I CANNA chuse, but ever will
Be luving to thy father still,
Whaireir he gae, whaireir he ryde,
My luve with him maun still abyde;
In weil or wae, whaireir he gae,
Mine heart can neir depart him frae.
Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament.
IT may be remembered that in the earlier part of this continuation of the
history of Maltravers it was stated that Aubrey had in early life met
with the common lot of a disappointed affection. Eleanor Westbrook, a
young woman of his own humble rank, had won, and seemed to return, his
love; but of that love she was not worthy. Vain, volatile, and
ambitious, she forsook the poor student for a more brilliant marriage.
She accepted the hand of a merchant, who was caught by her beauty, and
who had the reputation of great wealth. They settled in London, and
Aubrey lost all traces of her. She gave birth to an only daughter: and
when that child had attained her fourteenth year, her husband suddenly,
and seemingly without cause, put an end to his existence. The cause,
however, was apparent before he was laid in his grave. He was involved
far beyond his fortune,--he had died to escape beggary and a jail. A
small annuity, not exceeding one hundred pounds, had been secured on the
widow. On this income she retired with her child into the country; and
chance, the vicinity of some distant connections, and the cheapness of
the place, concurred to fix her residence in the outskirts of the town of
C-----. Characters that in youth have been most volatile and most
worldly, often when bowed down and dejected by the adversity which they
are not fitted to encounter, become the most morbidly devout; they ever
require an excitement, and when earth denies, they seek it impatiently
from heaven.
This was the case with Mrs. Westbrook; and this new turn of mind brought
her naturally into contact with the principal saint of the neighbourhood,
Mr. Richard Templeton. We have seen that that gentleman was not happy in
his first marriage; death had not then annulled the bond. He was of an
ardent and sensual temperament, and quietly, under the broad cloak of his
doctrines, he indulged his constitutional tendencies. Perhaps in this
respect he was not worse than nine men out of ten. But then he professed
to be better than nine hundred thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine men
out of a million! To a fault of temperament was added the craft of
hypocrisy, and the vulgar error became a dangerous vice. Upon Mary
Westbrook, the widow's daughter, he gazed with eyes that were far from
being the eyes of the spirit. Even at the age of fourteen she charmed
him; but when, after watching her ripening beauty expand, three years
were added to that age, Mr. Templeton was most deeply in love. Mary was
indeed lovely,--her disposition naturally good and gentle, but her
education worse than neglected. To the frivolities and meannesses of a
second-rate fashion, inculcated into her till her father's death, had now
succeeded the quackeries, the slavish subservience, the intolerant
bigotries, of a transcendental superstition. In a change so abrupt and
violent, the whole character of the poor girl was shaken; her principles
unsettled, vague, and unformed, and naturally of mediocre and even feeble
intellect, she clung to the first plank held out to her in "that wide sea
of wax" in which "she halted." Early taught to place the most implicit
faith in the dictates of Mr. Templeton, fastening her belief round him as
the vine winds its tendrils round the oak, yielding to his ascendency,
and pleased with his fostering and almost caressing manner, no confessor
in Papal Italy ever was more dangerous to village virtue than Richard
Templeton (who deemed himself the archetype of the only pure
Protestantism) to the morals and heart of Mary Westbrook.
Mrs. Westbrook, whose constitution had been prematurely broken by long
participation in the excesses of London dissipation and by the reverse of
fortune which still preyed upon a spirit it had rather soured than
humbled, died when Mary was eighteen. Templeton became the sole friend,
comforter, and supporter of the daughter.
In an evil hour (let us trust not from premeditated villany),--an hour
when the heart of one was softened by grief and gratitude, and the
conscience of the other laid asleep by passion, the virtue of Mary
Westbrook was betrayed. Her sorrow and remorse, his own fears of
detection and awakened self-reproach, occasioned Templeton the most
anxious and poignant regret. There had been a young woman in Mrs.
Westbrook's service, who had left it a short time before the widow died,
in consequence of her marriage. Her husband ill-used her; and glad to
escape from him and prove her gratitude to her employer's daughter, of
whom she had been extremely fond, she had returned to Miss Westbrook
after the funeral of her mother. The name of this woman was Sarah Miles.
Templeton saw that Sarah more than suspected his connection with Mary; it
was necessary to make a confidant,--he selected her. Miss Westbrook was
removed to a distant part of the country, and Templeton visited her
cautiously and rarely. Four months afterwards, Mrs. Templeton died, and
the husband was free to repair his wrong. Oh, how he then repented of
what had passed! but four months' delay, and all this sin and sorrow
might have been saved! He was now racked with perplexity and doubt: his
unfortunate victim was advanced in her pregnancy. It was necessary, if
he wished his child to be legitimate--still more if he wished to preserve
the honour of its mother--that he should not hesitate long in the
reparation to which duty and conscience urged him. But on the other
hand, he, the saint, the oracle, the immaculate example for all forms,
proprieties, and decorums, to scandalize the world by so rapid and
premature a hymen--
"Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in his galled eyes,
To marry."
No! he could not brave the sneer of the gossips, the triumph of his foes,
the dejection of his disciples, by so rank and rash a folly. But still
Mary pined so, he feared for her health--for his own unborn offspring.
There was a middle path,--a compromise between duty and the world; he
grasped at it as most men similarly situated would have done,--they were
married, but privately, and under feigned names: the secret was kept
close. Sarah Miles was the only witness acquainted with the real
condition and names of the parties.
Reconciled to herself, the bride recovered health and spirits, Templeton
formed the most sanguine hopes. He resolved, as soon as the confinement
was over, to go abroad; Mary should follow; in a foreign land they should
be publicly married; they would remain some years on the Continent; when
he returned, his child's age could be put back a year. Oh, nothing could
be more clear and easy!
Death shivered into atoms all the plans of Mr. Templeton. Mary suffered
most severely in childbirth, and died a few weeks afterwards. Templeton
at first was inconsolable, but worldly thoughts were great comforters.
He had done all that conscience could do to atone a sin, and he was freed
from a most embarrassing dilemma, and from a temporary banishment utterly
uncongenial and unpalatable to his habits and ideas. But now he had a
child,--a legitimate child, successor to his name, his wealth; a
first-born child,--the only one ever sprung from him, the prop and hope
of advancing years! On this child he doted with all that paternal
passion which the hardest and coldest men often feel the most for their
own flesh and blood--for fatherly love is sometimes but a transfer of
self-love from one fund to another.
Yet this child--this darling that he longed to show to the whole
world--it was absolutely necessary, for the present, that he should
conceal and disown. It had happened that Sarah's husband died of his own
excesses a few weeks before the birth of Templeton's child, she having
herself just recovered from her confinement; Sarah was therefore free
forever from her husband's vigilance and control. To her care the
destined heiress was committed, and her own child put out to nurse. And
this was the woman and this the child who had excited so much benevolent
curiosity in the breasts of the worthy clergyman and the three old maids
of C-----.* Alarmed at Sarah's account of the scrutiny of the parson, and
at his own rencontre with that hawk-eyed pastor, Templeton lost no time
in changing the abode of the nurse; and to her new residence had the
banker bent his way, with rod and angle, on that evening which witnessed
his adventure with Luke Darvil.** When Mr. Templeton first met Alice, his
own child was only about thirteen or fourteen months old,--but little
older than Alice's. If the beauty of Mrs. Leslie's _protege_ first
excited his coarser nature, her maternal tenderness, her anxious care for
her little one, struck a congenial chord in the father's heart. It
connected him with her by a mute and unceasing sympathy. Templeton had
felt so deeply the alarm and pain of illicit love, he had been (as he
profanely believed) saved from the brink of public shame by so signal an
interference of grace, that he resolved no more to hazard his good name
and his peace of mind upon such perilous rocks. The dearest desire at
his heart was to have his daughter under his roof,--to fondle, to play
with her, to watch her growth, to win her affection. This, at present,
seemed impossible. But if he were to marry,--marry a widow, to whom he
might confide all, or a portion, of the truth; if that child could be
passed off as hers--ah, that was the best plan! And Templeton wanted a
wife! Years were creeping on him, and the day would come when a wife
would be useful as a nurse. But Alice was supposed to be a widow; and
Alice was so meek, so docile, so motherly. If she could be induced to
remove from C-----, either part with her own child or call it her
niece,--and adopt his. Such, from time to time, were Templeton's
thoughts, as he visited Alice, and found, with every visit, fresh
evidence of her tender and beautiful disposition; such the objects which,
in the First Part of this work, we intimated were different from those of
mere admiration for her beauty.*** But again, worldly doubts and
fears--the dislike of so unsuitable an alliance, the worse than lowness
of Alice's origin, the dread of discovery for her early error--held him
back, wavering and irresolute. To say truth, too, her innocence and
purity of thought kept him at a certain distance. He was acute enough to
see that he--even he, the great Richard Templeton--might be refused by
the faithful Alice.
* See "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 164.
** "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 181.
*** "Our banker always seemed more struck by Alice's moral
feelings than even by her physical beauty. Her love for her
child, for instance, impressed him powerfully," etc. "His
feelings altogether for Alice, the designs he entertained
towards her, were of a very complicated nature, and it will
be long, perhaps, before the reader can thoroughly comprehend
them."--See "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 178.
At last Darvil was dead; he breathed more freely, he revolved more
seriously his projects; and at this time, Sarah, wooed by her first
lover, wished to marry again; his secret would pass from her breast to
her second husband's, and thence how far would it travel? Added to this,
Sarah's conscience grew uneasy; the brand ought to be effaced from the
memory of the dead mother, the legitimacy of the child proclaimed; she
became importunate, she wearied and she alarmed the pious man. He
therefore resolved to rid himself of the only witness to his marriage
whose testimony he had cause to fear,--of the presence of the only one
acquainted with his sin and the real name of the husband of Mary
Westbrook. He consented to Sarah's marriage with William Elton, and
offered a liberal dowry on the condition that she should yield to the
wish of Elton himself, an adventurous young man, who desired to try his
fortunes in the New World. His daughter he must remove elsewhere.
While this was going on, Alice's child, long delicate and drooping,
became seriously ill. Symptoms of decline appeared; the physician
recommended a milder air, and Devonshire was suggested. Nothing could
equal the generous, the fatherly kindness which Templeton evinced on this
most painful occasion. He insisted on providing Alice with the means to
undertake the journey with ease and comfort; and poor Alice, with a heart
heavy with gratitude and sorrow, consented for her child's sake to all he
offered.
Now the banker began to perceive that all his hopes and wishes were in
good train. He foresaw that the child of Alice was doomed!--that was one
obstacle out of the way. Alice herself was to be removed from the sphere
of her humble calling. In a distant county she might appear of better
station, and under another name. Conformably to these views, he
suggested to her that, in proportion to the seeming wealth and
respectability of patients, did doctors attend to their complaints. He
proposed that Alice should depart privately to a town many miles off;
that there he would provide for her a carriage, and engage a servant;
that he would do this for her as for a relation, and that she should take
that relation's name. To this, Alice rapt in her child, and submissive
to all that might be for the child's benefit, passively consented. It
was arranged then as proposed, and under the name of Cameron, which, as
at once a common yet a well-sounding name, occurred to his invention,
Alice departed with her sick charge and a female attendant (who knew
nothing of her previous calling or story), on the road to Devonshire.
Templeton himself resolved to follow her thither in a few days; and it
was fixed that they should meet at Exeter.
It was on this melancholy journey that occurred that memorable day when
Alice once more beheld Maltravers; and, as she believed, uttering the
vows of love to another.* The indisposition of her child had delayed her
some hours at the inn: the poor sufferer had fallen asleep; and Alice had
stolen from its couch for a little while, when her eyes rested on the
father. Oh, how then she longed, she burned to tell him of the new
sanctity, that, by a human life, had been added to their early love! And
when, crushed and sick at heart, she turned away, and believed herself
forgotten and replaced, it was the pride of the mother rather than of the
mistress that supported her. She, meek creature, felt not the injury to
herself; but _his_ child,--the sufferer, perhaps the dying one,--_there_,
_there_ was the wrong! No! she would not hazard the chance of a
cold--great Heaven! perchance an _incredulous_--look upon the hushed,
pale face above. But little time was left for thought, for explanation,
for discovery. She saw him--unconscious of the ties so near, and thus
lost--depart as a stranger from the spot; and henceforth was gone the
sweet hope of living for the future. Nothing was left her but the pledge
of that which had been. Mournful, despondent, half broken-hearted, she
resumed her journey. At Exeter she was joined, as agreed, by Mr.
Templeton; and with him came a fair, a blooming, and healthful girl to
contrast her own drooping charge. Though but a few weeks older, you
would have supposed the little stranger by a year the senior of Alice's
child: the one was so well grown, so advanced; the other so backward, so
nipped in the sickly bud.
* See "Ernest Maltravers," book v., p. 221.
"You can repay me for all, for more than I have done; more than I ever
can do for you and yours," said Templeton, "by taking this young stranger
also under your care. It is the child of one dear, most dear to me; an
orphan; I know not with whom else to place it. Let it for the present be
supposed your own,--the elder child."
Alice could refuse nothing to her benefactor; but her heart did not open
at first to the beautiful girl, whose sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks
mocked the languid looks and faded hues of her own darling. But the
sufferer seemed to hail a playmate; it smiled, it put forth its poor,
thin hands; it uttered its inarticulate cry of pleasure, and Alice burst
into tears, and clasped them _both_ to her heart.
Mr. Templeton took care not to rest under the same roof with her he now
seriously intended to make his wife; but he followed Alice to the
seaside, and visited her daily. Her infant rallied; it was tenacious of
the upper air; it clung to life so fondly; poor child, it could not
foresee what a bitter thing to some of us life is! And now it was that
Templeton, learning from Alice her adventure with her absent lover,
learning that all hope in that quarter was gone, seized the occasion, and
pressed his suit. Alice at the hour was overflowing with gratitude; in
her child's reviving looks she read all her obligations to her
benefactor. But still, at the word _love_, at the name of _marriage_,
her heart recoiled; and the lost, the faithless, came back to his fatal
throne. In choked and broken accents, she startled the banker with the
refusal--the faltering, tearful, but resolute refusal--of his suit.
But Templeton brought new engines to work: he wooed her through her
child; he painted all the brilliant prospects that would open to the
infant by her marriage with him. He would cherish, rear, provide for it
as his own. This shook her resolves; but this did not prevail. He had
recourse to a more generous appeal: he told her so much of his history
with Mary Westbrook as commenced with his hasty and indecorous
marriage,--attributing the haste to love! made her comprehend his
scruples in owning the child of a union the world would be certain to
ridicule or condemn; he expatiated on the inestimable blessings she could
afford him, by delivering him from all embarrassment, and restoring his
daughter, though under a borrowed name, to her father's roof. At this
Alice mused; at this she seemed irresolute. She had long seen how
inexpressibly dear to Templeton was the child confided to her care; how
he grew pale if the slightest ailment reached her; how he chafed at the
very wind if it visited her cheek too roughly; and she now said to him
simply,--
"Is your child, in truth, your dearest object in life? Is it with her,
and her alone, that your dearest hopes are connected?"
"It is,--it is indeed!" said the banker, honestly surprised out of his
gallantry; "at least," he added, recovering his self-possession, "as much
so as is compatible with my affection for you."
"And only if I marry you, and adopt her as my own, do you think that your
secret may be safely kept, and all your wishes with respect to her be
fulfilled?"
"Only so."
"And for that reason, chiefly, nay entirely, you condescend to forget
what I have been, and seek my hand? Well, if that were all, I owe you
too much; my poor babe tells me too loudly what I owe you to draw back
from anything that can give you so blessed an enjoyment. Ah, one's
child! one's own child, under one's own roof, it _is_ such a blessing!
But then, if I marry you, it can be only to secure to you that object; to
be as a mother to your child; but wife only in name to you! I am not so
lost as to despise myself. I know now, though I knew it not at first,
that I have been guilty; nothing can excuse that guilt but fidelity to
_him_! Oh, yes! I never, never can be unfaithful to my babe's father!
As for all else, dispose of me as you will." And Alice, who from very
innocence had uttered all this without a blush, now clasped her hands
passionately, and left Templeton speechless with mortification and
surprise.
When he recovered himself, he affected not to understand her; but Alice
was not satisfied, and all further conversation ceased. He began slowly,
and at last, and after repeated conferences and urgings, to comprehend
how strange and stubborn in some points was the humble creature whom his
proposals so highly honoured. Though his daughter was indeed his first
object in life; though for her he was willing to make a _mesalliance_,
the extent of which it would be incumbent on him studiously to
conceal,--yet still, the beauty of Alice awoke an earthlier sentiment
that he was not disposed to conquer. He was quite willing to make
promises, and talk generously; but when it came to an oath,--a solemn, a
binding oath--and this Alice rigidly exacted,--he was startled, and drew
back. Though hypocritical, he was, as we have before said, a most
sincere believer. He might creep through a promise with unbruised
conscience; but he was not one who could have dared to violate an oath,
and lay the load of perjury on his soul. Perhaps, after all, the union
never would have taken place, but Templeton fell ill; that soft and
relaxing air did not agree with him; a low but dangerous fever seized
him, and the worldly man trembled at the aspect of Death. It was in this
illness that Alice nursed him with a daughter's vigilance and care; and
when at length he recovered, impressed with her zeal and kindness,
softened by illness, afraid of the approach of solitary age,--and feeling
more than ever his duties to his motherless child, he threw himself at
Alice's feet, and solemnly vowed all that she required.
It was during this residence in Devonshire, and especially during his
illness, that Templeton made and cultivated the acquaintance of Mr.
Aubrey. The good clergyman prayed with him by his sick-bed; and when
Templeton's danger was at its height, he sought to relieve his conscience
by a confession of his wrongs to Mary Westbrook. The name startled
Aubrey; and when he learned that the lovely child who had so often sat on
his knee, and smiled in his face, was the granddaughter of his first and
only love, he had a new interest in her welfare, a new reason to urge
Templeton to reparation, a new motive to desire to procure for the infant
years of Eleanor's grandchild the gentle care of the young mother, whose
own bereavement he sorrowfully foretold. Perhaps the advice and
exhortations of Aubrey went far towards assisting the conscience of Mr.
Templeton, and reconciling him to the sacrifice he made to his affection
for his daughter. Be that as it may, he married Alice, and Aubrey
solemnized and blessed the chill and barren union.
But now came a new and inexpressible affliction; the child of Alice had
rallied but for a time. The dread disease had but dallied with its prey;
it came on with rapid and sudden force; and within a month from the day
that saw Alice the bride of Templeton, the last hope was gone, and the
mother was bereft and childless!
The blow that stunned Alice was not, after the first natural shock of
sympathy, an unwelcome event to the banker. Now _his_ child would be
Alice's sole care; now there could be no gossip, no suspicion why, in
life and after death, he should prefer one child, supposed not his own,
to the other.
He hastened to remove Alice from the scene of her affliction. He
dismissed the solitary attendant who had accompanied her on her journey;
he bore his wife to London, and finally settled, as we have seen, at a
villa in its vicinity. And there, more and more, day by day, centred his
love upon the supposed daughter of Mrs. Templeton, his darling and his
heiress, the beautiful Evelyn Cameron.
For the first year or two, Templeton evinced some alarming disposition to
escape from the oath he had imposed upon himself; but on the slightest
hint there was a sternness in the wife, in all else so respectful, so
submissive, that repressed and awed him. She even threatened--and at one
time was with difficulty prevented carrying the threat into effect--to
leave his roof forever, if there were the slightest question of the
sanctity of his vow. Templeton trembled; such a separation would excite
gossip, curiosity, scandal, a noise in the world, public talk, possible
discovery. Besides, Alice was necessary to Evelyn, necessary to his own
comfort; something to scold in health, something to rely upon in illness.
Gradually then, but sullenly, he reconciled himself to his lot; and as
years and infirmities grew upon him, he was contented at least to have
secured a faithful friend and an anxious nurse. Still a marriage of this
sort was not blessed: Templeton's vanity was wounded; his temper, always
harsh, was soured; he avenged his affront by a thousand petty tyrannies;
and, without a murmur, Alice perhaps in those years of rank and opulence
suffered more than in all her wanderings, with love at her heart and her
infant in her arms.
Evelyn was to be the heiress to the wealth of the banker. But the
_title_ of the new peer!--if he could unite wealth and title, and set the
coronet on that young brow! This had led him to seek the alliance with
Lumley. And on his death-bed, it was not the secret of Alice, but that
of Mary Westbrook and his daughter, which he had revealed to his dismayed
and astonished nephew, in excuse for the apparently unjust alienation of
his property, and as the cause of the alliance he had sought.
While her husband, if husband he might be called, lived, Alice had seemed
to bury in her bosom her regret--deep, mighty, passionate, as it was--for
her lost child, the child of the unforgotten lover, to whom, through such
trials, and amid such new ties, she had been faithful from first to last.
But when once more free, her heart flew back to the far and lowly grave.
Hence her yearly visits to Brook-Green; hence her purchase of the
cottage, hallowed by memories of the dead. There, on that lawn, had she
borne forth the fragile form, to breathe the soft noontide air; there, in
that chamber, had she watched and hoped, and prayed and despaired; there,
in that quiet burial-ground, rested the beloved dust! But Alice, even in
her holiest feelings, was not selfish: she forbore to gratify the first
wish of her heart till Evelyn's education was sufficiently advanced to
enable her to quit the neighbourhood; and then, to the delight of Aubrey
(who saw in Evelyn a fairer, and nobler, and purer Eleanor), she came to
the solitary spot, which, in all the earth, was the _least_ solitary to
her!
And now the image of the lover of her youth--which during her marriage
she had _sought_, at least, to banish--returned to her, and at times
inspired her with the only hopes that the grave had not yet transferred
to heaven! In relating her tale to Aubrey or in conversing with Mrs.
Leslie, whose friendship she still maintained, she found that both
concurred in thinking that this obscure and wandering Butler, so skilled
in an art in which eminence in man is generally professional, must be of
mediocre or perhaps humble station. Ah! now that she was free and rich,
if she were to meet him again, and his love was not all gone, and he
would believe in _her_ strange and constant truth; now, _his_ infidelity
could be forgiven,--forgotten in the benefits it might be hers to bestow!
And how, poor Alice, in that remote village, was chance to throw him in
your way? She knew not: but something often whispered to her, "Again you
shall meet those eyes; again you shall hear that voice; and you shall
tell him, weeping on his breast, how you loved his child!" And would he
not have forgotten her; would he not have formed new ties?--could he read
the loveliness of unchangeable affection in that pale and pensive face!
Alas, when we love intensely, it is difficult to make us fancy that there
is no love in return!
The reader is acquainted with the adventures of Mrs. Elton, the sole
confidant of the secret union of Templeton and Evelyn's mother. By a
singular fatality, it was the selfish and characteristic recklessness of
Vargrave that had, in fixing her home at Burleigh, ministered to the
revelation of his own villanous deceit. On returning to England she had
inquired for Mr. Templeton; she had learned that he had married again,
had been raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Vargrave, and was
gathered to his fathers. She had no claim on his widow or his family.
But the unfortunate child who should have inherited his property, she
could only suppose her dead.
When she first saw Evelyn, she was startled by her likeness to her
unfortunate mother. But the unfamiliar name of Cameron, the intelligence
received from Maltravers that Evelyn's mother still lived, dispelled her
suspicions; and though at times the resemblance haunted her, she doubted
and inquired no more. In fact, her own infirmities grew upon her, and
pain usurped her thoughts.
Now it so happened that the news of the engagement of Maltravers to Miss
Cameron became known to the county but a little time before he
arrived,--for news travels slow from the Continent to our
provinces,--and, of course, excited all the comment of the villagers.
Her nurse repeated the tale to Mrs. Elton, who instantly remembered the
name, and recalled the resemblance of Miss Cameron to the unfortunate
Mary Westbrook.
"And," said the gossiping nurse, "she was engaged, they say, to a great
lord, and gave him up for the squire,--a great lord in the court, who had
been staying at Parson Merton's, Lord Vargrave!"
"Lord Vargrave!" exclaimed Mrs. Elton, remembering the title to which Mr.
Templeton had been raised.
"Yes; they do say as how the late lord left Miss Cameron all his
money--such a heap of it--though she was not his child, over the head of
his nevy, the present lord, on the understanding like that they were to
be married when she came of age. But she would not take to him after she
had seen the squire. And, to be sure, the squire is the finest-looking
gentleman in the county."
"Stop! stop!" said Mrs. Elton, feebly; "the late lord left all his
fortune to Miss Cameron,--not his child! I guess the riddle! I
understand it all! my foster-child!" she murmured, turning away; "how
could I have mistaken that likeness?"
The agitation of the discovery she supposed she had made, her joy at the
thought that the child she had loved as her own was alive and possessed
of its rights, expedited the progress of Mrs. Elton's disease; and
Maltravers arrived just in time to learn her confession (which she
naturally wished to make to one who was at once her benefactor, and
supposed to be the destined husband of her foster-child), and to be
agitated with hope, with joy, at her solemn conviction of the truth of
her surmises. If Evelyn were not his daughter--even if not to be his
bride--what a weight from his soul! He hastened to Brook-Green; and
dreading to rush at once to the presence of Alice, he recalled Aubrey to
his recollection. In the interview he sought, all, or at least much, was
cleared up. He saw at once the premeditated and well-planned villany of
Vargrave. And Alice, her tale--her sufferings--her indomitable
love!--how should he meet _her_?