“Your house within the city
Is richly furnished with plate and gold,
Basins and ewers, to lave your dainty hands,
Your hangings all of Tyrian tapestry.”
Taming of the Shrew.
A year had passed since the events narrated in our last chapter, and how
had the time sped with Mabel. Received with a proud and delighted
affection by her newly-found parent, and welcomed with almost a mother’s
kindness by his titled and wealthy bride, she could not feel otherwise
than grateful, and, at times, happy; but as increased intimacy revealed
more and more to her of the characters of those whom, under God, she was
most bound to obey and honor, Mabel’s heart sank, and her thoughts flew
back to the simple piety and humble faith of her early teacher and
guardian. The worldliness, the cold selfishness, the grasping ambition,
and slavish cringing to superior rank that she saw in all around her,
was to the high-souled and enthusiastic girl deserving of the most
profound contempt and pity. She saw the father whom she so longed to
honor and respect, fawning and bending before a monarch whom he hoped
still further to propitiate, and at times he would talk to Mabel about
her own advancement, until her whole frame trembled with a nameless
fear. He had lately begun to speak more sternly with regard to her
neglect of the ceremonies of the Romish Church, not dreaming that this
neglect arose from a determined opposition. It did not once occur to
him—so little had his own religious belief to do with conviction—that,
in the mind of a young and beautiful girl, there _could_ be a settled
and resolute preference for any particular church. Mabel had, indeed,
never joined in any of the rites of her father’s church, but this he had
attributed to thoughtlessness and indifference, little dreaming that, in
her own solitary chamber, she enjoyed the purest and truest communion
with her Maker, and that not the sternest mandate he could utter, would
tempt her to abjure her Protestant faith.
But the trial was yet to come.
For some months after her arrival at the castle, Mabel had continued to
receive, constantly, letters from Walter and Mr. Dacre; but she was not
long to enjoy this gratification.
“Mabel, my daughter,” said Lord Arlington one day, as he saw with a
frown the blush and smile with which she received an unusually large
packet from Riverdale; “it were well if you could remember for yourself
what were proper and becoming in the rank you now hold; but since your
own sense has not prompted you to cease at _once_ all communication with
those among whom nothing but your father’s misfortunes could have placed
you, I am now compelled to forbid your ever again receiving any of those
voluminous epistles, which, to judge from your countenance, must possess
a degree of interest perfectly unaccountable. Does the old man send his
weekly sermons for your soul’s benefit?” he sneeringly said.
Mabel endeavored to reply, but her eyes fell under his cold, searching
gaze; she could not speak, as the thought flashed through her mind that
she should never again see that well-known hand, or read those precious
words of affection from Walter, never more be cheered and supported by
the advice and sympathy of him whom she reverenced more than any earthly
being.
“Oh! father, do not, do not compel me to give up my dearest—”
She stopped, for the frown on her father’s face grew darker at this
involuntary betrayal of her preference for her early friends—
“Do not compel me to seem so ungrateful and proud to those, whose
kindness made me what I am: let me at least write a few words to tell
them of your wishes?”
“Mabel—I have already been sufficiently annoyed and displeased by your
evident dislike to your new life, and your childish preference for your
country home; rouse me no further by opposition, strive to overcome your
early prejudices, and to remember you are an _Earl’s daughter_, and that
you may be the wife—”
At this moment, Mabel uttered a faint cry of surprise and terror; then
recollecting herself, she complained of feeling unwell, and begged her
father’s permission to retire to her own apartment.
“Go, my daughter; but do not let a trifling indisposition prevent your
being in readiness to accompany us this evening to the palace, for the
king expressly requested me to bring you, and your mother has provided
your toilette for the occasion: let me see my Mabel the gayest and
happiest, as she will be the loveliest, in the proud assemblage?”
With a sad and heavy heart Mabel gained her own chamber, and
there—seated on the floor, with her head buried in the velvet cushions
of the luxurious divan, and her precious letters clasped to her
bosom—she wept bitterly. Long did she sit thus, with her soft, black
hair hanging like a veil around her, and her head bowed in that utter
abandonment to grief, that only an impassioned nature can feel.