endeavours--?'
'Hope nothing,' said Theodora. 'Every one would tell you you have had a happy escape.'
'And is this all? My inspiration!--you who were awakening me to a sense of the greatness of real life--you who would have led me and aided me to a nobler course--'
'That is open to you, without the evils I should have entailed on you. I could never have returned your feelings, and it would have been misery for both. You will see it, when you come to your senses, and rejoice.'
'Rejoice! If you knew how the thought of you is entwined in every aspiration, and for life!'
'Do not talk so,' said Theodora. 'It only grieves me to see the pain I have given; but it would be worse not to break off at once.'
'Must it be so?' said he, lingering before his fleeting vision.
'It must. The kindest thing by both of us is to cut this as short as possible.'
'In that, as in all else, I obey. I know that a vain loiterer, like myself, had little right to hope for notice from one whose mind was bent on the noblest tasks of mankind. You have opened new views to me, and I had dared to hope you would guide me in them; but with you or without you, my life shall be spent in them.'
'That will be some consolation for the way I have treated you,' said Theodora.
His face lighted up. 'My better angel!' he said, 'I will be content to toil as the knights of old, hopelessly, save that if you hear of me no longer as the idle amateur, but as exerting myself for something serviceable, you will know it is for your sake.'
'It had better be for something else,' said Theodora, impatiently. 'Do not think of me, nor delude yourself with imagining you can win me by any probation.'
'I may earn your approval--'
'You will earn every one's,' she interrupted. 'Put mine out of your head. Think of life and duty, and their reward, as they really are, and they will inspirit you better than any empty dream of me.'
'It is vain to tell me so!' said the Earl, looking at her glancing eye and earnest countenance. 'You will ever seem to beckon me forwards.'
'Something better will beckon you by and by, if you will only begin. Life is horrid work--only endurable by looking after other people, and so you will find it. Now, let us have done with this. Wish your sister good-bye for me, and tell her that I beg her to forgive me for the pain I have given you. I am glad you have her. She will make you happy--I have only tormented those I loved best; so you are better off with her. Good-bye. Shake hands, to show that you forgive me.'
'I will not harass you by pertinacity,' said poor Lord St. Erme, submissively. 'It has been a happy dream while I was bold enough to indulge in it. Farewell to it, though not, I trust, to its effects.'
Lingering as he held her hand, he let it go; then, returning to the grasp, bent and kissed it, turned away, as if alarmed at his own presumption, and hastened from the room.
She flung herself into her father's chair to consider of seeing Lady Lucy, of writing to Violet, of breaking the tidings to her aunt, of speaking to her Cousin Hugh; but no connected reflection could be summoned up--nothing but visions of an Athenian owl, and green cotton umbrella. At length the sound of the opening door made her start up.
'Have I interrupted you?' asked her cousin. 'I thought I should find your father here.'
'I do not know where he is,' said Theodora. 'Can I do anything for you? Oh! I beg your pardon; I had forgotten it was time to read to you.'
'You know I always hoped that yon would not make it a burden.'
'If you knew the relief it is to be of any sort of use,' returned she, hastily setting his chair, and fetching the books.
Perhaps her attention wandered while she read, for they had hardly finished before she looked up and said, 'That always puts me in mind of Arthur's wife. The ornament of a meek and quiet spirit is so entirely her adorning--her beauty only an accessory.'
'Yes; I wish I knew her,' said Mr. Martindale.
'Oh! how I wish she was here!' sighed Theodora.
'For any special reason?'
'Yes; I want her to soften and help me. She seems to draw and smooth away the evil, and to keep me from myself. Nothing is so dreary where she is.'
'I should not have expected to hear you, at your age, and with your prospects, talk of dreariness.'
'That is all over,' said Theodora. 'I have told him that it cannot be. I am glad, for one reason, that I shall not seem to deceive you any more. Has papa told you what he thinks my history!'
'He has told me of your previous affair.'
'I wonder what is his view?'
'His view is one of deep regret; he thinks your tempers were incompatible.'
Theodora laughed. 'He has a sort of termagant notion of me.'
'I am afraid you do no justice to your father's affection and anxiety.'
'It is he who does me no justice,' said Theodora.
'Indeed, I do not think that can be your sister's teaching,' said Mr. Martindale.
'I wish she was here!' said Theodora, again. 'But now you have heard my father's story, you shall hear mine;' and with tolerable fairness, she related the history of the last few months. The clergyman was much interested in the narrative of this high-toned mind,--'like sweet bells jangled,' and listened with earnest and sorrowful attention. There was comfort in the outpouring; and as she spoke, the better spirit so far prevailed, that she increasingly took more blame to herself, and threw less on others. She closed her confession by saying, 'You see, I may well speak of dreariness.'
'Of dreariness for the present,' was the answer; 'but of hope. You put me in mind of some vision which I have read of, where safety and peace were to be attained by bowing to the dust, to creep beneath a gateway, the entrance to the glorious place. You seem to me in the way of learning that lesson.'
'I have bent to make the avowal I thought I never could have spoken,' said Theodora.
'And there is my hope of you. Now for the next step.'
'The next! what is it?'
'Thankfully and meekly to accept the consequences of these sad errors.'
'You mean this lonely, unsatisfactory life?'
'And this displeasure of your father.'
'But, indeed, he misjudges me.'
'Have you ever given him the means of forming a different judgment?'
'He has seen all. If I am distrusted, I cannot descend to justify myself.'
'I am disappointed in you, Theodora. Where is your humility?'
With these words Mr. Martindale quitted her. He had divined that her feelings would work more when left to themselves, than when pressed, and so it proved.
The witness within her spoke more clearly, and dislike and loathing of her proceedings during the last year grew more strongly upon her. The sense of her faults had been latent in her mind for months past, but the struggle of her external life had kept it down, until now it came forth with an overpowering force of grief and self- condemnation. It was not merely her sins against Mr. Fotheringham and Lord St. Erme that oppressed her, it was the perception of the wilful and rebellious life she had led, while making so high a profession.
Silently and sadly she wore through the rest of the day, unmolested by any remark from the rest of the family, but absorbed in her own thoughts, and the night passed in acute mental distress; with longings after Violet to soothe her, and to open to her hopes of the good and right way of peace.
With morning light came the recollection that, after all, Violet would rejoice in what she had just done. Violet would call it a step in the right direction; and she had promised her further help from above and within, when once she should have had patience to take the right move, even in darkness. 'She told me, if I put my trust aright, and tried to act in obedience, I should find a guide!'
And, worn out and wearied with the tossings of her mind, Theodora resolved to have recourse to the kind clergyman who had listened to her confidence. Perhaps he was the guide who would aid her to conquer the serpents that had worked her so much misery; and, after so much self-will, she felt that there would be rest in submitting to direction.
