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FIRST LOVE.
A NOVEL.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.
1830.
FIRST LOVE.
CHAPTER I.
“I love thee not.”
We left our party concluding breakfast on the morning after the
masquerade. The ladies shortly after repaired to the great room, whither
they were soon followed by some of the gentlemen, among others the
Marquis of H. The scene afforded a striking contrast to that of the
evening before: Sir Archibald’s mysterious death, together with the
atrocious attempt on the life of Captain Montgomery, seemed to have
given a shock to the gay spirits of all. Those who spoke at all, spoke
almost in whispers, their themes murders, mysteries, and sudden deaths.
Mr. Graham, reclining on a _chaise longue_, was very nearly asleep, and
Lady Morven was already yawning. Julia happened to enter the green-house,
and was immediately followed thither by the Marquis. Wise looks were
interchanged by the rest of the company. Half an hour, an hour, nay, a
quarter more elapsed, but neither Julia nor the Marquis re-appeared. At
length Frances entered the green-house. Lo, the birds had flown! Julia
was found in her own room writing to her grandmamma.
But the Marquis’s seat at the dinner table was vacant. The servants could
give no account of his lordship; but, that he had left the castle on
horse-back some hours since. Julia was observed to colour a little, when
the Marquis’s absence was noticed.
Lord Fitz-Ullin was again at sea; and our hero had again sailed with him.
A new harvest of glory was being reaped by both. Almost every column of
every newspaper was filled with the movements of the fleet under the
command of Admiral Lord Fitz-Ullin; and in every account did the name of
Captain Montgomery stand pre-eminent in the ranks of glory. No wonder
then if that name often fixed the eye of Julia.
Indeed, the moment she took up a paper, it was the first word she saw! It
seemed written in talismanic characters! It stood out from the page, and
offered itself to her view, ere, at least, she was conscious of having
sought for it. Yet there were those (and among them Lord Arandale,) who
suspected that Henry was the object of her thoughts, when her face and
neck became suffused with blushes on her being found with a newspaper in
her hand.
At length, Lord Fitz-Ullin lost his life in the achievement of one of the
most brilliant of his victories. The whole nation mourned in the midst of
triumph!
The papers in which, so lately, the heart-stirring deeds of the living
hero followed each other in rapid succession, were now, with a mournful
sameness, as chilling to the excited imagination as the still scene they
represented, filled, from end to end, with the solemn lying in state of
the unconscious corse, the funeral lighting of the chamber of death, the
silent mourners, who watched with the dead night and day, the sombre
splendours of the body’s last receptacle. The numerous banners waving
their shattered remnants over it; the noiseless steps of the spectators,
as they approached, gazed, and passed, treading a flooring that returned
no echo to their footfalls; the firing of minute guns by the forts, the
lowering of their colours half mast high, by all the vessels at the
Nore, and in the harbour; the muffled peal of the bells; in short, every
demonstration of what was the feeling of all, in which a nation could
unite its myriad tongues in one voice of woe.
In addition to the numerous attendance, professional and official, which
was almost a matter of course, the mortal remains of the hero were to
be followed to the grave by many of the princes of the blood, and all
the principal nobility of the kingdom. Among the latter, Lord Arandale
intended to take his place; and Mrs. Montgomery consented, by letter,
to her grand-daughters accompanying their aunt and uncle to town on the
occasion.