CHAPTER III.

{38}

“I should have been more strange, I must confess, But that thou overheard’st me ere I was ’ware My love’s true passion; therefore pardon me, And not impute this yielding to light love.” _Romeo and Juliet_.

The week that succeeded Hope Leslie’s interview with Magawisca was one of anxiety to most of the members of Governor Winthrop’s family.

The habitual self-possession of the governor himself seemed somewhat disturbed; he was abstracted and thoughtful; frequently held secret conferences with Sir Philip Gardiner in his study; and, in relation to this stranger, he appeared to have departed from his usual diplomatic caution, and to have admitted him to the most confidential intimacy. There were frequent private meetings of the magistrates; and it was quite evident, from the external motions of these guardians of the colony, that some state secret was heaving in their bosoms.

The governor was in the habit of participating with his wife his most secret state affairs, moved to this confidence, no doubt, by his strict views of her rights as his helpmate; for it cannot be supposed, even for a moment, that one of the superior sex should find pleasure in telling a secret.

But in this instance he communicated nothing to his trustworthy partner, excepting some obscure intimations {39} that might be gathered from the significant utterance of such general truths as, “That it was impossible for human foresight to foresee everything; that those who stood at the helm of state could not be too vigilant; that ends were often brought about by unexpected means;” and similar truisms, which, enunciated by grave and dignified lips, are invested with importance from the source whence they proceed.

Madam Winthrop was happily too much absorbed with the feminine employment of watching the development of her niece’s affairs to have much curiosity in relation to cabinet secrets. She naturally concluded that some dangerous adherent of that arch-heretic, Gorton, had been discovered; or, perhaps, some new mode of faith had demanded magisterial interference; whatever her mental conclusions were, it is certain her thoughts all ran in another channel. In all ages of the world, in every condition, and at every period of life, a woman’s interest in the progress of a love-affair masters every other feeling.

Esther Downing was a favourite of her aunt; and as it had been urged by Mr. Downing, as an objection to his removal to New-England, that his daughters would have small chance of being eligibly married there, it became a point of honour with Madam Winthrop, after he had been persuaded to overlook this objection, to prove to him that it was unfounded.

Madam Winthrop was too upright intentionally to do a wrong to any one; but, without being herself {40} conscious of it, she was continually setting off the lights of her niece’s character by what she deemed the shades of Hope Leslie’s. Our heroine’s independent temper and careless gayety of heart had more than once offended against the strict notions of Madam Winthrop, who was of the opinion that the deferential manners of youth, which were the fashion of the age, had their foundation in immutable principles.

Nothing was farther from Miss Leslie’s intention than any disrespect to a woman whom she had been taught to venerate; but, unfortunately, she would sometimes receive what Madam Winthrop meant for affability as if it were simply the kindness of an equal; she had been seen to gape in the midst of the good lady’s most edifying remarks; and once she ran away to gaze on a brilliant sunset at the moment Madam Winthrop was condescendingly relating some very important particulars of her early life. This was certainly indecorous; but her offences were trifling, and were probably forgotten by Madam Winthrop herself long before their effects were effaced from her mind.

Esther was always respectful, always patient, always governed by the slightest intimation of her aunt’s wishes; and it must be confessed that, even to those who were less partial and prejudiced than Madam Winthrop, Miss Downing appeared far more lovely than our heroine during the week when she was suffering the extremes of anxiety and apprehension. No one who did not know that there was a {41} secret and sufficient cause for her restlessness, her seeming indifference to her friends, and to everything about her, could have escaped the conclusion that forced itself on Everell’s mind: that fortune, and beauty, and indulgence had had their usual and fatal effect on Hope Leslie. In the bitterness of his disappointment, he wished he had never returned to have the vision of her ideal perfection expelled from his imagination by the light of truth.

With the irritable feeling of a lover, he watched the devoted attentions of Sir Philip Gardiner to Hope, which she, almost unconscious of them, received passively, but, as Everell thought, favourably. Utterly engrossed in one object, she never reflected that there had been anything in her conduct to excite Everell’s distrust; and, feeling more than ever the want of that sympathy and undisguised affection which she had always received from him, she was hurt at his altered conduct; and her manner insensibly conforming to the coldness and constraint of his, he naturally concluded that she designed to repel him, and he would turn from her to repose in the calm and twilight quiet that was shed about the gentle Esther, whom he knew to be pure, disinterested, humble, and devoted.

Poor Hope, the subject of his unjust condemnation, was agitated, not only by impatience for the promised meeting with her unfortunate sister, but by fear that some unforeseen circumstance might prevent it. She was also harassed with a sense of conflicting duties. She sometimes thought that the duty of {42} restoring her sister to the condition in which she was born was paramount to the obligation of her promise to Magawisca. She would waver and resolve to disclose her secret appointment; but the form of Magawisca would rise to her recollection, with its expression of truth, sweetness, and confidence, as if to check her treacherous purpose.

A thousand times she condemned herself for the rashness of her promise to Magawisca, by which she had reduced herself, surrounded as she was by wise and efficient friends, to act without their council and aid. Had Everell treated her with his accustomed kindness, the habitual confidence of their intercourse might have led her to break through the restriction of her promise, but she dared not deliberately violate her word so solemnly pledged. Oppressed with these anxieties, the hours rolled heavily on; and when Friday, the appointed day, arrived, it seemed to Hope that an age had intervened since her interview with Magawisca.

She had taken care previously to propose an excursion on Friday to the governor’s garden; and, contrary to usual experience when a long-projected pleasure is to be realized, every circumstance was propitious. The day was propitious--one of Nature’s holydays; the governor, too, was propitious, and even promoted the party with unprecedented zeal.

After various delays, which, however trifling, had increased Hope’s nervous impatience, they were on the point of setting forth, when Madam Winthrop, {43} who was not one of the party, came into the parlour, and said, after a slight hesitation, “I am loath, my young friends, to interfere with what you seem to have set your hearts on, but really--” she paused.

“Really what, ma’am?” asked Hope, impatiently.

Madam Winthrop was not inclined to be spurred by Miss Leslie, and she answered very deliberately, “I have a feeling as if something were to happen to-day. I am a coward on the water at all times, more than becomes one who fully realizes that the same Providence that watches over us on the land follows us on the great deep.”

“But your fears, madam,” said Sir Philip, “did not prevent your crossing the stormy Atlantic.”

“Nay, Sir Philip; and I know not what mettle that woman is made of that would not go hand in hand with her husband in so glorious a cause as ours.”

“Are we not all ready?” asked Hope, anxious to escape before Madam Winthrop proposed, as she apprehended she was about to do, a postponement of the party.

“Yes, all ready, I believe, Miss Leslie, but not _all_ too impatient to await a remark I was about to make, namely, Sir Philip, that a party of pleasure is very different from a voyage of duty.”

“Certainly, madam,” replied Sir Philip, who trusted that assent would end the conversation, “widely different.”

“It is not necessary for me,” resumed Madam Winthrop, “to state all the points of difference.”

{44}

“Oh! not in the least, ma’am,” exclaimed Hope.

“Miss Leslie!” said Madam Winthrop, in a tone of surprise; and then, turning her eye to Everell, who was standing next to Esther, she said, resuming her measured tone, “My responsibility is so great to my brother Downing--I had an uncommon dream about you, Esther, last night; and, if anything should happen to you--”

“If it is me you are concerned about, aunt,” said Esther, untying her bonnet, “I will remain at home. Do not let me detain you,” she added, turning to Hope, “another moment.”

Nothing seemed to Hope of any importance in comparison with the prosecution of her plans; and, nodding a pleased assent to Esther, she took her aunt’s arm in readiness to depart.

“How changed,” thought Everell, as his eye glanced towards her, “thus selfishly and impatiently to pursue her own pleasure without the slightest notice of her friend’s disappointment.” His good feelings were interested to compensate for the indifference of Hope. “If,” he said to Madam Winthrop, “you will commit Miss Downing to my care, I will promise she shall encounter no danger that my caution may avoid or my skill overcome.”

Madam Winthrop’s apprehensions vanished. “If she is in your particular charge, Mr. Everell,” she said, “I shall be greatly relieved. I know I am of too anxious a make. Go, my dear Esther; Mr. Everell will be constantly near you--under Providence, your safeguard. I believe it is not right to be too {45} much influenced by dreams. See that she keeps her shawl round her, Mr. Everell, while on the water. I feel quite easy in confiding her to your care.”

Everell bowed, and expressed his gratitude for Madam Winthrop’s confidence, and Esther turned on him a look of that meek and pleased dependance which it is natural for woman to feel, and which men like to inspire, because, perhaps, it seems to them an instinctive tribute to their natural superiority.

“Miss Leslie has become so sedate of late,” continued Madam Winthrop, with a very significant smile, “that I scarcely need request that no unwonted sounds of revelry and mirth may proceed from any member of the governor’s family, which ever has been, as it should be, a pattern of Gospel sobriety to the colony.”

Mrs. Grafton dropped a bracelet she was clasping on her niece’s arm, but Madam Winthrop’s remark--half reproof, half admonition--excited no emotion in Hope, whose heart was throbbing with her own secret anxieties, and who was now in some measure relieved by Sir Philip making a motion for their departure, by adroitly availing himself of this first available pause, and offering her his arm.

As soon as they were fairly out of the house, “Revelry and mirth,” exclaimed Mrs. Grafton, as if the words blistered her tongue, “revelry and mirth, indeed! I think poor Hope will forget how to laugh if she stays here much longer. I wonder, Sir Philip, if it is such a mighty offence to use one’s laughing faculties, what they were given for!”

{46}

“I believe, madam,” replied the knight, with well-sustained gravity, “that ingenious theologians impute this convulsion of the muscles to some disorganization occasioned by Adam’s transgression; and, in support of their hypothesis, they maintain that there is no allusion to laughter in Scripture. Madam Winthrop, I fancy, intends that her house shall be a little heaven on earth.”

Honest Cradock, who had taken his favourite station at Miss Leslie’s side, replied, without in the least suspecting the knight’s irony, “Now, Sir Philip, I marvel whence you draw that opinion. I have studied all masters in theology, from the oldest down to the youngest, and, greatest of all, Master Calvin, with whose precious sentences I ‘sweeten my mouth always before going to bed,’ yet did I never see that strange doctrine concerning laughter. To me it appears--the Lord preserve me from advancing novelties--but to me it appears that there is no human sound so pleasant and so musical as the laugh of a little child, and of such are the kingdom of Heaven. I have heard the walls at Bethel ring with bursts of laughter from Miss Hope; and the thought came to me (the Lord forgive me if I erred therein) that it was the natural voice of innocence, and, therefore, pleasing to him that made her.”

Hope was touched with the pure sentiment of her good tutor, and she involuntarily slipped her arm into his. Sir Philip was also touched, and, for once speaking without forethought, he said, “I would give a kingdom for one of the laughs of my boyhood.”

{47}

“I dare say, Sir Philip,” said Cradock, “for truly there is no heart-work in the transgressor’s laugh.”

“Sir” exclaimed Sir Philip, angrily.

The simple man started as if he had received a blow, and Hope said, “You did not mean to call Sir Philip a transgressor?”

“Oh, certainly not, in particular, certainly not; Sir Philip’s professions are great, and, I doubt not, practice correspondent; but all of us add daily transgression to transgression, which, I doubt not, Sir Philip will allow.”

“Yes,” said Hope, archly, “it is far easier, as is said in one of your good books, Master Cradock, ‘to subscribe to a sentence of universal condemnation than to confess individual sins.’”

“What blessed times we have fallen on,” retorted Sir Philip, “when youthful beauties, instead of listening to the idle songs of Troubadours, or the fantastic flatteries of vagrant knights, or announcing with their ruby lips the rewards of chivalry, are exploring the mines of divinity with learned theologians like Master Cradock, and bringing forth such diamond sentences as the pithy saying Miss Leslie has quoted.”

“Heaven preserve us! Sir Philip,” exclaimed Mrs. Grafton, “Hope Leslie study theology! you are as mad as a March hare; all her theology she has learned out of the Bible and Common Prayer-book, which should always go together, in spite of what the governor says. It is peculiar that a man of his commodity of sense should bamboozle himself with {48} that story he told at breakfast. Oh, you was not there, Sir Philip: well, he says that in his son’s library there are a thousand books, and among them a Bible and Prayer-book bound together--one jewel in the dunghill--but that is not what he says; it seems that this unlucky Prayer-book is gnawed to mince-meat by the mice, and not another book in the library touched.[1] I longed to commend the instinct of the little beasts, that knew what good food was; but everybody listened with such a solemn air, and even you, Hope Leslie, who are never afraid to smile, even you did not move your lips.”

“I did not hear it,” said Hope.

“Did not hear it! that is peculiar; why, it was just when Robin was coming in with the rolls--just as I had taken my second cup--just as Everell gave Esther Downing that bunch of rosebuds: did you take notice of that?”

“Yes,” replied Hope, and a deep blush suffused her cheek. She had noticed the offering with pain, not because her friend was preferred, but because it led her mind back to the time when she was the object of all Everell’s little favours, and impressed her with a sense of his altered conduct.

The telltale blush did not escape the watchful eye of Sir Philip; and, determined to ascertain if the “bolt of Cupid” had fallen on this “little Western flower,” he said, “I perceive that Miss Leslie is aware that rosebuds, in the vocabulary of lovers, are made to signify a declaration of the tender passion.”

{49}

Secret springs of the heart are sometimes suddenly touched, and feelings disclosed that have been hidden even from our own self-observation. Hope had been moved by Miss Downing’s story, and taking a generous interest in her happiness, she had, with that ardent feeling with which she pursued every object that interested her, resolved to promote it in the only mode by which it could be attained. But now, at the first intimation that her romantic wishes were to be fulfilled, strange to tell, and still stranger to her to feel, there was a sudden rising in her heart of disappointment, a sense of loss, and, we shrink from recording it, but the truth must be told, tears, honest tears, gushed from her eyes. Oh, pardon her, all ye youthful devotees to secret self-immolation! all ye youthful Minervas, who hide with an impenetrable shield of wisdom and dignity, the natural workings of your hearts! Make all due allowance for a heroine of the seventeenth century, who had the misfortune to live before there was a system of education extant, who had not learned, like some young ladies of our enlightened days, to prattle of metaphysics, to quote Reid, and Stewart, and Brown, and to know (full as well as they, perhaps) the springs of human action, the mysteries of mind, still profound mysteries to the unlearned.

Hope Leslie was shocked, not that she had betrayed her feelings to her companions, but at her own discovery of their existence; not that they had appeared, but that they were. The change had been so gradual, from her childish fondness for Everell, to {50} a more mature sentiment, as to be imperceptible even to herself. She made no essay to explain her emotion. Mrs. Grafton, though not remarkably sagacious, was aware of its obvious interpretation, and of the pressing necessity of offering some ingenious reading. “What a miserable nervous way you have fallen into, Hope,” she said, “since you was caught out in that storm; she must have taken an inward cold, Sir Philip.”

“The symptoms,” replied the knight, significantly, “would rather, I should think, indicate an internal heat.”

“Heat or cold, Hope,” continued Mrs. Grafton, “I am determined you shall go through a regular course of medicine; valerian tea in the morning, and lenitive drops at night. You have not eaten enough for the last week to keep a humming-bird alive. Hope has no kind of faith in medicine, Sir Philip, but I can tell her it is absolutely necessary, in the spring of the year, to sweeten the blood.”

Sir Philip looked at Hope’s glowing face, and said “he thought such blood as mantled in Miss Leslie’s cheek needed no medical art to sweeten it.”

Hope, alike insensible to the good-natured efforts of her aunt and the flatteries of Sir Philip, was mentally resolving to act most heroically, to expel every selfish feeling from her heart, and to live for the happiness of others.

The experienced smile sorrowfully at the generous impulses and fearless resolves of the young, who know not how costly is the sacrifice of self-indulgence, {51} how difficult the ascent to the heights of disinterestedness; but let not the youthful aspirant be discouraged; the wing is strengthened by use, and the bird that drops in its first flutterings about the parent-nest, may yet soar to the sky.

Our heroine had rallied her spirits by the time she joined her companions in the boat that was awaiting them at the wharf; and in the effort to veil her feelings, she appeared to Everell extravagantly gay; and he, being unusually pensive, and seeing no cause for her apparent excitement, attributed it to Sir Philip’s devotion: a cause that certainly had no tendency to render the effect agreeable to him.

When they disembarked, they proceeded immediately to the single habitation on the island, Digby’s neat residence. The faithful fellow welcomed Everell with transports of joy. He had a thousand questions to ask and recollections to recall; and while Everell lingered to listen, and Hope and Esther, from a very natural sympathy, to witness the overflowings of the good fellow’s affectionate heart, their companions left them to stroll about the island.

As soon as his audience was thus reduced, “It seems but a day,” he said, “since you, Mr. Everell, and Miss Leslie were but children.”

“And happy children, Digby, were we not?” said Everell, with a suppressed sigh, and venturing a side glance at Hope; but her face was averted, and he could not see whether Digby had awakened any recollections in her bosom responding to his own.

“Happy! that were you,” replied Digby, “and {52} the lovingest,” he continued, little thinking that every word he uttered was as a talisman to his auditors, “the lovingest that ever I saw. Young folks, for the most part, are like an April day--clouds and sunshine: there are my young ones, though they look so happy now they have your English presents, Mr. Everell, yet they must now and then fall to their little battles--show out the natural man, as the ministers say; but with you and Miss Hope it was always sunshine: it was not strange, either, seeing you were all in all to one another after that terrible sweep-off at Bethel. It is odd what vagaries come and go in a body’s mind; time was when I viewed you as good as mated with Magawisca; forgive me for speaking so, Mr. Everell, seeing she was but a tawny Indian, after all.”

“Forgive you, Digby! you do me honour by implying that I rightly estimated that noble creature; and before she had done the heroic deed to which I owe my life--yes, Digby, I might have loved her--might have forgotten that Nature had put barriers between us.”

“I don’t know but you might, Mr. Everell, but I don’t believe you would; things would naturally have taken another course after Miss Hope came among us; and many a time I thought it was well it was as it was, for I believe it would have broken Magawisca’s heart to have been put in that kind of eclipse by Miss Leslie’s coming between you and her. Now all is as it should be; as your mother--blessed be her memory--would have wished, and your father, and all the world.”

{53}

Digby seemed to have arranged everything in his own mind according to what he deemed natural and proper; and, too self-complacent at the moment to receive any check to his garrulity from the silence of his guests, he proceeded. “The tree follows the bent of the twig; what think you, Miss Esther, is not there a wedding a brewing?” Miss Downing was silent: Digby looked round, and saw confusion in every face, and, feeling that he had ventured on forbidden ground, he tried to stammer out an apology. “I declare, now,” he said, “it’s odd--it’s a sign I grow old; but I quite entirely forgot how queer young people feel about such things. I should not have blundered on so, but my wife put it into my head; she is equal to Nebuchadnezzar for dreaming dreams; and three times last night she waked me to tell me about her dreaming of a funeral, and that, she said, was a sure forerunner of a wedding; and it was natural I should go on thinking whose wedding was coming, was it not, Miss Esther?”

Everell turned away to caress a chubby boy. Miss Downing fidgeted with her bonnet-strings, threw back her shawl, and disclosed the memorable knot of rosebuds. If they had a meaning, they seemed also to have a voice, and they roused Hope Leslie’s resolution. Some pride might have aided her, but it was maidenly pride, and her feelings were as near to pure generosity as our infirm nature can approach.

“Digby,” she said, “it was quite natural for you both to think and speak of Mr. Everell’s wedding; we are to have it, and that right soon, I hope; you {54} have only mistaken the bride; and as neither of the parties will speak to set you right,” and she glanced her eyes from Esther to Everell, “why, I must.”

Esther became as pale as marble. Hope flew to her side, took her hand, placed it in Everell’s, threw her arm around Esther, kissed her cheek, and darted out of the house. Digby half articulated an expression of disappointment and surprise, and, impelled by an instinct that told him this was not a scene for witnesses, he too disappeared.

Never were two young people left in a more perplexing predicament. To Everell it was a moment of indescribable confusion and embarrassment. To Esther, of overwhelming recollections, of apprehension, and hope, and, above all, shame.

She would gladly have buried herself in the depths of the earth. Everell understood her feelings. There was no time for deliberation; and with emotions that would have made self-immolation at the moment easy, and impelled, as it seemed to him, by an irresistible destiny, he said something about the happiness of retaining the hand he held.

Miss Downing, confused by her own feelings, misinterpreted his. She was, at the moment, incapable of estimating the disparity between his few, broken, disjointed, half-uttered words, and the natural, free, full expressions of an ardent and happy lover. She only spoke a few words, to refer him to her aunt Winthrop; but her hand, passive in his, her burning cheeks and throbbing heart, told him what no third person could tell, and what her tongue could not utter.

{55}

Thus had Hope Leslie, by rashly following her first generous impulses, by giving to “unproportioned thought its act,” effected that which the avowed tenderness of Miss Downing, the united instances of Mr. Fletcher and Governor Winthrop, and the whole colony and world beside, could never have achieved. Unconscious of the mistake by which she had put the happiness of all parties concerned in jeopardy, she was exulting in her victory over herself, and endeavouring to regain in solitude the tranquillity which she was surprised to find had utterly forsaken her; and to convince herself that the disorder of her spirits, which, in spite of all her efforts, filled her eyes with tears, was owing to the agitating expectation of seeing her long-lost sister.

The eastern extremity of the island, being sheltered by the high ground on the west, was most favourable for horticultural experiments, and had therefore been planted with fruit-trees and grapevines; here Hope had retired, and was flattering herself she was secure from interruption and observation, when she was startled by a footstep, and perceived Sir Philip Gardiner approaching. “I am fortunate at last,” he said; “I have just been vainly seeking you, where I most unluckily broke in upon the lovers at a moment of supreme happiness, if I may judge from the faces of both parties; but what are you doing with that vine, Miss Leslie?” he continued, for Hope had stooped over a grapevine, which she seemed anxiously arranging.

“I am merely looking at it,” she said; “it seems drooping.”

{56}

“Yes, and droop and die it must. I am amazed that the wise people of your colony should hope to rear the vine in this cold and steril land: a fit climate it is not for any delicate plant.”

The knight’s emphasis and look gave a particular significance to his words; but Miss Leslie, determined to take them only in their literal sense, coldly replied, “that it was not the part of wisdom to relinquish the attempt to cultivate so valuable a production till a fair experiment had been made.”

“Very true, Miss Leslie. The governor himself could not have spoken it more sagely. Pardon me for smiling; I was thinking what an admirable illustration of your remark your friend Miss Downing afforded you. Who would have hoped to rear such a hot-bed plant as love amid her frosts and ice? Nay, look not so reproachfully. I admit there are analogies in nature; in my rambles in the Alpine country, I have seen herbage and flowers fringing the very borders of perpetual snows.”

“Your analogy does not suit the case, Sir Philip,” replied Miss Leslie, coldly; “but I marvel not at your ignorance of my friend; the waters gushed from the rock only at the prophet’s touch--” Hope hesitated; she felt that her rejoinder was too personal, and she added, in a tone of calmer defence, “surely she who has shown herself capable of the fervour of devotion and the tenderness of friendship, may be susceptible of an inferior passion.”

“Most certainly; and your philosophy, fair reasoner, agrees with experience and poetry. An old {57} French lay well sets forth the harmony between the passions; thus it runs, I think;” and he trilled the following stanzas:

“‘Et pour vérité vous record Dieu et amour sont d’un accord, Dieu aime sens et honorance, Amour ne l’a pas en viltance; Dieu hait orgueil et fausseté, Et Amour aime loyauté; Dieu aime honneur et courtoisie Et bonne Amour ne hait-il mie; Dieu écoute belle prière, Amour ne la met pas arrière.’”

Sir Philip dropped on his knee, and, seizing Hope’s hand, repeated,

“‘Dieu écoute belle prière, Amour ne le met pas en arrière.’”

At this moment, when Hope stood stock still from surprise, confusion, and displeasure, Everell crossed the walk. The colour mounted to his cheeks and temples, he quickened his footsteps, and almost instantly disappeared. This apparition, instead of augmenting Miss Leslie’s embarrassment, restored all her powers. “Reserve your gallantries, Sir Philip,” she said, quietly withdrawing her hand, “and your profane verses for some subject to whom they are better suited; if you have aught of the spirit of a gentleman in you, you must feel that I have neither invited the one nor provoked the other.”

Sir Philip rose, mortified and disconcerted, and suffered Miss Leslie to walk slowly away from him without uttering a word to urge or defend his suit. He would have been better pleased if he had excited {58} more emotion of any sort; he thought he had never seen her, on any occasion, so calm and indifferent. He was piqued, as a man of gallantry, to be thus contemptuously repelled; and he was vexed with himself that, by a false step, he had retarded, perhaps endangered, the final success of his projects. He had been too suddenly elated by the removal of his rival; he deemed his path quite clear; and, with due allowance for natural presumption and self-love, it was not perhaps strange that an accomplished man of the world should, in Sir Philip’s circumstances, have counted sanguinely on success.

He remained pulling a rose to pieces, as a sort of accompaniment to his vexed thoughts, when Mrs. Grafton made an untimely appearance before him. “Ah ha!” she said, picking up a bracelet Hope had unconsciously dropped, “I see who has been here--I thought so; but, Sir Philip, you look downcast.” Sir Philip, accustomed as he was to masquerade, had not been able to veil his feelings even from the good dame, whose perceptions were neither quick nor keen; but what was defective in them she made up in abundant good-nature. “Now, Sir Philip,” she said, “there is nothing but the wind so changeful as a woman’s mind; that’s what everybody says, and there is both good and bad in it: for if the wind is dead ahead, we may look for it to turn.”

Sir Philip bowed his assent to the truism, and secretly prayed that the good lady might be just in her application of it. Mrs. Grafton continued: “Now, what have you been doing with that rose, Sir Philip? {59} one would think it had done you an ill turn, by your picking it to pieces; I hope you did not follow Everell’s fashion; such a way of expressing one’s ideas should be left to boys.” Sir Philip most heartily wished that he had left his sentiments to be conveyed by so prudent and delicate an interpreter; but, determined to give no aid to Mrs. Grafton’s conjectures, he threw away the rose-stem, and, plucking another, presented it to her, saying that “he hoped she would not extend her proscription of the language of flowers so far as to prevent their expressing his regard for her.”

The good lady courtesied, and said “how much Sir Philip’s ways did remind her of her dear deceased husband.”

The knight constrained himself to say “that he was highly flattered by being thus honourably associated in her thoughts.”

“And you may well be, Sir Philip,” she replied, in the honesty of her heart, “for my poor dear Mr. Grafton was called the most elegant man of his time: and the best of husbands he proved; for, as Shakspeare says, ‘He never let the winds of heaven visit me.’” She paused to wipe away a genuine tear, and then continued: “It was not for such a man to be disheartened because a woman seemed a little offish at first. _Nil desperandum_ was his motto; and he, poor dear man, had so many rivals! Here, you know, the case is quite different. If anybody were to fall in love with anybody--I am only making a supposition, Sir Philip--there is nobody here but {60} these stiff-starched Puritans--a thousand pardons, Sir Philip; I forgot you was one of them. Indeed, you seem so little like them that I am always forgetting it.”

Sir Philip dared not trust Mrs. Grafton’s discretion so far as to cast off his disguises before her, but he ventured to say that “some of his brethren were over-zealous.”

“Ay, ay, quite too zealous, aren’t they? a kind of mint, anise, and cummin Christians.”

Sir Philip smiled: “He hoped not to err in that particular; he must confess a leaning of the heart towards his old habits and feelings.”

“Quite natural; and I trust you will finally lean so far as to fall into them again, all in good time; but, as I was saying, skittishness isn’t a bad sign in a young woman. It was a long, long time before I gave poor dear Mr. Grafton the first token of favour; and what do you surmise that was, Sir Philip? Now just guess; it was a trick of fancy really worth knowing.”

Sir Philip was wearied beyond measure with the old lady’s garrulity; but he said, with all the complaisance he could assume, “That he could not guess; the ingenuity of a lady’s favour baffled conjecture.”

“I thought you would not guess; well, I’ll tell you. There’s a little history to it, but, luckily, we’ve plenty of time on hand. Well, to begin at the beginning, you must know I had a fan--a French fan I think it was; there were two Cupids painted on {61} it, and exactly in the middle, between them, a figure of Hope--I don’t mean Hope Leslie,” she continued, for she saw the knight’s eye suddenly glancing towards the head of the walk, past which Miss Leslie was just walking, in earnest conversation with Everell Fletcher.

Sir Philip felt the urgent necessity, at this juncture of affairs, of preventing, if possible, a confidential communication between Miss Leslie and Fletcher; and his face expressed unequivocally that he was no longer listening to Mrs. Grafton.

“Do you hear, Sir Philip?” she continued; “I don’t mean Hope Leslie.”

“So I understand, madam,” replied the knight, keeping his face towards her, but receding rapidly in the direction Miss Leslie had passed, till, almost beyond the sound of her voice, he laid his hand on his heart, bowed, and disappeared.

“Well, that is peculiar of Sir Philip,” muttered the good lady; then, suddenly turning to Cradock, who appeared making his way through some snarled bushes, “What is the matter now, Master Cradock?” she asked. Cradock replied by informing her that the tide served for their return to town, and that the governor had made it his particular request that there might be no delay.

Mrs. Grafton’s spirit was always refractory to orders from headquarters; but she was too discreet or too timid for any overt act of disobedience, and she gave her arm to Cradock, and hastened to the appointed rendezvous.

{62}

When Sir Philip had emerged from the walk, he perceived the parties he pursued at no great distance from him, and was observed by Hope, who immediately, and manifestly to avoid him, motioned to Everell to take a path which diverged from that which led to the boat, to which they were now all summoned by a loud call from the boatmen.

We must leave the knight to digest his vexation, and follow our heroine, whose face could now claim nothing of the apathy that had mortified Sir Philip.

“You are, then, fixed in your determination to remain on the island to-night?” demanded Fletcher.

“Unalterably.”

“And is Digby also to have the honour of Sir Philip’s company?”

“Everell!” exclaimed Hope, in a tone that indicated surprise and wounded feeling.

“Pardon me, Miss Leslie.”

“Miss Leslie again! Everell, you are unkind; you but this moment promised you would speak to me as you were wont to do.”

“I would, Hope: my heart has but one language for you, but I dare not trust my lips. I may--I _must_ now speak to you as a brother; and, before we part, let me address a caution to you which that sacred, and, thank God, permitted love, dictates. My own destiny is fixed--fixed by your act, Hope; Heaven forgive me for saying so. It is done. For myself, I can endure anything, but I could not live to see you the prey of a hollow-hearted adventurer.” The truth flashed on Hope: she was beloved--she loved {63} again--and she had rashly dashed away the happiness within her grasp. Her head became dizzy; she stopped, and, gathering her veil over her face, leaned against a tree for support. Everell grievously misunderstood her agitation.

“Hope,” he said, with a faltering voice, “I have been slow to believe that you could thus throw away your heart. I tried to shut my eyes against that strange Saturday night’s walk--that mysterious, unexplained assignation with a stranger; knowing, as I did, that his addresses had received the governor’s full approbation--my father’s, my poor father’s reluctant assent, I still trusted that your pure heart would have revolted from his flatteries. I believe he is a heartless hypocrite. I would have told you so, but I was too proud to have my warning attributed, even for a moment, to the meanness of a jealous rival. I have been accused of seeking you from--” interested motives he would have added, but it seemed as if the words blistered his tongue; and he concluded, “It matters not now; now I may speak freely, without distrusting myself or being distrusted by others. Hope, you have cast away my earthly happiness; trifle not with your own.”

Hope perceived that events, conspiring with her own thoughtless conduct, had riveted Everell’s mistake; but it was now irremediable. There was no middle path between a passive submission to her fate and a full and now useless explanation. She was aware that plighted friendship and troth were staked on the resolution of the moment; and when {64} Everell added, “Oh! I have been convinced against my will--against my hopes: what visions of possible felicity have you dispersed; what dreams--”

“Dreams--dreams all,” she exclaimed, interrupting him; and, throwing back her veil, she discovered her face drenched with tears. “Hark! they call you: let the past be forgotten; and for the future--the future, Everell--all possible felicity does await you if you are true to yourself--true to--” her voice faltered, but she articulated “Esther;” and, turning away, she escaped from his sight as she would have rushed from the brink of a precipice.

“Oh!” thought Everell, as his eye and heart followed her with the fervid feeling of love, “oh! that one who seems all angel should have so much of woman’s weakness!” While he lingered for a moment to subdue his emotion, and fit him to appear before Esther and less interested observers, Sir Philip joined him, apparently returning from the boat. “Your friends stay for you, sir,” he said, and passed on.

“Then he does remain with her,” concluded Everell; and the conviction was forced more strongly than ever on his mind, that Hope had lent a favourable ear to Sir Philip’s suit. “The illusion must be transient,” he thought; “vanity cannot have a lasting triumph over the noble sentiments of her pure heart.” This was the language of his affection; but we must confess that the ardour of his confidence was abated by Miss Leslie’s apparently wide departure from delicate reserve, in permitting (as he believed {65} she had) her professed admirer to remain on the island with her.

He now hastened to the boat, in the hope that he should hear some explanation of this extraordinary arrangement; but no such consolation awaited him. On the contrary, he found it a subject of speculation to the whole party. Faithful Cradock expressed simple amazement. Mrs. Grafton was divided between her pleasure in the probable success of her secret wishes, and her consciousness of the obvious impropriety of her niece’s conduct; and her flurried and half-articulated efforts at explanation only served, like a feeble light, to make the darkness visible; and Esther’s downcast and tearful eye intimated her concern and mortification for her friend.