel imposition, and sunk beneath the extraordinary efforts she required from it.

When by degrees she recovered from her swoon, she, became sensible of the cause that had induced it, and yielded to the entreaties of Angelo that she would take a little of the wine she had procured for him, which was one of those luxuries she still persisted in obtaining for him, and ever as resolutely refused to partake of. For the present however she consented to relax in a slight degree the severity of her laws against herself, and, as Angelo supported her in his arms, accepted from his hand a small portion of the wine, which considerably revived her, and she became enabled to rise from the bed, but still so much enfeebled as to be under the necessity of abstaining more reluctantly from her employment, though she was sufficiently imprudent to hazard the attempt.

CHAPTER XXIII.

FROM this period Gabrielle grew daily worse, yet determined to persevere till the power of doing so should utterly forsake her. She disregarded the strong and faithful warnings of nature, which on every exertion, however trifling, appeared on the point of being overpowered, and still pressed and goaded it beyond its capability of endurance. She felt a rapid internal waste, her strength failing, and every indubitable symptom of hastening decay.

The origin of her malady was certainly in the mind; now its baleful effects had communicated to her body in an alarming degree; the least movement fatigued her, to bend over her employment caused a pain at her chest, amounting to suffocation, to walk was an effort scarcely endurable, and her only moments of comparative ease were when for a few hours she allowed herself in a recumbent posture to seek the benefit of repose.

She now became so extremely feeble, and was so frequently obliged to intermit her occupation, that she clearly perceived she must speedily relinquish it altogether. On this subject however she was spared consideration; for having one morning, with infinite pain, dragged her weary limbs as far as the residence of her employer, for the purpose of conveying home the fruits of her labour; the unfeeling being, upon receiving them from her, looked coldly in her languid countenance, and carelessly observed that she seemed going into a consumption, and too ill to work.

The unfortunate Gabrielle, shocked at this cruel remark, shrank back, yet timidly replied, “that such light work could not possibly injure any one;” ill, dying as she was, she thought of the feeble Angelo, and still was anxious to preserve for him the means of procuring a slender subsistence.

“That’s no concern of mine,” replied the man, in answer to her observation, “all I know is, you work too slow for me, and I can’t pay you above half price any longer.”

Gabrielle answered not, for though she despised the brutality of the man, she easily perceived that remonstrance must be lost upon him, and that he was one of those vilely selfish beings who have no other idea than that of trafficking with distress, and think all fair that may be reaped from the urgent necessities of the unfortunate: she did not therefore notice his insinuation, for well she knew the pain and labour which it cost her to compleat what she did for the miserable consideration which she received; to have performed it for any thing beneath that, much less half, as this being had intimated, would, she felt, have been absolutely useless. Stretching forth her fair hand therefore, she accepted the wretched pittance which was her due, and without deigning to utter a syllable, left the shop.

Now was her situation indeed dreadful; she saw that want must speedily overtake them, that nothing could delay its rapid strides; she entered their sad abode with tottering steps, and a heavy heart, almost incapable of further exertion, had she even retained her employment.

Angelo was dismayed at her appearance; she looked the chill image of breathing death, or like some shadowy phantom bearing the false semblance of life and reality.

In tender accents he enquired the cause of her seeming anguish; for though her pallid aspect was familiar to him, there was an expression of distress in it at present, such as, owing to her perpetual exertions to appear cheerful in his presence, he had not for long so evidently perceived.

Her fortitude half succumbing at the sad prospect she now anticipated for Angelo, she looked in his face with the wish to smile, but burst into tears.

“Ah, tell me, beloved Gabrielle, what has happened!” exclaimed Angelo.

“Nothing, nothing, poor Angelo; nothing has happened, but the time is at length arrived—we must starve together!”

Angelo, who had scarcely during this period of distress experienced aught which could be termed privation, and whose mind therefore could not be like Gabrielle’s, familiarised to the idea of want, remained for a moment stupified with horror at her words, and the manner in which she had uttered them.

“Wretch that I am!” at length he exclaimed, striking his forehead with his hand, “wretch that I am, and monster! it is I, who have caused all this! Oh! Gabrielle, Gabrielle, on my head rest your sufferings, on my head will be your death.”

“Not so, Angelo,” faintly cried Gabrielle, “accuse not yourself, neither give way to despair; consider, dear friend, situated as we are, existence is rather painful than pleasing; if you then can with calmness bring your mind to the idea of its surrender, wherefore should we grieve, since passing from this state cannot fail to be a transition to a better? But for you, long, long had I anticipated that era with hope, as now I view it without regret.”

But Angelo possessing not the fortitude of Gabrielle, could not reason like, nor think with her; life, however bitter, was preferable in his estimation to death, the idea of which, as usually to weak minds it is, was terrible to him, viewed with repugnance and dismay. He cast himself in despair upon the ground, and could offer no consolation to her who had so long veiled from his eyes, though fully revealed to her own, the picture of horror now displayed before them. Oppressed by the strong power of imagination, already he fancied the hand of death upon him, and again were the waning powers of the hapless Gabrielle exerted to restore him to firmness and better thoughts.

The first transports of despair over, urged by the pious counsels and elevated reasonings of the half-sainted Gabrielle, Angelo, gradually animated by a slight portion of her divine enthusiasm, acquired the power to contemplate without shrinking the scene before him. He beheld indeed that the best hope now was death bringing a speedy termination of their remediless woes; it was death in its apprehension, rather than the settled thought of death, which appalled him; it was its slow approach which he dreaded—the pang of seeing it advance, that he wished to be spared, and he prayed in his heart that it might overtake him suddenly, and without warning, or that in unconscious slumber, his trembling soul might pass into eternity.

The day at length dawned upon the wretched pair, when not only their means of procuring further subsistence were totally at an end, but when they had not even sustenance to support them through it—not even a single slender meal. This was indeed a day of horror for Angelo—to Gabrielle, of pious resignation, firm hope, and blissful anticipation of a future, better state.

Till now Angelo had resembled the mariner in the storm, who to the last moment indulges hope, nor amid the crashing wreck resigns it, till dismayed he sees rushing towards him the mountainous surge which must envelop him in its fathomless bosom. So till this day, vainly, weakly and unreasonably, had Angelo indulged the fond hope of some unforeseen event, some blest occurrence to turn the tide of fate, and preserve him from the catastrophe, so dreadful and incredible to his mind, of perishing from want.

Yet this fatal day had already dawned, and no symptoms of an approaching delivery had appeared—it advanced unvarying—evening arrived—they gazed at each other in silence—night followed, and as the darkness spread around them, Angelo started from the fixed attitude of despair in which he had been gazing on Gabrielle, and clasping his hands together, exclaimed, “Now indeed have I lost all hope, the crisis of our fate rapidly approaches, God enable us to meet it with courage;” then in a deep gloomy voice he pursued, “Gabrielle, canst thou bear my head upon thy knee? I could sleep—wilt thou then pray, that from the arms of sleep, gently I may pass into those of death!”

“Come then, my dear friend,” cried Gabrielle, “so be it; for myself, I will not sleep—my crimes have been great at the bar of heaven; I would employ my last moments in endeavouring to prepare my guilty soul for its examination, and praying of the Almighty to judge it with mercy.”

Angelo threw himself at her feet, he laid his head upon her lap, and covered his eyes with her hand, as if desirous to shut out for ever all earthly objects, and be spared the pang of death.

Soon as he wished, deep sleep overpowered him. The apartment was in gloomy darkness—yet the inspired soul of Gabrielle saw light—her thoughts ascended to eternity, and revelled in the infinity of space. In the heaven of heavens she fancied she beheld her father, that he looked down smiling upon her, and with outstretched arms, and in a voice which seemed to her rapt ears as the music of the spheres, said, “Come, my Gabrielle, all is forgiven.” In visions like these did she pass the night, sleep visited not her eyes, neither did she wish it. Morning dawned, Angelo started suddenly from his slumber, and springing up, exclaimed in a wild voice, “Oh, my God! do I then still live!”

“Be not impatient, my friend,” said Gabrielle; “but if thou hast strength, bear me to the bed, that I may die there, for of myself I have not power to move.”

Angelo, who was somewhat refreshed by sleep, bore the enfeebled Gabrielle in his arms to the bed, and seated himself beside her. This day the sun shone upon them, but its splendour was mockery; Gabrielle gazed not on it through humility, for she wished not that its cheering beams should exhilarate her soul, or recall her to earthly pleasure, while Angelo closed his eyes upon the brilliant visitant in the bitterness of an impatient despair.

Hour after hour rolled on; the dusk of evening again advanced, a sense of pain from long abstinence began to be acutely felt; their sufferings by the most terrible of deaths were necessarily protracted, and gradually increased, while their termination was contemplated, by the one with an invincible fortitude, by the other with sensations of an indescribable horror that amounted almost to madness!

The light was now such that they could merely distinguish each other. Gabrielle in a faint voice murmured to Angelo, to raise her head from the pillow. Trembling with anguish and alarm, he obeyed, conceiving from the tone of her voice that her last moments were approaching. He supported her in his arms, she rested her head upon his shoulder, and gazed on him, though without speaking, with a grateful placid smile. She laid her spread hand upon her heart, her eyes of celestial blue were raised upwards with an animated expression, her countenance was that of a saint inspired with a holy fervour, while her soul seemed gently passing like a breath from earth to heaven!

Angelo looked upon her with the wild aspect of moody terrible despair, on perceiving that he must still survive, yet with an anxious wish that her fleeting breath might be delayed till his might mingle with it, and their souls together pass the threshold of mortal life; for he dreaded the thought of dying as it were unprotected in his last moments, so tremblingly did he hang on Gabrielle, even in death.

While thus they remained in each other’s arms, a slight noise was heard at their door. Gabrielle, whose thoughts had already parted from earth, wished not that they should be recalled to it; she desired to die; and to return to life and to the world, would have been a painful effort; she heeded not therefore the noise, either by look or movement.

Mean time it was repeated, but with increased violence. Angelo started involuntarily; it continued still louder, for their door had been secured, that no one might intrude upon or witness their anguish and distress. The attention of Gabrielle was dragged again to earth, she made a faint movement, Angelo laid her head gently upon the pillow, and fast as his debilitated limbs would allow, approached the door, opened it, and in a voice almost inarticulate from passion struggling with weakness, he cried, “Who dare intrude here! and interrupt our last moments!” at the same time staring wildly upon the intruder, and holding the door in his hand, as if unwilling he should enter.

“D’Albini!” cried a voice that recalled itself to the mind of Angelo, “I perceive you know me not; I have, however, letters and papers of consequence for you, which I could deliver into your hands alone: with the utmost difficulty, after having been several days in search of you, I have been so fortunate as to trace you; and if I judge aright, you will find in the packet I bring something to reconcile you to my apparently unwelcome intrusion.”

Angelo now perfectly recognised the voice of an old associate, but his travelled heart shrunk from contact with him, and in faltering accents he replied, his native pride still operating, “This is no place for you, it is the chamber of misery, of death!—I will dispense with your entrance, you can have no papers, no letters that now concern me.”

“Pardon me,” returned Fitzarden, “and allow me a word only, to convince you to the contrary. Ellesmere is no more, he expired by a wound received in a duel from his most intimate friend, who had attempted to seduce his mistress: no sooner was he given to understand that he could not survive, than he sent for me, and reverting to his unfortunate transaction with yourself, the whole of which he had before related to me, he confessed that in that awful moment he felt the bitterest remorse, from the reflection of having, as he feared, completely ruined you, since you had suddenly vanished, no one knew whither; and that he could not die easy, unless he made you restitution of the whole of what he had obtained from you on that memorable night, and at every former period. “Promise me, Fitzarden,” he added, “that you will not neglect my dying request, that you will not rest till you have discovered his retreat, and re-instated him in the full possession of his own. I faithfully promised; he lived to see the requisite instrument executed, which was to confirm you in the possession of your right, and then expired in comparative tranquillity—though deeply deploring his manifold errors, yet in the hope that he had retrieved at least the effects of one most baleful.” Fitzarden concluded; Angelo endeavoured to speak, hope had dawned upon his soul, and with it had returned, more strongly than ever, the desire of life.

The attempt, however, that he had made to speak, from the confusion of ideas that pressed upon his mind, and his extreme debility, overpowered him. He staggered towards the bed, where the silent Gabrielle still lay; he essayed to express himself to her, but could not; the words evaporated in a hollow murmur, and he sunk exhausted on the bed. Fitzarden, now considerably alarmed, called aloud for lights and some assistance.

Angelo was presently restored, though appearing in a state of the utmost debility; but for the unhappy Gabrielle, her last hour seemed to have arrived, and it was considered almost a forlorn hope to summon the immediate aid of a physician.

Without making enquiry, the situation of his former gay companion was sufficiently evident to Fitzarden; he clearly perceived that he was reduced to the most abject distress, and as he cast his eyes around the cold desolate apartment, he could not avoid contrasting it in his mind with the sumptuous dwellings in which formerly he had been accustomed to behold him. The view of the dreadful change produced by a fatal indiscretion, struck a salutary terror to the heart of the young man, and he started to reflect that his own habits were at this period such precisely as D’Albini’s had long been: thus reverting to self, and what might be his own fate, he felt his commiseration increase for the unhappy beings before him.

A physician now arrived, and was conducted instantly to Gabrielle; he felt her pulse, looked in her death-like countenance, on which the finger of want had imprinted traces deep as those of sorrow, and pronounced with an unusual delicacy and sincerity, that her malady was the result of intense exhaustion, and that nourishment, not medicine, was alone capable of restoring her.

At this declaration, however compassionately veiled, that the tender and angelic Gabrielle was expiring from want, Angelo, unable to restrain his acute emotion, burst into tears. Such was the anguish of his feelings, that but for immediate assistance he would have sunk into a state worse far than that from which he had just been recovered.

Despair and eternal repining had made on his countenance a havoc almost equal to that which want and hidden anguish had made in that of Gabrielle; and again as Fitzarden pressed him to take some wine, he gazed upon his sunken cheeks, and hollow eyes, and could not avoid remembering the gay hours when, glowing in the bloom of health and careless vivacity, they had pledged each other in repeated goblets, not, as now, to restore exhausted nature, but to sink it rather in enfeebling sensuality, or, plunging into the vice of prodigal excess, to fit themselves for pursuits that sober reason could not have tolerated.

Some exhilarating cordial having been administered to Gabrielle, she once more opened on the light her faintly beaming eyes.—Angelo supported her in his trembling arms; while Fitzarden, in whose soul the scene before him awakened feelings which he was unconscious of possessing, and whose mind was impressed with the most delicate respect for Gabrielle, joined his entreaties to those of Angelo, and earnestly besought her to take some nourishment.

Gabrielle found herself compelled to yield; the cup of existence was again presented to her lips, she wished not to taste of it, for her sad mind foreboded that as heretofore the sweets that it might contain, would bear no proportion to the bitter with which they would be mingled; yet to repel life was equal to the crime of seeking death; she remembered that she was the creature of her Creator, and as her piety had given her the resignation to die, it now inspired her with the fortitude to live.

She recovered by degrees; with her Angelo recovered likewise, for he saw that for this time he should be spared the remorse of beholding her die for him. His was not a mind to anticipate distant events, neither to dive deeply into remote origins, or causes; the simple position of not having to accuse himself at this juncture of the death of her who had sacrificed so much for him, who had famished that he might feast—to be spared a reflection so bitter, so accusing, was of itself sufficient to exhilarate his soul, while the idea, then shining forth in added lustre, of his fair future prospects, conveyed a feeling of renovated bliss. Fitzarden would not leave them till he beheld them in a state widely different from that in which he had found them; Angelo, ever easily depressed, now animated to a pitch of extravagance, while a feeling of pleasure at his joy, chastened by her stronger reason, shone through the lovely mind of Gabrielle, as the mild light of the soul, or like a tempered sun-beam diffusing around a soft and tender brilliancy. Fitzarden promised to return on the following day, but previous to his visiting them, to arrange for their reception an abode somewhat different to that which they at present occupied.

“But was not this good enough to die in!” observed Gabrielle to Fitzarden, as he rose to depart.

“I know not that,” answered Fitzarden, who involuntarily gazed on her with admiration; “for such a being as you it was not even good enough to die in; yet indeed,” added he, “virtues like yours are of themselves independent, requiring neither living pomp nor mausoleum!”

“Who talks of death!” cried Angelo, with a laugh,—“it must be life, beloved Gabrielle, long and happy life, for both you and me!”

The feelings of Gabrielle told her a less flattering tale, but she faintly smiled in compliment to the wild hopes of the sanguine Angelo.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A FEW days now beheld them re-instated in all their former comforts, such at least as depended upon ease and affluence alone: but while other subsequent sufferings had diminished in the mind of Angelo the feeling of deep sorrow for the loss of a son, and then again by an unexpected deliverance from those sufferings, made him almost forget the evil in the good, the heart of the sensible Gabrielle fondly yearned after her children, in anxious conjecture of their fate, and in the eager desire to behold them ere she died; for sadly she foreboded that if this period did not soon arrive, speedily must she resign the lingering hope.

And well and truly did she forebode; that tender and susceptible soul had received a cureless wound, which time might aggravate indeed, but which it was powerless to heal. Great and terrible, even from early youth, had been her sufferings, almost unintermitting; one misfortune had been succeeded by another, and each more dreadful than the last. Those blows which render some hearts callous from their frequency, had lacerated her’s beyond recovery; yet it was not that she wanted firmness to repel, but she had likewise sensibility acutely to feel.

Such, such on a virtuous, delicate, and sensible mind, are the consequences of early error, deeply, unceasingly, yet unavailingly deplored.

Now that Angelo was restored to the rank he had formerly held in society, he determined to renew to Gabrielle the offer of his hand; for his vices were in consequence of the weakness of his heart, and not of its depravity—of the insufficiency of his reason to direct him right, and not of his desire to do ill. He reverted therefore with complacency to the idea of making Gabrielle his wife, and with that pleasure which never fails to accompany in a mind not utterly depraved the desire of retrieving in some degree the faults that have been committed, he felt, with becoming emotion, how little was this late and insufficient compliment calculated to recompense in the thousandth part, the conduct she had pursued towards him.

He seized therefore the earliest opportunity of fulfilling his intention and in justice to him be it said, with a faltering and confusion resulting from the consciousness of how much earlier he should have made the tender of that name and title, she had ever equally as now deserved.

“When I was young and foolish, Gabrielle,” said he, “I knew not your worth; I outraged, injured, and insulted you: when I became beggared in fortune as in happiness, I felt a wretch so wholly unworthy of you, that to have then pressed upon you the offer of my hand, would have merited that you should reject it with contempt; but now that I am no longer in adversity, though bettered by the lessons it has taught me, and capable from the point of view in which it has revealed your excellencies of appreciating, though not yet equal to your merit, the heavenly treasure I possess in you; now if you will suffer me by repentance and future care to expiate in a slight degree my past errors towards you, then, beloved Gabrielle, will you give me but one more proof of the superiority of your nature, even in that difficult task, the forgiveness and oblivion of injury.”

Gabrielle gave her hand to Angelo in token of acquiescence: confused ideas pressed upon her mind, she wished not to damp his animation, nor the hope which sparkled in his eyes, fondly bent upon her, by giving them utterance; therefore looking with kindness on him, she remained silent, while she admitted without pain to her mind the conviction that long she should not live to possess by name, what in a superior degree she had ever been in character.

Angelo was permitted to fix an early day for the ceremony of rendering Gabrielle his wife; he desired to invite the whole of his friends (so esteemed) resident in England, to witness what he termed the celebration of his day of triumph; but from this public display the pride and delicacy of Gabrielle shrunk repugnant, knowing too well that it would be considered by others the day of her triumph! It was enough for her to receive in secret the tardy avowal of her merits; the mortification of having been so long unappreciated, or deemed unworthy, and of accepting at length what had been ever due to her, was by her deemed no proud triumph; to be exhibited before idle witnesses, who could neither feel nor understand, none either, but the contrary. In secret had been her sufferings, her injuries, and indignities; of the atonement which it was proposed to make for them she had her own sentiments, and she determined that secret too should be her acceptance of it.

The day now drew nigh on which the marriage was fixed to take place. Gabrielle, still languid, feeble, and becoming daily more exhausted, reclined upon a couch from morning until night, and on the arrival of the day, she was so ill as to be incapable of the least exertion.

Angelo with his usual impatience was wild at the idea of being under the necessity of postponing the ceremony, which Gabrielle no sooner perceived than in order to tranquillize him, she declared her determination that no indisposition on her part should retard it.—It took place accordingly; she received his vows and gave him hers in return; and Angelo, as he embraced, and hailed her by the name of wife, experienced a felicity purer and more extatic than ever had been afforded him by the highest gratification of meretricious passion.

Such is the power of virtue over the heart, that even a long course of vice will not render us wholly invulnerable to its divine influence; yet if indeed there be a human being so far sunk in depravity, as to prove an exception to this remark, lamentable indeed must be his state.

But the performance of a sacred ceremony had no power to call back to Gabrielle her departed health; it had no more power over her weakened body than over her towering mind her; fearful malady continued to increase, and she appeared but as a fair anatomy, the shadow of her former self. Angelo, who perceived that of all his worldly friendships Gabrielle had alone remained by him in the hour of adversity, viewed her at length as she had always merited to be viewed, and could not contemplate the possibility of losing her, without feelings little short of distraction.

Now as the prospect of her danger increased, his anguish and his fears increased likewise; he ransacked the kingdom for advice, he collected around him a host of doctors: all proved vain; and in despair of the power of medicine, he yielded with the eagerness of a last hope to the counsel which directed him to convey her from the dense atmosphere of the town to the salubrious coast of Devon.

The patient uncomplaining Gabrielle, who took without a murmur the vain medicines which the terrified solicitude of Angelo pressed upon her, who listened with a placid and resigned smile to all that was proposed, who yielded with the softness of an angel to every scheme suggested for her amusement, or the renovation of her health, acceded without a word of opposition, and without a thought of hope, to the present entreaty of Angelo, that she would at least consent to try the effect of a purer air.

As if he had obtained a certainty of prolonging her life, of restoring her from wasting sickness to bloomy health, he seized her acquiescence on the instant, as fearful she should retract, and by the eager impatience which he evinced in preparing for the journey, if he distressed and incommoded the enfeebled Gabrielle, he at the same time conveyed to her mind the reflection that she was now more than ever dear to him; though why she was so, she wished not to dissipate the pleasing delusion by inquiring.

In the highest human mind, self-love will a little operate; true, the conviction could not restore her drooping health, but it spared her the pang of witnessing in the last stages of her existence a rooted heart-breaking indifference to her fate.

With Angelo, to decide and to act was the same thing; he immediately left London, and by easy stages arrived in Devonshire, there hiring a beautiful cottage which commanded an uninterrupted view of the coast. In the exhilaration inspired by novelty and change of scene, Angelo, transferring his vivacity to the idea of Gabrielle, endeavoured to believe that it arose from beholding in her languid countenance confirmation of his hopes that her residence on this spot would be crowned with success; expressing himself to her with his wonted animation, he exclaimed, gently seizing her in his arms, “Come, my love, come, recover your bloom! you must—and the brilliancy of those eyes; smile upon me, and let me see that already you feel yourself growing better!”

As if in obedience to his wish the pale countenance of Gabrielle became suffused with a faint hectic blush, and unwilling to damp the animation of Angelo, she said, “I do, Angelo—- I do feel growing better;” she smiled too, but her smile was hopeless, and the momentary fire which sparkled in her eyes, was in the blest anticipation that she would be better, not in this world but in a future state.

Several weeks she lingered, at the earnest wish of Angelo, in this lovely abode. It was the close of spring, and if hope of health could be conveyed to the sick soul bending to the tomb, this was the season to inspire it; or if life could be breathed into the cold form of death, this too was the season in which the miracle would have seemed less; but amidst all this, amidst its mild verdure and budding beauty, the heart of Gabrielle was incapable of being elated, it was still calm, still patient and resigned, for she felt that no second spring could it ever be her lot to behold!

One evening when for the time of year it was uncommonly, but not oppressively warm, Angelo prevailed on her to sit without the door of their cottage, and inhale the refreshing breezes from the sea; she as usual acquiesced, he led her forth, and debility compelled her immediately to sit upon the rustic bench which had been placed for her accommodation. She leaned back, and Angelo, with his arm round her waist, tenderly supported her of whom now he felt almost the full value.

Nothing could be more beautiful than the prospect before them; it was nature, not in her most fantastic or magnificent attire, but in her simple, lovely and most interesting garb! she was not as a fierce and sovereign mistress decked in her robes of state, and awing by her frowns, but as a gentle maid, wooing and irresistibly winning admiration by her dimpled smiles. Gradually sloping hills, dales, and blooming valleys, charmed without confusing the senses, pleased without fatiguing the eye; before them the green expanded bosom of the sea seemed swelling in soft acclivity, and as if respectful to the sun beams glittering upon it, (making it a sheet of liquid radiance,) only gently smiled, and undulated, sending to the shore at intervals its low rushing waves, that in hollow murmurs seemed to speak their gratitude.

Gabrielle sat for a while silent, her dim shining eyes fixed on the prospect before her; mournful, yet not unpleasing ideas crouded on her mind—she shed a few tears, but they were not tears of anguish. “Angelo,” cried she at length, “regard the sky.”

“I behold it, my love,” answered Angelo.

“Do you see nothing remarkable in it?”

“Nothing!” Angelo replied, looking at her involuntarily with some surprise.

“Well then, regard stedfastly,” pursued Gabrielle; “do you remember the figure of my sainted father? look!” pointing with her finger, “it is there accurately delineated in the sky! see, there is his majestic form! the contour of his head, his perfect self! Ah, Angelo, he is in heaven, he is behind that cloud, and his blest image shines dimly through it, as through a thin veil! ah! now it fades! it fleets away! see, Angelo, it is disappearing altogether! Would that my soul could aspire on that parting sun beam, and reach him ere he goes—He came to call me hence! to warn me, I know it—I feel it in the new sensation that rushes through my frame! I am going to be regenerated!” She paused for a moment, then added in a voice, low yet firm, “Angelo! never more on this earth shall I behold the glory of the setting sun!”

“My beloved,” cried Angelo turning pale, and half fearful that her senses were forsaking her, or that her language was ominous of approaching death, “my beloved, talk not thus, nor let so fair an evening inspire you with melancholy only—it should chear, it should exhilarate your spirits, for I am confident from the improvement I behold in your looks, that it has benefited you; never, never did you appear more beautiful in my eyes than at this moment!”

Nor was the latter observation of Angelo wholly void of foundation, on the livid white of her cheek, glowed but not blended with it, a crimson red, resembling the brightest hue of the damask rose-bud! the gaudy and deceitful livery in which fell consumption often decks its victims, misleading with the hope of health, when nearest to the tomb! The bright red tint which gave to her eyes a delusive brilliancy, causing them to shine like distant twinkling stars, added to the semblance of beauty, which Angelo had remarked; but Gabrielle, whose inward feelings taught her the vanity of looks, mournfully shook her head, and said, “Deceive not yourself, Angelo, nor cherish vain hopes; endeavour,” she continued in a deep solemn voice, “endeavour while I have yet strength to touch upon a subject nearest to my heart, to listen to me with fortitude:—Promise me, when I am gone that you will spare no pains to learn the fate of our children!—promise me, that for their sakes, you will form no other tie, and that being free, and at liberty, you will employ the time after my death, in seeking to discover if still they live, and how! Oh! Angelo, this is a momentous consideration; I cannot but think that we, to whose unhappy errors they owe that ever they were ushered into life, must be responsible for their fates at the bar of heaven! I wish not to grieve, to torture you in my last moments,” for the countenance of Angelo bore evident symptoms of the acuteness of his feelings, “but if I speak not now, as I feel it my duty to do, never more shall I possess the power!

“The only atonement which now we can make for our crime, is to obviate as much as possible its fatal consequences. Think, Angelo!—Great God! we have two children, and at this moment as if heaven were determined to punish us, and show its wrath at the subversion of a moral duty—at this moment we are deprived of both! nay, in utter ignorance of their destination!—dreadful reflection!—Yet if Heaven, more merciful than just, should wave in our favour the great cause of society (for in the grand scale of its wisdom, the few must not be spared in their errors to the injury of the many) and not punish as we merit, through us, those innocent victims—if you are allowed life, as I am not, yet to retrieve the unhappy past—then, I beseech you, give, give your whole soul with ardour, with enthusiasm to the task! Ransack the universe for your children, and snatch them from impending fate! Oh! thrice blest will you be, should you be permitted success! thrice blest will you be, and happy will you die, if laying your hand upon your heart, and fixing your eyes on heaven, you can say, ‘God, I thank thee, my children suffer not through me!—neither at thy tribunal can they accuse me!’ ”

The voice of Gabrielle, sweetly solemn, sunk in the heart of Angelo, but it deprived him of hope, and he gazed upon her with tearful eyes. It was getting dim twilight; to his inspired fancy, she appeared as an embodied spirit! he dared not even take her hand, such was the sacred awe of his feelings, and though her words rived him with anguish, he waited in hallowed silence for what further her aspiring soul should dictate to her lips!

She resumed: “You are silent, Angelo; I perceive, and I bless heaven for it, that you are impressed by my words; it is all I wish; I would not depress your soul, I desire rather to imbue it with energy; nor, if departed spirits are allowed to look down on this earth, could mine, oh, Angelo! be half so approving of your grief, as in beholding you in active prosecution of my last desire!”

“Oh, Gabrielle!” cried Angelo sinking on his knees before her, “beloved of my soul, talk not thus, I implore you, of your last desire! of quitting me at this moment, when you are more dear to me, more valued than at any former period of my past life! Oh! no, I will not promise aught—I cannot—I shall be bereft of energy if deprived of you! Live, live! oh, Gabrielle! and to the remotest corner of the earth may you command me! Inspired by the dear hope of rendering you happy, I should acquire strength, ardour for any thing! obstacles would but increase my exertion, and if our children still lived upon the earth, to your eager arms would I assuredly bring them!”

As he concluded, Gabrielle sank down upon her knees beside him, and joining his hands together, held them in hers.

“Now swear!” she cried, “now promise, Angelo, that you will faithfully attend to what I have required of you!—promise, or in peace I cannot die!—till then my soul, reluctant to leave its tenement of clay, will struggle in agony for mortal life! and e’en when parting hence, will still be steeped in anguish, unsatisfied, and clogged with remorse at the bar of heaven!”

“Oh! great God!” cried Angelo, bursting into tears, “you rive my heartstrings. Look not thus, my beloved!—Yes, I swear, I swear.”

“God! I thank thee!” cried Gabrielle, extending her fair arms to heaven, and looking upwards with a smile of enthusiastic gratitude; then kissing the forehead of her husband, she added, “Raise me, dear friend, and lead me into the house.”

Angelo obeyed, but rather carried than led her light emaciated form into the house; she retired early to bed, and slept with composure during the night.

On the following morning Angelo entered her chamber; she was sitting up in her bed, supported by pillows; the sun, through clustering vine and jessamine, shone brightly into her apartment, and with singular pleasure was she regarding alternately its chequered beams upon the floor, and the fair prospect without, while a variety of birds gaily singing and joining in concert their small melodious throats, seemed striving at once to inspire her with joy and hope, and to serenade the rising morn!

Poor Gabrielle was gazing with that melancholy anxious look that evinced her consciousness it was for the last time she did so; and this feeling, whether inspired by the anticipation of death, or absence, ever gives an indescribable charm to the most trivial surrounding objects. Angelo approached her bedside, and tenderly enquired how she felt.

“Well!” replied she, “calm, easy, just as I wish to feel!” A pang struck the heart of Angelo at the peculiar expression of her countenance, as she uttered this; but endeavouring to conceal his feelings, he said in a gay tone, “Since you have awakened so early, Gabrielle, you may as well enjoy the fresh morning breeze.”

“I would with pleasure,” she answered, “but I feel too feeble; and perhaps if I could, it might be wrong—for it might give me a longing to inhale it again!”

“A longing that you might easily gratify, my love,” interrupted Angelo.

“No, Angelo! I have seen the sun rise—I shall never see it rise again, nor shall I behold it set!” She reclined her head upon the pillow, and remained silent, while Angelo turned to the window to hide his gushing tears:—presently, from her gentle and regular breathings, he believed that she had fallen into a slumber; he gently approached the bed, and perceiving that her eyes were closed, sat down beside her.

She slept for about an hour, but not composedly; her countenance frequently changed, her muscles now and then worked with a tremulous motion, and a cold dew broke out upon her forehead.

Suddenly she started and awoke, as in trepidation and horror! she gazed with a wild bewildered air around, seeming anxious to collect her scattered thoughts, and recover from her strange confusion! Angelo, infinitely alarmed, took her hand; at this she started anew, made an effort to speak, and gazed on him with a look of patient anguish on finding she could not! her fingers convulsively grasped his, and now relaxed their hold—now a thin film gathered over her eyes, and now with a wild vacancy involuntarily they opened wide! now the colour fled from her lips, rushed back for a moment, then forsook them altogether! Her breathing became short and irregular, and the terrified Angelo laying his hand upon her heart, found its pulsations to tally with it. He instantly dispatched some attendants for the physician, who daily and vainly had visited her, and the moments passed in waiting for his arrival were past in anxious trepidation by Angelo.

Gabrielle remained in the same state; she could not speak, but her fixed and heavy eyes were turned on him with an expression, such as convinced him that she knew him well, and had even something that she wished to say to him.

The physician at length arrived; no sooner did he behold her than, turning to Angelo, he whispered, “I cannot give you hope! her last moments are approaching.” He drew near the bed-side of Gabrielle, and raising her head he poured into her mouth a few drops of a restorative quality. Gabrielle faintly struggled, an effort of nature aided the effect of the cordial—she rivetted for a few moments her closing eyes upon Angelo, and made a movement with her head, as if anxious to lay it on his bosom.

He took her in his arms, her head fell heavy on his breast.—“Angelo!” she faintly murmured—“a just God visits the death of my father upon me—— I—— I too am dying—— of a broken heart!”

Angelo had not words, he looked on her in anguish too big for speech; uttering a short convulsive sigh, she grasped his hand, and in quivering, irregular accents hastily resumed,—“Remember—our children—remember—your promise!” What more she sought to articulate in hollow murmurs died away, the damps of death gathered on her brow! cold and stiff became the hand which Angelo, fevered with agony, still held in his! the last breath flitted from her livid lips, and her pure soul, now at liberty to seek a sphere more congenial to it, ascended with it from earth to heaven!

For many minutes after she had ceased to breathe, Angelo durst not admit to his mind the terrible truth that she was gone for ever! He continued gazing on her cold body with a mingled sensation of agony, despair, and stupefaction!—at length he turned away his eyes, as if to convince himself that they had deluded him only with a frightful vision, and that when again he looked upon her, he should behold her breathe! but as he turned, he encountered the solemn looks of the physician, who, thinking that he read in the countenance of Angelo something like an expression of doubt, uttered the slow and dreadful sentence,—“All is indeed over!”

“No, no! you dare not say it!” wildly raved Angelo, clasping his hands together,—“no, no! I am not so cursed!—I have not killed the most angelic being!—Speak! Speak, oh, Gabrielle! say that you live!—that you will live! God of mercy!” he continued, madly glancing around, “she will not answer!—oh! she is, she is indeed dead!!—but I will not survive her—oh! no, by heaven! not an instant!” and rushing toward the door, with intent to seek some weapon of destruction, he was opposed by those around, when in the wildest fury he beat his breast, tore off his hair, and as if determined on death, dashed himself upon the floor, shrieking forth in bitter cries the name of Gabrielle! Then suddenly breaking from those who held him, he sprang to the bed, franticly he embraced the inanimate form, sacredly beautiful in death! he called upon her in a frenzy of agony, till losing all command over his voice, it wandered into a latitude of horror scarcely human! His senses failed him, and the physician conceiving that, exhausted by his violence, he would be longer unable to resist, desired that he should be immediately conveyed to bed, and for that purpose was he raised from the body of Gabrielle.

At this movement his paroxysms returned, he struggled like a maniac, now crying aloud that he would die beside her, now piteously entreating that he might be permitted! but nature could endure no more, he became again overpowered, and sinking into insensibility, was borne from the spot.

END OF VOL. III.

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Table of Contents

THE LIBERTINE;

THE LIBERTINE.

CHAP. XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CHAPTER XXIV.

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