^ :^m 
 
 ^ -'U 
 
 r y ^A J//^ /? -, \r ? '^//v. 
 
 r^^d^4- 
 
 S^C--
 
 w^ 
 
 %.' •'*•
 
 "L I E) R.ARY 
 
 OF THE 
 U N 1VE.R5ITY 
 or ILLI NOIS 
 
 823 
 C53
 
 ^ .K-
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 ^ Bomestic '^ale. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 COLBUEN & CO., PUBLISHEES, 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 1852.
 
 PRINTED BY HARRISON AND SON, 
 
 LONDON GAZETTE OFFICE, ST. MAKTIN's LANE ; 
 
 AND 
 
 OaCHAED STEEET, WESTMINSTER.
 
 %2i 
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Then, said she, I am very dreary. 
 He will not come ; she said. 
 She wept. I am aweary, aweary, 
 Oh ! God, that I were dead !" 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 In tlie immediate neigliboiirliood of 
 London there arc numerous dwellings, 
 wliich, though without splendour, or 
 any pretension to fashion, yet abound 
 with accommodation, are capable of much 
 elegance and beauty, and are full of those 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 peculiar English comforts tliat so much 
 help to create the charm of Home. 
 
 In spring, before smoke and dust have 
 spoiled the freshness of their trees and 
 shrubs, while the tender green leaves and 
 fragrant flowers are still young, the little 
 gardens attached to these suburban abodes 
 are almost as beautiful as those of the real 
 country. Their growth may be less vigo- 
 rous and their odour less sweet, but these 
 disadvantages are to a large extent com- 
 pensated by the contrast derived from the 
 close proximity of the vast city, in the 
 dust and stifling atmosphere of which few 
 plants will live, and hardly any flowers 
 grow. Here, while walking up and down 
 one of these narrow gardens, the true lover 
 of nature sometimes speculates on the 
 question whether, though the colour of his 
 flowers is no doubt tarnished, and the
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 3 
 
 yigoiir of their growth checked by the 
 smoke, so that some of the leaves of his 
 roses and geraniums are yellow, and others 
 so scanty that he can count every one, he 
 still does not derive as much enjoyment 
 from his little garden as many landed 
 proprietors from their large parks. At all 
 events, the lover of flowers will admit that 
 the difference is greater between having 
 such a garden and no garden at all — perhaps 
 nothing but a flagged court or the back of 
 an adjoining house — than between having 
 such a garden and being the possessor of 
 a park. 
 
 Situated among many rows, terraces, 
 crescents, and so-called villas of a similar 
 description, there was, a few miles out of 
 London, a small house with one of these 
 little gardens before it. The trelliscd bal- 
 cony was filled with boxes of mignionette, 
 
 B 2
 
 4 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 pots of hyacinths, violets, dwarf acacias, and 
 some even of the more rare and costly 
 plants, arranged so as to form a flowery 
 grove round the window. The little garden 
 was brilliant with lilacs and laburnums, and 
 gave evidence of the presiding hand of 
 some person of unusual taste and elegance; 
 and within the house this graceful presence 
 was even more conspicuous. The drawing- 
 room, small in dimensions, was refined and 
 elegant in all its appointments; simple, yet 
 far more beautiful than many magnificent 
 rooms filled with costly silks and gilding. 
 Some people possess a genius for the kind 
 of arrangement which gives this impression 
 of beauty. AVith no materials beyond 
 ordinary furniture, they have the power, by 
 good combinations and a maojic touch here 
 and there, to make all that w^as ungraceful, 
 or merely common-place, truly elegant; and
 
 CLAEA HARRINGTOX. 5 
 
 such was tlie talent with which the mistress 
 of this house was endowed. The least ob- 
 servant person felt the influence stealing 
 over him, like an enchantment, when he 
 entered that room. There was nothing 
 remarkable about it, nothing that any one 
 could remember and hope to succeed in 
 imitating; it was tlie arrangement of the 
 whole that made it charming. Glasses of 
 flowers, looking as if placed and arranged 
 bj a fairy's hand, casts from small pieces of 
 statuary, books, musical instruments, en- 
 grayings — all these were seen through the 
 softening half light of Venetian blinds and 
 muslin curtains, while the air was perfumed 
 in passing through the plants on the bal- 
 cony. Without changing any one of these 
 articles, the whole might have been so 
 disposed as merely to convey the impres- 
 sion, that there Avere collected in that par-
 
 6 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 ticular room so many pieces of furniture for 
 use or ornament; as actually arranged by 
 the hand that gave them grace and beauty, 
 they recalled to mind the old man's study of 
 Hoffman, over the common green paper of 
 which the power of poetry cast such a glow, 
 that it was transformed in the eyes of the 
 student Anselmus into a real grove, with 
 fairy flowers and trees that waved in the 
 wind. 
 
 It was in this pleasant home, that, to- 
 wards six o'clock on a spring afternoon, she 
 who had created its charm, stood in a little 
 back room at the top of the house, with her 
 head leaning against the opened window 
 frame, gazing intently along the dusty Lon- 
 don road, as motionless as the cast of 
 Sappho in her own drawing-room. In her 
 arms was a young child, two years old, with 
 its waxen hands clasped round the young
 
 CLARA HAERINGTON. 7 
 
 mother's neck, and its velvet clieek resting 
 against liers. Now and tlien tlie little 
 pink fingers softly patted tlie motlier's face, 
 and then the mother would for a moment 
 withdraw her eyes from the road to look 
 tenderly at her cliild, but quickly, as if 
 afraid of liaving lost a moment of her 
 watching, she turned to look eagerly again. 
 Thus they stood tlien, and usually stood 
 every day about this time, to watch along 
 that dusty road, sometimes for two or three 
 hours together, often to be disappointed at 
 last and to give up hope, the mother to sit 
 down in her solitude with her sad thoughts, 
 the unconscious infant to suffer from the 
 reflexion of that anxiety and sorrow. 
 
 Six o'clock was approaching; the hour 
 was even beginning to strike, when Mrs. 
 Merton, standing at that lonely window, 
 saw with delight the longed-for carriage
 
 8 CLARA HAERINGTON". 
 
 driving quicl^lj up the road. It was her 
 constant, though somewhat childish, prac- 
 tice — and Clara was scarcely more than a 
 child — to remain in the same posture at the 
 window, watching till the carriage reached 
 one particular tree, then to walk slowly 
 down-stairs, and begin some occupation 
 which would take her double the time to 
 finish that could elapse before her hus- 
 band's cabriolet drove to the gate; for 
 there was something exquisite in contriving 
 to be surprised at last by the ring at the 
 bell, and then to start up, throw away the 
 work, and rush, with her beating heart, to 
 open the door herself, forgetting all the 
 long hours of watching and waiting in the 
 joy of that actual presence. 
 
 On this particular day, Mrs. Merton 
 watclied the cabriolet pass the tree, and 
 then, having gone down slowly as usual, she
 
 CLARA HAREINGTON". 9 
 
 took up a book from the drawing-room 
 table, and resolved to read one whole page. 
 She read the words very quickly that she 
 might be ready. The page was finished, 
 yet no ring w^as heard. She tried to read 
 it again, but was obliged to lay it down. 
 She walked very slowly up and down the 
 lobby, — still no ring. Then she went back 
 to the drawing-room, from the window of 
 which she could only see a few yards, for 
 there was a turn in the road; she w^ould 
 not even look that sliort distance, because it 
 would spoil the surprise of the ring. She 
 sat resolutely down, and took up the liook 
 to read again. She once more finished the 
 page, and then hurried up-stairs again to 
 the higher window. Nothing unusual was 
 to be seen, no crowd of people, no one run- 
 ning hurriedly along tlie road, as if an 
 accident had happened, — carriages, horse-
 
 10 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 men, carts, foot passengers, went up and 
 down, but there was no appearance of the 
 person for whom alone she had ejes or 
 thoughts. She was quite sure it was he 
 whom she had seen ; she knew the carriage, 
 the horse, the groom, too well to be mis- 
 taken, and, far better, the master. 
 
 Fire minutes of wretched anxiety, such 
 as watchers alone know, had passed — 
 minutes that seemed like hours. And how 
 many long, profitless hours are endured by 
 women who love — hours that engender fret- 
 ful, suspicious thoughts — those ^thoughts 
 which are the bane of a happy home ! 
 
 Mrs. Merton sat down before a clock, 
 and resolved that as soon as the hand had 
 passed the quarter, she would go out and 
 ask the people in shops, as she went along, 
 whether any accident had happened, but 
 just at the instant, when this resolution
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 11 
 
 was formed, a loud ring sounded, like 
 heavenly music in lier ears, and she ran 
 down with her little Bertha, whose eyes 
 had caught the joy shining in her mother's, 
 and with trembling, eager hands, opened 
 the door, but — instead of him she looked 
 for, there stood a strange servant, and in 
 place of the expected cabriolet, a hired 
 carriage. 
 
 Without waiting to answer the question 
 whether " Mrs. Merton was at home ?" with 
 an aching heart Clara rushed back into the 
 house ; but scarcely had she time to bury 
 her weeping face in the sofa pillows, before 
 kind, friendly arms, were thrown around 
 her, and a soft voice tried to soothe her, 
 asking earnestly the cause of the tears 
 which little Bertha was trying to wipe 
 from her mother's eyes. Half ashamed of 
 her violent emotion, the poor, disappointed
 
 12 CLARA HARllINGTON. 
 
 Av atelier looked round, and then exclaimed, 
 T\'itli amazement, " Oh, Leonora, can this 
 be jou ? You hare come at last !" 
 
 *' Yes, my Clara, never, I trust, to leave 
 JOU again." 
 
 " Do I, indeed, see you once more V re- 
 sumed Clara ; " though I can hardly bear 
 to look at you, for I see in your face the 
 traces of what you have suffered. Yes, 
 I know how much, how deeply. But yet 
 what a blessing it is to see you again." 
 
 Even while she said these words, and 
 kissed her friend again and again, who 
 continued to fold her to her heart with 
 maternal fondness, that anxious friend ob- 
 served that her thoughts were absent, that 
 her face was constantly turned back to the 
 window, and that she was wholly absorbed 
 in listening. Scarcely, indeed, had a few 
 minutes passed in this manner, when, at
 
 CLARA HARRINGTOJf. 13 
 
 the sound of another ring, she started, and, 
 •without a word of explanation, snatched up 
 Bertha, and again ran to the gate, again to 
 be disappointed. 
 
 This time, however, there was some alle- 
 viation of her suffering, for a boj had 
 brought a note from her husband in his 
 own handwriting. It contained only a 
 few hurried lines, written in pencil, to say 
 that he had been unexpectedly prevented, 
 by affairs of consequence, from coming to 
 her. He did not give a very clear expla- 
 nation of these affairs, but intimated that 
 they were of consequence to her as well as 
 to other members of his family. Then fol- 
 lowed a few words of tenderness, and the 
 note concluded by saying, that the day 
 after to-morrow he hoped to have the great 
 pleasure of riding with her, if she would be 
 ready at two o'clock, when he would send
 
 14 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 the horses for her, and would meet her at 
 a certain spot, which he named. 
 
 She stood in the passage reading and 
 re-reading the unsatisfactory note ; then 
 questioned the boy who brought it, and 
 whom she recognized as one who swept 
 the crossing close by. He could only tell 
 her that a groom gave it to him, — that the 
 groom was dressed in dark grey, — that this 
 was about five minutes ago ; that after 
 giving it to him the groom ran quickly 
 along the opposite road, and that, just as 
 he, the boy, had got to Mrs. Merton's gate 
 with the note, he observed a cabriolet drive 
 past the turning with this groom behind it. 
 Instantly the impatient questioner ran 
 back into the house and up-stairs to the 
 little back window which gave a view of 
 the London Road. But she was too late ; 
 she had not even the comfort of seeing her
 
 CLAKA HARRINGTON. 16 
 
 husband driving away from lier. She stood 
 there a few minutes, too much bewildered 
 to shed tears. There was a shade of anger 
 mixed with her sorrow ; anger at the 
 mystery in this proceeding, — the intention 
 to conceal his having been so near her. 
 It was this anger which gave her strength 
 to chase away, for the moment, her sorrow 
 at the disappointment, and to make her 
 say to herself, " I will be happy, and enjoy 
 my dear Leonora's presence, even though 
 Gerard is not with me.'' But when she 
 went once more into the drawing-room, 
 and looked in her friend's kind face, and 
 heard herself addressed in tender soothing 
 accents, as "my own dear Clara!" then 
 this poor Clara's heart lost all its hardness, 
 and as she put her arms round that friend's 
 neck tears came to her relief, and she said 
 again and again, " Now that you are come 
 to help me, I shall soon be happier."
 
 16 CLARA HARPJXGTOIS'. 
 
 In a few minutes the visitor had dis- 
 missed her carriage, the two friends having 
 resolved not to separate again till the 
 following morning. Dinner v/as soon over, 
 and Clara, Avith her own hands, laid her 
 child to rest, pillow^ed on the sofa near 
 them, for Leonora begged that the child 
 might not be taken out of the room. " It 
 seemed," she said, " as if she could never 
 tire of looking into its deep, earnest ejes." 
 It was remarkable, that from the first 
 moment of her arrival, Bertha, who was 
 an unusually shv or rather fanciful child, 
 seemed to lay her head with as much 
 confidence on the stranger's bosom as on 
 her mother's, and it was not till those large 
 blue eyes had slowly closed, that Leonora 
 seemed inclined for conversation, and then 
 she still sat on a low stool by the sleeping 
 child, holding one of the little soft hands 
 in hers.
 
 CLAPtA HARRINGTOIT. 17 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " She wept — because slie had no more to say, 
 Of that perpetual weight, which on her spirit lay." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 "It is strange, Clara," she then said, 
 with a grave and even melancholy expres- 
 sion, " that you should never have written 
 to me since our accidental meeting the 
 autumn before last." 
 
 " It must, indeed, seem strange to jou." 
 " You cannot wonder that it appeared to 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 me incomprehensible, and that it was very 
 painful. We had arranged, jou remember, 
 that I should spend some days Tvith yon." 
 
 " It would haye been a sweet happiness 
 to me." 
 
 "Do you remember our last meeting? 
 Oh ! Avhat a joy it was to me to see you 
 again." 
 
 " And to me, so unexpectedly to meet 
 you, dearest Leonora." 
 
 " Bertha could then have been only about 
 six weeks old," contiimed Leonora. "I 
 had been anticipating with the greatest 
 delight my promised visit. Conceive, then, 
 my disappointment, my grief, when I went 
 to your house on the day you had ap- 
 pointed, and found that you were gone, 
 that you had left no message for me, and 
 that I could discover no trace of you." 
 
 " My disappointment and grief were
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 19 
 
 greater than your own," answered Clara ; 
 "for, besides mj sorrow that I could not 
 see you, I had to endure the apprehension 
 that you would think me both un affection ate 
 and ungrateful." 
 
 " Oh ! no ; sisters in affection cannot so 
 think of each other. Mistrust cannot mix 
 in a love so proved as ours. I never for a 
 moment felt anything but anxiety and 
 sorrow; but anxious I was, more than I 
 can describe, for I knew how much you 
 would suffer from our mutual disappoint- 
 ment, and I dreaded what you might be 
 suffering from your domestic position." 
 
 Clara was silent. 
 
 " Of course I attributed your disappear- 
 ance and the strangeness of the circum- 
 stances under which it happened to your 
 husband. You know how uneasy I felt 
 from the first at your acquaintance with 
 
 c 2
 
 20 CLARA HARRINGTO:^. 
 
 him ; and I have since heard nothing to 
 relieve mj apprehension." 
 
 An invohmtarj sigh was the only answer 
 returned by Clara. 
 
 " I came to joii now, in the hope that 
 jou would be able to lessen this apprehen- 
 sion. But I own I am disappointed. "What 
 I have seen to-daj increases mj fear. His 
 strange appearance and disappearance, his 
 incomprehensible note, — these are circum- 
 stances but little calculated to diminish my 
 uneasiness." 
 
 Clara tried to speak, but after uttering a 
 few broken and confused sentences, she 
 leant her head on licr hand, endeavouring 
 to conceal her emotion. 
 
 " You must make me acquainted with 
 your real position," resumed Leonora, '' sim- 
 jily and truly, as far as you yourself un- 
 derstand it. I have said that our affection
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 21 
 
 is sisterly ; but it is more tlian that, for I 
 am so miicli older than you, and have had 
 so mucli more experience, that I regard 
 myself in some degree as your mother, as 
 \7cll as your friend/' 
 
 '' In your o^Yn loving heart,'' said Clara, 
 earnestly, " you are at once sister, mother, 
 friend."' 
 
 "Something wrong there must be," re- 
 sumed Leonora ; " there is no confidence 
 between you and your husband. Either 
 you are wanting in your duty, or he fails in 
 his. If tliere is fault on your side, dearest 
 Clara, let me help you, as I have done 
 before." 
 
 " Oil ! if you had been with me, I 
 should not have suffered so much, so very 
 much." 
 
 " Well, even if it is he who is wrong, still 
 I may help you, help you to bear with
 
 22 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 fortitude what caunot be remedied, or to 
 make the requisite eflfort to rescue yourself 
 from the worst evils of a position in which 
 you have been unworthily placed — if, 
 indeed, it be so." 
 
 While thus speaking, Leonora laid the 
 child's hand softly down, as if afraid to 
 disturb its tranquil sleep, now that she had 
 entered on so agitating a topic. She then 
 rose from her low seat, and placed herself 
 at some distance. 
 
 Clara gazed at her earnestly, with some- 
 thing of bewilderment in her look, and after 
 a silence of a few moments, she threw her- 
 self kneeling before her friend, and cried in 
 a tone of anguish as she clasped her hand: 
 " Leonora, do not talk so of him. You give 
 me pain greater than I can bear. I look to 
 you for help. You must not encourage me 
 to feel unjustly, bitterly against him. You
 
 CLARA HARRINGTO]^. 23 
 
 must promise to strengthen me, and to give 
 me heart and hope when I fail." 
 
 Leonora pressed the trembling hands 
 that were now laid within hers, and said 
 " I am here to give jou comfort and aid ; 
 and JOU feel that I shall do so, do jou not, 
 in jour inmost heart V 
 
 Clara went on. " I will tell jou everj- 
 thing, and when jou know all, jou will see 
 how much I need jour help. You will feel 
 that he is not wrong. You must make me 
 think so ; must make me feel so, when dis- 
 appointment and anguish disturb the clear- 
 ness of mj own judgment. Oh, mj Leo- 
 nora," she continued, " I owe everjthing I 
 am to JOU. Without jou I should have 
 been lost, numbered with that vast mul- 
 titude that arc destrojed and forgotten in 
 this drear J London. I know jou will never 
 forsake me."
 
 24 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 "Never until I am mjself bereft of 
 reason and of feeling/' cried Leonora fer- 
 rentlj. 
 
 " Then," replied Clara, " joii must teac 
 me to love and esteem mj husband. With- 
 out that, I can accept of no happiness; 
 there are difficulties in my Avaj ; and it is 
 for this reason that I ^^^ant jour sympathy 
 and help." 
 
 " My sympathy you are sure of, and also 
 of T^'hat help I can give, but I fear my task 
 will be a difficult one." 
 
 "You think it will be difficult," said 
 Clara ; " and that you will have a bad 
 pupil; but you came to me to-day, just as 
 I had been severely tried and had nearly 
 failed." 
 
 " How V asked Leonora. 
 
 " It is because you saw my grief and wit- 
 nessed my anger against him, that you ima-
 
 CLAEA HAREINGTON. 25 
 
 gine I am imliappj, and that he makes me 
 so. You are wrong, very wrong, and to 
 encourage in me this state of feeling is to 
 weaken, not to strengthen me, and to make 
 me wicked as well as weak. Of what value 
 is that love which cannot forgive I" 
 
 She had risen from Leonora's feet and 
 now stood proudly up. Perhaps if that 
 true friend had said one single word in 
 opposition to her feeling, at that moment, 
 all the power of affection to comfort and to 
 guide would have been lost to her ; but 
 Leonora sat silent till this sudden burst of 
 emotion had passed away. 
 
 " Ah ! you think me weak, absurd," she 
 resumed ; " but you do not know how diffi- 
 cult it is for one living so much alone to 
 prevent suspicious and unworthy thoughts 
 from taking possession, — sometimes, yes, 
 entire possession of me."
 
 26 CLARA HARRmGTON. 
 
 And she sobbed bitterly, covering her 
 face with her hands. 
 
 Leonora pressed her to her bosom, still 
 without speaking. 
 
 " But now that jou are come to help me, 
 dearest Leonora, you will be my good angel; 
 you will drive these demons from my heart ; 
 you will allow them no longer to find a 
 resting-place there." 
 
 " I trust I shall be a comfort and help to 
 
 you." 
 
 " You have been so from the first mo- 
 ment that you ever spoke to me," resumed 
 Clara ; " when we first met, when you 
 found me a poor girl utterly destitute, from 
 that moment — no, do not stop me, it does 
 me good to think and speak of this — from 
 that moment I felt you to be my guardian 
 spirit. Then you did not rest satisfied with 
 wishing me well when we parted in London,
 
 CLAEA HAERINGTON. 27 
 
 but you sought me out and gave me your 
 counsel and assistance. Never yet have I 
 been able to make any return, excepting my 
 gratitude and my devoted love ; but it was 
 a blessed state to feel such admiration and 
 love as I felt for you ! Then came sorrow 
 — sorrow, where there ought to have been 
 nothing but additional joy. Then I first 
 knew Mr. Merton. You had left London, 
 you had returned to Italy ; there your own 
 trials and duties were sufficient to absorb 
 you, yet you never ceased to love me and to 
 care for me, and I wrote constantly to you. 
 I told you at the time everything that 
 passed between us ; everything that oc- 
 curred ; my engagement at the Hay market, 
 where he came every night; every thing 
 
 until that wretched time when " Clara 
 
 ceased speaking, her face flushed with 
 crimson.
 
 28 CLARA HARRINGTOX. 
 
 " What would I not give," sbe resumed, 
 '"■' to be able to for^^et that one wrong thing 
 he did 'i But, my Leonora, he himself re- 
 pented of it; repented having offered me 
 the indignity of "such proposals, and at once 
 urged me to become his wife." 
 
 "But how could you consent, after he 
 had offered you such an outraged" 
 
 " It was indeed contrary to your earnest 
 counsel/' 
 
 '•' It was my opinion, my deep conviction, 
 that you ought at once to have separated 
 yourself from him, and that you could place 
 no trust in a man who had so deservedly 
 forfeited your respect and confidence," 
 
 " But I loved him so much that I was 
 able to forgive him." 
 
 " You should have respected duty more 
 than love. It was wrong to place your 
 liappiness in the keeping of a man, who
 
 CLARA HAKRINGTON". 29 
 
 had shown himself capable of acting ^vith 
 such utter disregard to principle." 
 
 "But his repentance was so deep, liis 
 desire to make me reparation so earnest, 
 his misery so intense, and m j own wretched- 
 ness so overwhelming, that I seemed to 
 myself to see, in the tln-eatened, the certain 
 destruction of the happiness of both of us, 
 the condemnation of that unchristian spirit 
 which cannot forgive." 
 
 " To forgive is one thing : to repose im- 
 plicit, blind confidence — confidence involv- 
 ing the whole happiness of life — is quite 
 another." 
 
 " Do not say blind confidence. All the 
 reparation which it vras in human power to 
 make was offered ine. Ought not tliat 
 instant reparation to have satisfied me? 
 How could I ever offer up prayers for for- 
 giveness for myself, while conscious that I
 
 30 CLARA HARRINGTOIT. 
 
 cherished in mj heart a feeling of implaca- 
 bility, and that against one who loved me 
 with his whole soul, whose happiness was in 
 mj hands, whom indeed it was in mj power 
 to make happy by pronouncing a single 
 word? No, Leonora! there may be some 
 who think that they may be so sinned 
 against that they cannot forgive, on whom 
 repentance and reparation make no impres- 
 sion. But I do not think and feel in that 
 manner. I could not doubt the sincerity 
 or strength of his love. I know my own, 
 and in consenting to become his wife, I 
 trusted through that very love, to save and 
 bless my husband." 
 
 "God grant," cried Leonora fervently, 
 "that your expectation may be realized!" 
 
 " We were married — We were happy. 
 Many months passed on swiftly like a 
 dream, and yet the memory of that time
 
 CLARA HAERINGTON. 31 
 
 fills SO large a space in mj mind, that it 
 seems to equal all tlie other parts of my 
 life. Gradually, however, I fancied, and by 
 degrees I was obliged to acknowledge to 
 myself, that there was some alloy mixed 
 with this happiness. The first thing that 
 materially interrupted my peace had rela- 
 tion to yourself. He insisted that you 
 should be kept in entire ignorance of our 
 marriage. Why he made so decided a 
 point of this I never could conjecture. He 
 said many things to me in explanation of 
 his motives ; but I never could see any suffi- 
 cient reason for giving me so great a grief. 
 I was so absorbed in my own happiness, 
 that all the rest of the world beside you 
 appeared nothing to me; but you were still 
 the same to me; and, independently of my 
 regret that you were not with me to share 
 my happiness, and that I could not even
 
 32 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 have tlic comfort of jour sjmpatlij, the 
 thouglit that I must appear to you ungrate- 
 ful, was a source of bitterness in the midst 
 of my delirium of joy. The only reason I 
 could understand for his feeling towards 
 you, was the manner in which you expressed 
 yourself with regard to his former conduct. 
 I made no secret of your opinion, nor did I 
 conceal from him that you thought he had 
 justly forfeited all claim to my respect and 
 confidence, nor that you had used your 
 utmost efforts to separate us altogether. 
 This, he said, he never could or would for- 
 give." 
 
 "And was this the only alloy which 
 mingled with your happiness at that time V 
 
 " There was another thing which troubled 
 me a little, but I never attached much im- 
 portance to it. I mean his continued con- 
 cealment of our marriage from his family.
 
 CLARA HAEEINGTON. 33 
 
 I was annoyed at this, because I dislike 
 concealment; but he assured me that the 
 necessity for it in the present instance 
 would cease after a short time; and I really 
 cared very little about it." 
 
 " Has the necessity for this concealment 
 ceased yet V' 
 
 " Not that I am aware of. It is certain 
 that he has not made our marriage public 
 or introduced me to any of his family." 
 
 " Had you any other ground of unhap- 
 piness V 
 
 " Yes, there was another, — the greatest 
 of all, — without which I should have dis- 
 regarded all the others. I mean his fre- 
 quent absence. At first he was almost 
 always with me, but of course he could not 
 be entirely so, because he had not left his 
 own home, and his friends were ignorant 
 of everything about me. When he was 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 CLAEA HAREINGTON. 
 
 absent I had no friend in the world but 
 jou, and to jou he would not let me 
 write." 
 
 " Oh, jes, he allowed jou to write one 
 letter," said Leonora, in a tone of bitter- 
 ness. 
 
 " Yes, — that letter, that dreadful letter. 
 You well know what it cost me to write 
 it ; but I hoped that mj assurance that 
 I was happy, and that I had done nothing 
 wrong would have consoled you for my 
 absence and silence for a time, for I hoped 
 and believed that neither would be very 
 long. They have, indeed, been long, but 
 he would not let me write again, and, on 
 my part, I loved him so much that I could 
 not persist in wishing to do anything of 
 which he disapproved. He said that if I 
 loved him truly and entirely I should wish 
 for no other companion, and least of all
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 35 
 
 for one with whom he felt, as he said, so 
 justly irritated, and so I at length taught 
 myself to think that to wish for you was 
 to be untrue to him ; but you must not 
 imagine that for one moment my love and 
 gratitude to you were shaken. I knew you 
 were right to have felt and acted about him 
 as you did, and I was obliged to acknowledge 
 to my own mind, even from the very first, 
 when I wished to be blind to all his faults, 
 that it was neither good nor worthy in him 
 to harbour this revengeful feeling. Some- 
 times I could not help fancying that there 
 must be some other cause at the foundation 
 of his strange aversion, but whenever I 
 mentioned this suspicion it roused up so 
 much bitterness and anger in his ex- 
 pressions about you that I was very soon 
 silenced. But do you really think there 
 can have been any other cause?'' and she 
 
 D 2
 
 T5^ CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 looked searchinglj in her friend's face, as if 
 longing to find there some help in unravel- 
 ling the tangled skein of her life. 
 
 " It is impossible to divine the real cause 
 of this particular feeling," answered Leo- 
 nora, " unless we could discover the motives 
 which have induced him to involve the 
 whole affair in mjsterj. But he seems to 
 be of a peculiarly reserved nature." 
 
 " He is so, to such a degree," replied 
 Clara, " that this has been, and is, one of 
 the main causes of my unhappiness. To 
 this hour I do not know whether he has 
 father, or mother, or brother, or sister, nor 
 w^here his family and connections live, nor 
 Avhere he goes wlien he is away from me ; 
 so that if I wanted to see him when he is 
 absent I have no means of sending to him. 
 I never write to him for I do not know 
 where to direct, nor if I were dying could
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 3/ 
 
 I send to bid him come to me for the last 
 time, — and there have been moments lately 
 when I have been tempted to wish he 
 might return and find that I had died 
 during his absence." 
 
 There was a pause in Clara's sad nar- 
 ration. She turned towards Leonora with 
 the large tears swimming in her soft loving 
 eyes, and met a look of such deep, heartfelt 
 pity that they overflowed, and for some 
 minutes she could not speak. Then sud- 
 denly her face regained a happy, joyful 
 expression, and she exclaimed : — 
 
 " When he is absent he writes me such 
 kind and tender letters. If I could show 
 any of them to you you would be con- 
 vinced, you could never again for a moment 
 doubt that he does really love me, but he 
 wishes me to destroy tliem directly, and I 
 always do so the same night before I sleep.
 
 38 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 for I could not rest if I were not able to 
 thank Heaven that in this and in all things 
 in mj power I have never wilfully opposed 
 his wishes/' 
 
 " Dear Clara !'' 
 
 " Explain to me, Leonora, how it is, 
 that since I have been so perfectly true 
 and faithful to him I yet seem to want 
 trust in him ; this want of perfect trust 
 — my childish curiosity — appears to render 
 me unworthy of his love ; for he does 
 love, and you, dearest friend, must help 
 me to conquer my weakness and folly." 
 
 There was an expression of anguish in 
 Leonora's countenance which led Clara to 
 suppose that she was inflicting too much 
 suffering on her friend by this painful 
 history, and she proposed to bring it to 
 a close, but Leonora urged her with so 
 much earnestness to go on that she im- 
 mediately resumed : —
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON, 39 
 
 " Little Bertlia was born in July. It was 
 about the end of August tbat we met." 
 
 " Yes, by accident, in Kensington 
 Gardens/' 
 
 " You saw how very happy I was to 
 meet you?'' 
 
 " Our joy was mutual, dearest Clara." 
 
 " I could not help expressing my delight, 
 though I feared he might not like the re- 
 newal of my intercourse with you." 
 
 " I observed your embarrassment, almost 
 amounting to fear, when I proposed to 
 come to you the following day." 
 
 " I dreaded his displeasure, yet I felt 
 that your coming to me would be such a 
 comfort that I could not forego it. " Your 
 face seemed to bring me back to a better 
 life." 
 
 " The perception, the inward conviction, 
 that you were not happy was an additional
 
 40 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 reason why I was earnest with you to let 
 me come to you." 
 
 " When I reached home Gerard was there 
 before me ; I had staid with you longer than 
 I was aware of. He was vexed that I was 
 so late, for he said he had made a great 
 effort to be there early. I felt it would be 
 a breach of trust, a real act of infidelity, 
 not to tell him of our meeting. I told him 
 of it directly. He was far more angry 
 than I could have expected. He said I 
 was inexcusable to give you my address ; 
 but that since I had done so, there was 
 but one course to take. He did not say 
 what. I dressed for dinner, as quickly as 
 I was able in my nervousness and tremor. 
 I ran hurriedly down stairs to him. He 
 was not there. His absence afforded me 
 a few moments to endeavour to regain my 
 composure, but he did not return. I waited
 
 CLAEA HARRINGTON". 41 
 
 some time longer in silence, but he con- 
 tinued absent from the room. I became 
 alarmed. I looked for his hat ; it was gone. 
 On questioning the servant, I found that 
 almost immediately after I went up-stairs, 
 he had left the house, saying that he should 
 not be back that night. Oh ! what a night 
 was that to me. 
 
 " The following day he came back, and 
 brought me and my infant to this house, — 
 alone. — for he dismissed my maid and 
 nurse, and I found new ones here. 
 
 " I was so utterly wretched after this, 
 that I made myself ill. My baby was ill 
 too. But he remained at home with me 
 for three whole weeks, and was so yery 
 attentive to me, so truly tender, that at 
 last I forgot my sorrow. I felt only, tliat 
 I had displeased him. I reproached my- 
 self for havins: caused him so much suffer-
 
 42 CLAEA HARKINGTOJiT. 
 
 ing. I made the most earnest resolutions 
 never to render our home so miserable 
 again. A jear and a half have passed 
 since that wretched time, and I have 
 never broken my promise, at least to the 
 same extent. There are times when I can 
 now see that Gerard is very imhappy. I 
 do not ask him why ; because I fear that 
 it may bring back that old misery again. 
 I fancied, at the time, that the happiness 
 of those three weeks would always remain ; 
 but soon he again began the former plan 
 of leaving me. I had, however, deter- 
 mined never again to speak of my pain of 
 mind to him, I have kept my resolution, 
 but I think the suppression of my feelings 
 acted wretchedly upon me, for reserve is 
 quite foreign to my nature. 
 
 " Last autumn he left me for four 
 months. When he went away he said he
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 43 
 
 should return in a few weeks. Before he 
 went he had become yery unhappy, very 
 irritable, — at the same time he seemed 
 more fond of me than ever ; often telling 
 me how devotedly he loved me. Some- 
 times his eyes were filled with tears, yet I 
 did not dare to ask a question, — I see that 
 that word ' Dare ' shocks you, but it is the 
 right one. During this long absence he 
 wrote frequently to me the kindest pos- 
 sible letters, and repeated over and over 
 again assurances that he loved me better 
 than all the world. At last, in one of his 
 letters, he said that he Avas grieved to 
 think how solitary I must be, and that 
 *if I should like to see you, if it would 
 be a pleasure to me to write to you, he 
 wished I would do so,' and that if I could 
 form any agreeable acquaintances in the 
 neighbourhood, it would make him happy
 
 44 CLARA HARRmGTON. 
 
 to know tliat mj solitude ^Yas lessened. I 
 have no idea wlij he became so changed as 
 to give me this permission. However, I 
 lost no time in writing to jou, I sent a 
 letter to jour brother, and I have been 
 anxiously expecting to see either Dr. Weston 
 or yourself.'' 
 
 "But, mj Clara, I only received your 
 letter yesterday, on my return from Italy, 
 whither urgent business had called me.'' 
 
 " 1 was very unhappy at not seeing you 
 or hearing from you. I sometimes feared 
 that I had lost your love, for my heart told 
 me that you had much apparent reason to 
 behcve that I had forfeited your regard." 
 
 "Could you imagine that I should not 
 come to you the first moment I heard of 
 you, and was able to reach you V 
 
 "No, I generally thought you would 
 come to me, but sometimes I doubted it.
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON-. 45 
 
 I was lonelj and unhappj, and often full of 
 tlie most gloomy apprehensions. I Tvrotc 
 occasionallj to liira, at his request 
 always giving my letters to his servant, 
 who came for them, and who also called 
 every week, at his master's desire, to inquire 
 after me. Of course the servant knew 
 where his master was, but I never asked 
 him. I would not let his servant suspect 
 that I did not know. Indeed, so far from 
 desiring to find out what he conceals from 
 me, I would carefully avoid such knowledge, 
 though an angel brought it." 
 
 A short silence ensued, during which 
 Leonora seemed to be recalling mentally 
 several particulars of this melancholy nar- 
 ration, and endeavouring to find some clue 
 which midit o:uide her to their true si^^:- 
 nification; but she did not speak, and Clara 
 resumed : —
 
 46 CLARA HARRINGTON". 
 
 " During Lis long absence, I made a 
 picture of liim from memory. You know 
 how fond I always was of painting. It 
 seemed a comfort to me to work at this 
 portrait ; it was a still greater pleasure to 
 look at it ; but he does not know I have 
 it. I cannot tell him, for I dread his 
 throwing my treasure into the fire, lest 
 some harm may come of it. I have no 
 other concealment from him. 
 
 " In February, he came home quite un- 
 expectedly to me. My joy at seeing him 
 was so great that I forgot the intervening 
 absence, with all its anxieties and sorrows. 
 In the midst of my joy, I feared that such 
 happiness was too great to last. That I 
 might not lose a single particle of it, how- 
 ever, from any fault of my own, on the first 
 evening of his return, I stole away from 
 him for a few minutes to my own room,
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 47 
 
 where I sincerely and earnestly searclied 
 and questioned my heart, whether it could 
 in future guard against the admission of 
 those suspicious thoughts, which had for- 
 merly obtained the mastery over me, and 
 which had produced so much wretchedness. 
 The answer it returned was that it could ; 
 but it was a false and presumptuous boast. 
 I have been able, Leonora, to liide these 
 suspicions in my heart ; but they are still 
 there. Often and often are they present 
 with me, often and often do they embitter 
 my happiness when he is with me, and 
 sometimes they even rouse up thoughts of 
 anger against him ; for oh I he is so seldom 
 here. 
 
 " I have no happiness when he is not 
 with me. I would not allow myself to have 
 the feeling even if I could while he is absent 
 and unhappy, as he says he always is when
 
 48 CLARA HAERINGTON. 
 
 away from me. In tlic mornings I count 
 the hours that must elapse before six o'clock, 
 when he sometimes comes ; for now tliat 
 there is a chance of his being with me, 
 I think of nothing else from morning till 
 night. When I knew I could not see him, 
 then mj expectation was not daily, hourly 
 raised. I go up with Bertha about half- 
 past five o'clock and stand at that back 
 window, from which I have a view of the 
 road, along which I hope to see him 
 coming. I sometimes stand there for an 
 hour or more ; and yet he has been here 
 only three times during the last fortnight, 
 and this has made me feel unreasonable, 
 and unhappy, and irritated ; and I have 
 spoilt his happiness when he has come, 
 by some involuntary expression of this 
 wretched state of mind, and all my own 
 by my inward dissatisfaction.
 
 CLAKA HARRINGTON. 49 
 
 " I sometimes feel myself driven on, as 
 it were by some demon, to say bitter and 
 taunting things, and though I generally 
 refrain from uttering them yet my heart 
 is oppressed with the suffering the effort 
 causes me. This is weak and wicked, for 
 he earnestly assures me that he cannot help 
 these frequent and long absences. To-day 
 he had written to tell me he was coming, 
 and I had been trying to fortify myself 
 against all the thoughts that could give us 
 pain. I had made every preparation to 
 welcome him as he likes best, and to make 
 him happy ; therefore you will not wonder 
 that I was disappointed when, after I saw 
 him driving within a few yards of the gate, 
 I was still doomed to have my hopes 
 destroyed, and even more than that, to 
 learn from the note whicli I have read to 
 jou that he means to deceive me about 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 it, for tlie ajffairs he talks of must be 
 inventions of the moment, as I saw him 
 close to the gate. 
 
 " You can hardly wonder that I again 
 feel that evil spirit at my heart, rousing 
 up suspicion and jealousy, and making life 
 bitter. But Heayen has sent me a blessing 
 in again restoring to me my only friend. 
 Think of what I have told you, not as 
 giving you reasons to determine that he is 
 unkind, or to make you blame him, or to 
 suppose that he does not love me, for I 
 could not bear any of these things to be 
 thought of him, — but as reasons that may 
 account for my unhappiness, and that may 
 make you forgive and pity my weakness. 
 
 " I have concealed nothing from you, 
 and now you will assist and counsel me, 
 and give me the assurance that he loves 
 me, for as long as I am satisfied of that 
 there is nothin^j I cannot bear.^'
 
 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 51 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " And tliou, thougli strong in love, art all too weak, 
 In reason, in self-government too slow — 
 Be thy affections raised and solemnized." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 " Yes," said Leonora, after some mo- 
 ment's silence ; " that lie loves you, Clara, 
 I have no doubt ; sincerely and devotedly, 
 to the utmost extent of his power to 
 love." 
 
 Clara raised her weeping face from 
 
 E 2 
 
 yNIVERSITY OF 
 l^l^.k.^i^kO,^s ubraRY
 
 52 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 Leonora's knees, and smiling, with a look 
 of deep gratitude, said : — 
 
 " Then there can be no real sorrow for 
 me on earth/' 
 
 The pity which was mixed with Leonora's 
 look of tenderness showed that she did not 
 share in this confidence. 
 
 " You are unjust to me," resumed Clara, 
 in an altered tone. " You think me inca- 
 pable of happiness. You think me too 
 childish to appreciate the happiness of 
 being loved. This is taking a cruel advan- 
 tage of mj sincerity in telling you all my 
 faults." 
 
 There was a flush of anger on her cheek 
 as she spoke, but it was dissipated in a 
 moment at the sound of her friend's 
 sympathizing and tender voice, and she 
 was soon earnestly intent on every word that 
 fell from that dear and valued friend's lips.
 
 CLAEA HARRINGTON-. 53 
 
 Again Leonora repeated her conviction 
 that Merton loved with all his power of 
 loving ; but " whether," she added, *' his 
 love is of great value, or whether it is 
 capable of making you really happy, I very 
 much doubt. Do not interrupt me," she 
 continued, "but hear what I have to say. 
 I think, from all you have told me, that 
 up to this time his love has not diminished ; 
 but yours has, Clara. You are not aware 
 of it, but your own acknowledged feelings 
 and your course of proceeding convince me 
 that it is so. Your hours of painfid 
 watching prove it to me. Love is never 
 an effort, never constrained, never makes 
 sacrifices, which seem unreasonable at the 
 very time they are made, without injuring 
 its own purity and intensity. It appears 
 to me impossible that you can have suffered
 
 54 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 SO much from jom- love "without your love 
 having been diminished/' 
 
 " Oh, but that is quite a mistake," cried 
 Clara, earnestly ; " an entire mis-reading. 
 I have suflfered — but no amount of suffering 
 can diminish my love. I have suffered 
 because I have felt doubtful of his love. I 
 have suffered in proportion to my doubt ; 
 but my love, my love for him has not been 
 touched, that is certain." 
 
 " How can the flame of love continue to 
 burn purely and intensely in an atmosphere 
 of doubt and suspicion V 
 
 "Doubt and suspicion may take away 
 the happiness of love, but cannot lessen the 
 love ; at least I know they have not lessened 
 mine." 
 
 " Not that you are conscious of — not that 
 you distinctly see yet. But those who have
 
 CLAEA HARKINGTON. 55 
 
 experience in the human heart know that 
 these passions cannot dwell with love ; that 
 in the end one or the other must be expelled 
 from the same abode/' 
 
 " Ah ! is it so V cried Clara with a look 
 of terror. 
 
 "Listen to me. I have seen the begin- 
 ning and the end of love in more than one 
 instance." 
 
 " Good God, is it possible that love can 
 end '? No, never, not such love as mine.'' 
 
 "Already I see in the distance the 
 breakers on which your happiness will be 
 wrecked unless jou take timely warning." 
 
 " Speak, Leonora, and tell me what it is 
 you fear." 
 
 " My desire is to stop the progress of the 
 evil before it is too late, If you go on 
 much longer in your present course the 
 result will be fatal. Your sufferino:s will
 
 56 CLARA HARRmGTON. 
 
 re-act on liim, and his love will soon begin 
 to change, and when once that has hap- 
 pened, all is over. A man's love runs out 
 fast when once it begins to flow in that 
 direction, a woman's is longer retained bj 
 her greater power of affection — the strongest 
 element in a woman's love. I think that 
 you have made a great mistake from the 
 very commencement. You have fancied 
 that a life of love is a life of pure ease and 
 enjoyment, forgetting that there is nothing 
 in the world without alloy, and that no 
 state of life is without its serious duties. 
 How great then, and how serious must be 
 the duties belonging to the highest state 
 vv'hich a human being can be placed in — ■ 
 that of LOVE. It is not easy to love well. 
 Easy, perhaps, to love deeply, vehemently, 
 intensely, but not to love well. Before you 
 can achieve that, you must uproot selfish-
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 57 
 
 ness, and your heart must be tlie abode of 
 faith, hope, and charity. You must derive 
 enjoyment from the communication of it ; 
 the higher powers and excellencies of your 
 nature must be called forth and developed 
 in order to render you capable of giving 
 happiness, and the heavenly fruit of this 
 inward growth is happiness. This is the 
 true consecration of marriage on God's 
 altar, and if God be absent from you, in 
 the absence of this aim and feeling no love 
 can be pure^, or lasting, or blessed. The 
 true test of love is that in deed and in 
 truth you seek the happiness of him you 
 love more than your own ; that you could 
 even renounce him, should that renunciation 
 be required for his sake ; and this feeling 
 which is the touch-stone of true love, is 
 also at once the perennial, the everlasting 
 source of it, and the true happiness of it."
 
 58 CLAEA HAERINGTOK 
 
 Clara raised her face T\4tli an anxious and 
 inquiring expression, but did not speak. 
 
 " Your circumstances," pursued Leonora, 
 " are yerj unhappy. I mean the external 
 circumstances ; the mystery of your posi- 
 tion ; the cause of his absences ; the pain 
 of the absence itself — all these things are 
 unhappy for any one, and most particularly 
 so for such a nature as yours. But you 
 knew when you married him, that he con- 
 sidered the marriage so difficult that at first 
 he thought it impossible, and afterwards he 
 conducted it in secrecy, and told you that 
 he must always, at any cost, keep it secret. 
 Whether this is a real necessity, or only 
 appears so to him, we do not know, but 
 it should be sufficient for you that he 
 believes it to be so. His w^riting to you 
 during the last long absence, and proposing 
 your renewal of intercourse with me, and
 
 CLARA HARRINGTOIT. 59 
 
 jour making other acquaintances, convinces 
 me that his heart was grieved at jour dull 
 and solitarj position, and that it must have 
 been some verj strong motive which made 
 him insist upon jour seclusion at first. You 
 tell me that he requested jou solemnlj not 
 to inquire or endeavour to find out anj 
 thing connected with this mjsterj ; to rest 
 satisfied that jou were the whole world to 
 him, and that he would never be absent 
 from JOU for a daj if he could avoid it. You 
 promised to complj with this wish. You 
 have failed in fulfilling this promise, Clara/' 
 
 " And could you have fulfilled it, Leonora? 
 Could JOU have remained satisfied with the 
 mjsterj "? Place jourself in mj circum- 
 stances, " 
 
 " I cannot do that, for our mode of view- 
 ing and feeling things is not the same ; 
 besides, I have more experience of the
 
 60 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 world than you ; I should never have placed 
 myself in your position T\nthout understand- 
 ing it thoroughly. There was your great 
 mistake. Happiness is lost from many 
 causes, — mine was wrecked on other shoals. 
 It is what I have learned from sad expe- 
 rience, and the memory of my own failure 
 in the great object of my life, the hope that 
 I might raise my husband's character, and 
 purify his love foi* me, that enables me to 
 give you this earnest advice." 
 
 " Dearest Leonora, do not imagine that 
 I am so selfishly occupied with my own 
 unhappiness as not to mourn over yours." 
 
 " Unhappiness is not merely to be 
 mourned over, — it must be profited by. 
 The unhappiness which has sprung out of 
 your position, shows you that it is a false 
 one ; that is the first lesson to be learnt. 
 The next is to ascertain in what respect it is
 
 CLARA HAKRINGTOK. 61 
 
 wrong, and tlien, if possible, to find a 
 remedy. Your misfortune clearly is, that 
 you have undertaken a task wliicli you did 
 not understand, and for which you were not 
 prepared. Either you ought to have refused 
 to marry him when he told you the condi- 
 tions, or you ought to have resolved reso- 
 lutely to go through with them without a 
 murmur." 
 
 " And so I did resolve," cried Clara, 
 " but how could I imagine the pain until I 
 
 felt it r 
 
 " But feeling it your duty remained the 
 same. You are bound to deal fairly and 
 openly with your husband." 
 
 " Deal fairly and openly with him, — 
 what can you mean V 
 
 " You must tell him that he has placed 
 you in a position which you cannot bear ;
 
 62 CLARA HARKIKGTON. 
 
 that you must give it up and separate from 
 him I" 
 
 " Give it up ! — Separate from him 1" cried 
 Clara aghast. " Would you drive me mad? 
 How can you give utterance to such horrible 
 suggestions.'^ 
 
 " Then you must fulfil the conditions/' 
 
 " But how can I fulfil them V' 
 
 " I think you may. I should not advise 
 you to try, if I did not see the strength of 
 love in you, but I think it is strong enough 
 to carry you through." 
 
 " But how 1 how V cried Clara, starting 
 up impatiently, " what am I to do ? what 
 am I to try ?" 
 
 " You must resolutely and instantly with- 
 draw your thoughts from all these circum- 
 stances which give you pain, and place them 
 on those which constitute your happiness.
 
 OLAEA HARKINGTOJT. 6S 
 
 at least the portion of happiness which re- 
 mains to you. By doiug this determinately 
 and constantly, the painful circumstances 
 will diminish in magnitude, and the happy 
 ones will increase in importance and even in 
 number. You must for the future avoid 
 all scrutiny into his conduct and character. 
 Instead of fixing your attention unceasingly 
 on what is doubtful in him, and may be 
 wrong, you should bravely and earnestly 
 turn it inward on yourself, with a view to 
 ascertain and correct your own deficiencies. 
 This mental discipline will be the salvation 
 of your happiness, and even of your love. 
 It will raise you in the estimation of your 
 husband ; it will not sink you in your own. 
 You will be at peace with yourself, and the 
 heavenly calmness and satisfaction in your 
 own heart will be reflected on him ; he will 
 recognise in you a new and superior being.
 
 64 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 He may not understand tlie cause of tlie 
 alteration, but will feel himself drawn to 
 you by a delightful and irresistible influence. 
 You will make him happy from the pure 
 and holy source of your OAvn blessedness ; 
 and the happiness he derives from you, will 
 have, must have, a purifying, elevating in- 
 fluence on him ; and thus your love, the 
 love of both of you, will not only be secured, 
 but will be increased and exalted." 
 
 " Oh I" cried Clara, her eyes beaming 
 with a new and holy aspiration. " You 
 open to me a new light, — a heavenly pro- 
 spect.'^ 
 
 "Recollect that you have faculties and 
 talents to be exercised and improved. 
 Whatever measure of them has been given 
 to you, you must use, and an account of the 
 use to which you have applied them will be 
 required of you. This is no world for idle-
 
 CLARA HAllRIXGTOX. 65 
 
 ness. Nothing in nature stands still, and 
 whatever is allowed to do so, in hTiman 
 nature especially, becomes mean and cor- 
 rupt. You are placed here to do jour little 
 part in carrying on the Great Creator's 
 plan, and by cultivating your own means 
 and powers of happiness, to contribute to 
 the improvement and happiness of others. 
 In your own case, Clara, you have unusually 
 beautiful powers and talents. These you are 
 entirely neglecting, not only to the injury 
 of your mind, but also to the destruction of 
 your health/' 
 
 " I fear you are right, my dearest friend. 
 I have no inward voice contradicting your 
 words. What can I do V 
 
 " Your position has one advantage, one 
 blessing ; in itself sufficient to raise you out 
 of all your difficulties." 
 
 " Ah ! what is it V 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 CLAKA HARRmGTON. 
 
 "Your child, jour own sweet Bertha, 
 whom jou have hitherto neglected, much 
 less in reference to her than to yourself/^ 
 
 Clara did not speak. She seemed in a 
 manner stunned by a new and overwhelming 
 truth suddenly disclosed to her. 
 
 " We -will together devise the means of 
 unfolding this lovely child's life : of pro- 
 tecting this exquisite blossoming period of 
 existence, so that it may not be injured, — 
 so that the tender bud may unfold duly, the 
 flower grow in beauty daily, and the fruit 
 uncankered fully ripen/' 
 
 Clara threw herself on the bosom of her 
 friend, exclaiming, — 
 
 " You ever have been, you are my 
 guardian angel. Help me to obtain 
 strength to follow you in this path."
 
 CLAEA HAKKINGTON". 67 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " But through these tears, 
 Shed at our hopeless parting, I can see 
 A world of treason practised upon you." 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 The two friends continued tlieir conver- 
 sation till a late hour. When thej sepa- 
 rated, Clara spent the greater part of the 
 night in revolving in her mind the new view 
 of duty which her friend had disclosed to 
 her, and in contemplating the happy goal to 
 
 F 2
 
 68 CLARA HARPJXGTON. 
 
 whicli a practical adoption of it promised to 
 lead. Instead of spending her hours in the 
 bitterness and idleness of Tvaiting and 
 watching, ought she not to set this noble 
 object before her as the great end of life 1 
 
 To make his happiness bj bringing liim 
 under the influence of tender and sweet 
 affections — to break down the reserre of his 
 nature by the strength of gentleness — to 
 gain the power of bearing his absences, his 
 irritability, his concealments, by the dcvo- 
 tedness, the real and practical possession of 
 which would be the sign that true love had 
 made her capable of being a true wife — 
 this would be to convert the very evils in 
 her position into means of good. This 
 object, this aim would be in itself a happi- 
 ness, would be in itself a source of strength. 
 She already felt in renovated hope that the 
 blessing of heaven would be on this purpose.
 
 CLARA 1IAEKINGT0^\ 69 
 
 Ob, if in the end it sliould be followed by 
 the recompense of success ! 
 
 Occupied ^Yith such thoughts and feelings 
 the time passed swiftly away till Leonora 
 returned to her, according to her promise, 
 on the following evening. From the calmer 
 manner and happier expression which she 
 perceived in her yoimg friend, Leonora 
 hoped that she had spent the interval in 
 not unprofitable reflection. She herself had 
 thought much of their conversation on the 
 previous evening, and was earnest to turn it 
 to practical account. 
 
 " I see," said she, " that you have been 
 thinking of my plan of leading a more 
 active and profitable life." 
 
 "I have, indeed, thought much of it," 
 replied Clara, " and I am resolved to 
 attempt it." 
 
 " There is one thing which may help you.
 
 70 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 You must learn to look at the realities of 
 things, and withdraw your thoughts from 
 those idealizations which end only in disap- 
 pointment and bitterness/^ 
 
 " Alas 1 much of my idealization is 
 already gone. I have too soon become 
 familiar with imperfection/' 
 
 " It is a part of human nature ; it is 
 the condition of human life : it attaches 
 to the best of human beings, and belongs to 
 the holiest and highest of human affections/' 
 
 " Yes, I fear, even to the truest love/' 
 
 " To the truest love which the infirmities 
 of our present natures permit, and which, 
 under our present unfavourable circum- 
 stances, is attainable. AVe cannot enjoy 
 perfect happiness, for we are not perfect 
 creatures. The persons we love must have 
 faults ; it is our duty to sec and acknow- 
 ledge those faults."
 
 CLAEA HAREINGTOK. 7l 
 
 "But I thought love was universally 
 admitted to be blind." 
 
 " The love that is blind is the same love 
 that has wings. There is a love that has 
 eyes, and that love is without wings." 
 
 " Ah ! disappointment is very apt to make 
 love bethink himself of his wings, and take 
 flight." 
 
 " Yes, disappointment of unreason- 
 able expectation, that is the history of 
 the birth and death of many a passion. 
 Passion is the proper name for that sort of 
 love ; but there is love of a higher and 
 better nature, not incompatible with passion, 
 but above it, independent of it, and existing 
 in full vigour when that is gone. This is 
 the love which we should cherish. I have 
 known those who would not hear, and 
 would not acknowledge to themselves that 
 the object of their love had a single fault.
 
 • 72 CLAKA HARKINGTON. 
 
 The admission of one fault, according to 
 tliem, would destroy all the beaiitj of the 
 character which they had idealized — would 
 destroy all the enchantment of their vision. 
 And they were right ; for at the approach 
 of truth, all such visions disappear." 
 
 "But how may we learn, and become 
 familiar with the reality, and yet keep the 
 love r 
 
 " By looking at our own faults, and 
 curing them. At every advance which we 
 thus ourselves make towards a more perfect 
 state, our own love will increase, and that 
 of its object. Our own improvement will 
 act — perhaps unconsciously, but not the 
 less powerfully or happily, on the person 
 we love. When your husband finds that 
 your character is strengthening, and that 
 you arc ever cheerful, ever forbearing and 
 unselfish, because you have objects and aims
 
 CLARA HAERINGTON". 73 
 
 beyond the passing moment, because jour 
 hours are actively and profitably employed, 
 the irritability of his temper will disappear, 
 and a measure at least of your own gentle- 
 ness and sweetness will be imparted to him. 
 Placed as you are entirely out of the world, 
 so that you have nothing to divert you 
 from this straight and narrow path, I really 
 do not see why you should not walk in it 
 steadily, and why you should not in the 
 end behold your husband walking in it at 
 your side. If this should be so, conceive of 
 the happiness of that moment, when you 
 come to the point in this holy path, where 
 the scales shall fall from your husband's 
 eyes, when he will see how valueless arc 
 the fictions which man has set up for 
 worship, in comparison with the truths 
 which heaven has implanted in the human
 
 74 CLARA HARRINGTOIT. 
 
 heart, and when he will cast aside evasions, 
 and follow after that which is real and 
 good, instead of clinging to hollow 
 vanities/' 
 
 The picture thus called up before the 
 mental view of Clara, excited in her such a 
 longing desire to find this path, and to begin 
 the happy journey in it, that she endea- 
 voured to enable her friend to see her whole 
 heart, as it were, in a mirror ; and at the 
 same time, she told her everything respect- 
 ing her husband which she conceived could 
 throw any light on his mode of feeling and 
 acting. But after much and sincerely un- 
 reserved conversation on this theme, there 
 ever recurred to her memory one incident 
 that had passed between them, with re- 
 ference to which she had hitherto been 
 entirely silent, and of which she felt an
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 75 
 
 unconquerable reluctance to speak, though 
 she was fully conscious the truth reqmred 
 that she should now disclose it. 
 
 At length she said, suddenly and hur- 
 riedly, evidently struggling to fulfil a painful 
 resolution : 
 
 "Leonora, there is one thing which I 
 must tell you. I have not yet spoken of it, 
 but you must know it." 
 
 And she looked anxiously in her friend's 
 face. 
 
 "I cannot conceive what relation you 
 can have had with him," she continued ; 
 " it must be purely a delusion." 
 
 " Relation with him !" exclaimed Leonora, 
 with unfeigned astonishment. "What can 
 you mean ?" 
 
 " Perhaps you will be able to explain 
 the mystery. I have felt an unaccount- 
 able dread at telling you the circumstance ;
 
 76 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 but I really think it is quite a childish 
 fear. 
 
 " Mj love of music, and his also, often 
 took us to the Opera. Whenever we went 
 he always chose the higher tier of boxes. 
 On one occasion, however, when we got to 
 the theatre, by some mistake of the people, 
 our box, instead of being, as usual, in the 
 upper row, was on a level with the stage. 
 At first Gerard was angry, and said w^e 
 should return, and actually began to leave 
 the house ; but when we were half way 
 out of the theatre he turned back ao;ain. 
 We had gone, as usual, early, considerably 
 before the beginning of the opera, but 
 still several people began to arrive, and 
 I believe he wished to avoid being seen 
 with me. According to his custom he 
 sat at the very back of the box. Sud- 
 denly I forgot everything else, for I saw
 
 CLARA HARRIXGTOIn-. 77 
 
 jou come in, and take jour seat in one of 
 the pit boxes directly opposite ours. I 
 trembled at the siglit of jou ; but I en- 
 deavoured to conceal my agitation from 
 him, and I said nothing of my knowledge 
 that you were there. I kept you con- 
 stantly in yiew, for I could hardly bear to 
 lose sight of you for a moment ; but wlien- 
 ever I moved from beliind the red curtain 
 I nearly covered my face with my hand- 
 kerchief. Presently I saw you look to- 
 wards our box ; I observed that you looked 
 straight into it ; not at me, for I was so 
 much concealed by the curtain that you 
 could not distinguish me ; but your gaze 
 was fixed on Gerard. Your colour went 
 and came violently, and you hid your face 
 in your hands, as if in extreme emotion. 
 I instantly looked round at Gerard. He 
 was standing up, his face was crimson, then
 
 78 CLARA HARRIXGTOlf. 
 
 it became pale as death. When I looked 
 again at jou, joii were calm, and had 
 turned away/' 
 
 She paused, and looking into Leonora's 
 face, she saw there an expression of dread- 
 ful anguish. 
 
 " What can be the meaning of this V 
 cried Clara ; " for heaven's sake, tell me the 
 truth.'' 
 
 Leonora was silent. 
 
 " I have long kept this circumstance to 
 myself; but the time is come when you 
 must give me some explanation of it. I 
 implore it of you." 
 
 Leonora continued silent. 
 
 " Leonora, your hand trembles, and is 
 cold, like marble." 
 
 Still not a single word passed Leonora's 
 lips; but she could not conceal her agita- 
 tion.
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 79 
 
 '•' Your silence, tlien, confirms mj worst 
 suspicions," cried Clara, in a state of violent 
 emotion. " I am now convinced that jou 
 know him, and that jou know some evil 
 about him." 
 
 " Go on with jour narrative," said Leo- 
 nora, faintly. 
 
 Clara continued. " I felt sure then, as I 
 do now, that you exchanged looks of recog- 
 nition. I turned round to Gerard, and 
 said to him, ' You know Leonora, — I am 
 sure your eyes met.' His lips were white, 
 and he rolled his eyes, as he always does 
 when he is very angry; but he gave me 
 no answer. In a few moments, however, 
 he proposed that we should go home. I 
 rose to obey immediately. I made myself 
 very miserable. I pressed questions upon 
 him. He was silent and moody. When 
 we reached home I again began this ques-
 
 so CLAEA HARRIK-GTON. 
 
 tioning. A wretched scene followed, and 
 I spent the night in inexpressible misery." 
 
 " Did jon again recur to this subject 
 with him ?" inquired Leonora. 
 
 " Often and often ; it seemed to have a 
 fatal attraction for me ; though well aware 
 of the misery it w^ould produce, I could not 
 resist the temptation of continually recur- 
 ring to this subject." 
 
 " Did he never offer you any explanation 
 ofitr 
 
 " Never ; and whenever, by my indis- 
 cretion, or rather infatuation, I brought on 
 a recurrence of such scenes as those which 
 I just described, my punishment was, that 
 he did not come near me for many days, 
 and when at last he did, if I made the 
 slightest allusion to what had passed he 
 looked at me with a sort of contemptuous 
 pity, and made me feel that I had fallen
 
 CLAP. A HARRINGTON. 81 
 
 in his esteeui; attributing what he called 
 mj childish behaviour to my not being in 
 good health. Such scenes at that time 
 were of frequent occurrence." 
 
 Clara, while giving this narration, had 
 placed herself, kneeling, on a cushion before 
 Leonora, and now, on ceasing to speak, she 
 looked, with tlic most imploring anguish, 
 into her friend's eyes, listening for words of 
 comfort. But no words of comfort came. 
 
 " There is something extraordinary, cer- 
 tainly, in this," sai([ Leonora, after some 
 moments silence, and then, not addressing 
 Clara, but as if answering to her own 
 thoughts ; " but the truth is unknown to 
 me — at least uncertain — as — it must be!" 
 
 " What is uncertain 1 w^hat is unknown V 
 cried Clara. " What is the truth you so 
 much dread'?" 
 
 " My dearest Clara," said Leonora, sud- 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 denlj rousing up and speaking with great 
 earnestness ; " I must make inquiry into this 
 matter. You have given me a clue which 
 I will follow out. It may lead to nothing. 
 All may be as you once thought it, simply 
 a delusion ; but it may lead to the dis- 
 covery of something important to your 
 happiness. Until I know more, I cannot, 
 I will not hazard a conjecture ; and you 
 must give me this proof of your strength — 
 your love — to question me no further on 
 the matter at present." 
 
 Then, after a short pause, rising from 
 her seat, she continued : " Let us remember 
 that the issues of events are not with us. 
 We are in the hands of an unerring guide. 
 We must do our duty and bear the result, 
 whether, for the present, joyful or sorrow- 
 ful.'^ 
 
 "But why should we fear the result?"
 
 CLAIU HAERINGTON. 83 
 
 asked Clara, " if what joii have been 
 endeavouring to impress upon me be true, 
 that it is in mj own power to do so much 
 ■ — bj earnest, bj unfailing exertion, — to do 
 so very much for myself, for him, for us 
 all." 
 
 " May God prosper and recompense your 
 resolution and courage," replied Leonora, 
 endeavouring to speak in a cheerful tone, 
 but looking so tired and ill that it was 
 difficult to recognise her as the same being 
 that had entered the house a few hours 
 since. 
 
 " One word more," resumed Leonora, 
 '•'you mentioned that you had a picture 
 of him. Will you show it to me ? I should 
 like to see it." 
 
 "You shall see it at once," rephed Clara; 
 " come with me." 
 
 She led her to her sleepiDg room. It 
 
 G 2
 
 84 CLARA HAllRINGTOK-. 
 
 was fitted up ^vit]l the utmost elegance and 
 luxury. Clara brought a key from a mag- 
 nificent dressing-box, and opening her 
 escritoire, took out the locket from a con- 
 cealed drawer. She was going to open 
 the spring, but Leonora stopped her. 
 
 " No, no, — not now. Give it me, — 1 
 wish to look at it alone, — at another time. 
 I cannot bear any fresh agitation now." 
 
 Clara placed the locket in her friend's 
 hands, and resolutely abstained from making 
 any further allusion to the subject. 
 
 On retiring to rest Leonora requested 
 that Bertha's little cot might be placed in 
 her room. It would soothe me, she said, 
 to have that sweet face by my side through 
 this one night." 
 
 This request was complied witli instantly; 
 the requisite arrangements were made, and 
 the friends parted for the night. In a
 
 OLAPvA HARRINGTON. 85 
 
 moment, however, Leonora returned to 
 Clara's room, sajiug, " Clara, come with 
 me ;" and thej went softly up to the cot 
 where Bertha laj, with her little hands 
 crossed on her bosom, the limbs straight 
 down, and the head very slightly bowed. 
 She looked like the angels represented in 
 old paintings. 
 
 The two friends stood together looking 
 witli reverence at the pure, innocent, un- 
 conscious child, — 
 
 '^ While the peace of God that passeth word 
 Upoa her spirit lay." 
 
 They spoke not ; they scarcely breathed ; 
 but while their hands were locked in each 
 other's, there ascended silently from the 
 bottom of their hearts an united aspiration 
 that they might be enabled to do their 
 duty in its highest sense to tliis beloved 
 being, and that, with reference to them-
 
 86 CLARA HARRINGTOIT. 
 
 selves, whatever might be the events before 
 them, thej might be enabled trustingly 
 to say, "Father, thj will, not mine, be 
 done." 
 
 Then, kissing each other without speak- 
 ing, Clara left her friend alone with Bertha, 
 who slept on, breathing softly like measured 
 music in the room.
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 87 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " There is a vile, dishonest trick in man 
 More than in woman : all the men I meet 
 Appear thus to me, are harsh and rude, 
 And have a subtlety in everything 
 Which love could never know : but we, fond women, 
 Harbour the easiest and smoothest thoughts, 
 And think all shall go so : it is unjust 
 That men and women should be matclit together." 
 Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 The moment Leonora was alone, thoughts 
 full of anguish pressed npon her. An 
 assumed name ; a false marriage. It was 
 even beyond the ruthless course of men of
 
 ^88 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 tlie TTorlcI. " Clara, my poor Clara/^ slie 
 moaned in the bitterness of her heart; "the 
 sense of jour degradation and jour outraged 
 affection, if it must ever be revealed to jou, 
 will kill jomJ' 
 
 Leonora had seated herself bj the table. 
 She sat there long and perfectlj still ; but 
 at length, resolved to have full confirmation 
 of the truth of her suspicion, which indeed 
 required but little further evidence, she 
 suddenly opened the locket. There was the 
 face she expected — dreaded to see. Her 
 first emotion on beholding it was that of 
 deep grief; then the bitter feelings of scorn 
 and contempt agitated her heart, but out of 
 the depths of her affectionate nature arose 
 other and better trains of thought. She 
 rose, and placing the locket open on Bertha's 
 pillow, she solemulj devoted herself to tlie 
 happiness of that dear child, and of its 
 mother.
 
 CLAEA HAEEINGTON. 89 
 
 But out of tlic labjaiutli in which Clara 
 Avas involYCcl, slic could see no way of deli- 
 verance, and this thought renewed all her 
 grief. At this moment her eve was struck 
 bj the elegance of the room, and the luxurj 
 of the appointments. " These/^ cried she, 
 "she would now miss, painfully miss, I 
 fear." 
 
 To sleep was impossible ; Leonora con- 
 tinued to pace restlessly up and down the 
 room, the events of years crowding upon her 
 memory in rapid succession, and the diffi- 
 culties of the present pressing themselves 
 upon her attention with most painful yet 
 not exaggerated force, for exaggeration here 
 seemed impossible. A determination to 
 consult her brother broup-ht with it a recol- 
 lection of his calm and earnest character, 
 and it seemed as if strength to act and for- 
 titude to endure arose in her heart as she
 
 90 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 thought of him. With these feelings she 
 lay down and soon fell asleep. 
 
 She awoke in an hour with the wretched 
 remembrance that a great calamity had 
 befallen her. It was some time before she 
 could recal the comparative peace which she 
 had attained before she slept, and dreading 
 to sleep again lest she should again 
 have to encounter these horrible waking 
 thoughts, she rose with an aching heart and 
 head. 
 
 On turning to the bed where Bertha lay, 
 she was surprised to see the child lying witli 
 her large blue eyes quietly but earnestly 
 looking at her. Leonora took her up, half 
 afraid that she would instantly struggle and 
 cry, but on the contrary. Bertha laid her 
 head on the bosom of her new friend with 
 as much confidence as if they had been 
 familiar companions during all her little
 
 CLAEA HAREmaTON". 91 
 
 life. " It must be with the sight of grief 
 that she is thus familiar," thought Leonora. 
 But whatever might be the cause, this ex- 
 pression of tenderness and confidence was 
 at the moment inexpressibly comforting to 
 her. 
 
 As soon as she had dressed, she took 
 Bertha in her arms and went to Clara, who 
 was still in bed, after an uneasy and rest- 
 less night. Leonora proposed to take 
 breakfast beside her, in hopes that after 
 she was herself gone, her friend might 
 have a few hours of quiet sleep ; mean- 
 while, avoiding all allusion to the agitating 
 topics of the previous night. 
 
 "I shall see you again very soon," said 
 Leonora, rising to prepare for going, and 
 placing the locket in Clara's hand, " perhaps 
 to-morrow."
 
 92 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 " No, not to-morrow, Leonora, for you 
 know he will be liere/^ 
 
 " Well then, tlie day after ; if not, you 
 must write and tell me wlien. It must, 
 however, be very soon, or I shall come 
 without waiting for an invitation. Now 
 that I have found you again, I will not 
 easily lose sight of you. And Bertha, too ! 
 How I envy you the possession of such a 
 treasure ! If she were mine, how rich I 
 should feel \" Saying this she hurried away 
 amidst affectionate adieux. 
 
 She drove straight to her brother's cot- 
 tage ; the drive was not a long one, for Dr. 
 Weston's country residence was on the same 
 side of London with Clara's abode, but, 
 xmfortunately, he had already gone into 
 town for the day. 
 
 Leonora, therefore, next went to his
 
 CLARA HARRmGTON. 93 
 
 house in London, but she was again too 
 late. He had been sent for to attend some 
 urgent case. He was, however, always at 
 home between one and three ; she, there- 
 fore, resolved to remain, sending her ser- 
 vant to her own house, to bring any letters 
 or messages that might have been left for 
 her. He brought back word that a gentle- 
 man had called twice, inquiring anxiously 
 for her. Soon afterwards a note was brought 
 to her, which had been left by the writer 
 himself, telling her that " he had called at 
 her house the night before, and not finding 
 her at home, had left word that he would call 
 again in the morning at ten o'clock. This 
 morning he had again waited on her in vain. 
 He was most desirous to see her, and to 
 have half-an-hour's confidential discourse 
 with her on a subject of the greatest im- 
 portance to him ; in the meanwhile he
 
 94 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 remained convinced that his honour was 
 safe in her hands, and felt assured that if 
 she had any suspicion (which, from his 
 
 having seen her enter a house in , on 
 
 an evening when he was himself about to 
 visit it, he thought not impossible,) of the 
 subject on which he wished to see her, she 
 would not postpone the opportunity he 
 sought of speaking with her ! He would 
 call again about twelve, on his way to keep 
 an appointment. As he could not stop 
 long after twelve, he must intreat, that if 
 she was not at home by that time, she 
 would see him in the evenino:, thouorh in 
 appointing the evening, he should be obliged 
 to give up a most important engage- 
 ment.'^ 
 
 The name affixed to this note left no 
 shadow of doubt on her mind of the truth 
 of her suspicion.
 
 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 95 
 
 " Oh, that my brother would return!" she 
 cried impatiently. She read the backs of 
 the books in the study, turned over various 
 pamphlets, and looked through the news- 
 paper of the day, but still he did not 
 come.
 
 96 CLARA HARRIXGTON" 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " I'll believe thee, 
 And make my senses credit tliy relation 
 To points that seem impossible." 
 " Tell me what blessings I have here alive, 
 That I should fear to die 1" 
 
 SlIAKESPERE. 
 
 While Leonora Tvas tliiis anxiously wait- 
 ing for counsel and help, Clara, who stood 
 more in need of both tlian her friend, had 
 no one to whom she could go to unburthen 
 the dreadful apprehensions which now op- 
 pressed her, and which seemed to gather 
 strength witli every liour.
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 97 
 
 Though Leonora would not allow her to 
 speak of the scene at the Opera, nor give 
 her any explanation of the cause of her 
 extreme agitation in connexion with it, jet 
 it was an unspeakable comfort to hare her 
 near her, to see her, to hear the sound of 
 her voice, and this she felt most acutelj 
 now that she was gone. That there was 
 some dreadful meaning in the emotion which 
 she had witnessed in Gerard, and in the 
 anguish and terror which she now beheld in 
 Leonora was beyond all doubt. What 
 could be the true cause ? Who would re- 
 solve this mjsterj 1 When should she 
 know the truth ? Would she have strength 
 to bear it when at length the moment for 
 disclosing it should comel 
 
 But what at present demanded her imme- 
 diate attention, what she must come to 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 some instant decision upon, was tLe meeting 
 with her husband. In a few hours she was 
 to join him. IIow could she bear his pre- 
 sence '? Ho^y could she look on him '? How 
 could she encounter those penetrating eyes 
 which knew how to look into the depths of 
 her heart — that heart which had hitherto 
 been laid open to him without reserve 1 
 What should she say to him *? How could 
 she assume the appearance of calmness and 
 frankness, with a mind distracted and mad- 
 dened with such horrible doubts and fore- 
 bodings *? Even if it were in her nature to 
 play the hypocrite so well, that she could 
 conceal from him the disorder which had 
 invaded the most sacred recesses of her soul, 
 would it be right to do so '? Would she not 
 be detestable for practising the deception? 
 Could he ever again place confidence in her,
 
 CLAllA HARRINGTON. 99 
 
 after he should come to know that she was 
 capable of appearing before him in such an 
 exterior of falsehood ? 
 
 But then, if she were to disclose the truth 
 to him, if she were to let him see at once 
 her real thoughts and feelings — how could 
 this be, in the open street — before the public 
 gaze 1 How could she tell what her own 
 strength, what her own condition might be, 
 the moment she approached this subject 1 
 How could she calculate the effect on him 1 
 Oh, no ! this must not be — this risk must 
 not be run ! There must be no expla- 
 nation, no approach to it till thej were 
 alone. 
 
 Then it was clearly impossible that she 
 could meet him this morning on horseback. 
 That was out of the question ; she had not 
 strength for it. Her very existence might 
 be endangered by it. She would write and 
 
 H 2
 
 100 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 tell him that she was ill, and beg him to 
 come to her. 
 
 She instantly sat down and wrote her note, 
 and sealed and addressed it, that it might 
 be ready for his servant when he came with 
 the horses. But no sooner had she done 
 this, than another train of thought arose in 
 her mind, bringing with it fresh doubts and 
 difficulties. 
 
 This note would certainly bring Gerard 
 to her in half-an-hour after he received it. 
 What should she say to him '? What after 
 all had slie to tell him "? That she had seen 
 Leonora, that they had gone over that old 
 subject — the painful scene at tlie Opera ; 
 that they had made themselves wretched 
 about it, as everybody always did, and that 
 they had distracted their minds with vague 
 fears and terrors ! 
 
 Vague fears and terrors ? Yes, nothing
 
 CLAKA. HAREINGTOIT. 101 
 
 else ! No new fact had been brought to 
 light ; nothing certain had been discovered ! 
 All might still be simply delusion. That 
 was Leonora's own expression. She was 
 gone to make inquiry. She might even 
 already be in possession of the delightful 
 truth, that they had been distressing them- 
 selves for nothing. Until she had seen her 
 again, until she knew the nature of the 
 information, whatever it might be, of which 
 she was gone in search, it would be to the 
 last degree unjust, it would be also foolish, 
 it would be even criminal to say a word to 
 Gerard on the subject. 
 
 To Gerard ! Her beloved Gerard ! He 
 who loved her with such intensity and devo- 
 tedness ! He to whom she was an object of 
 adoration ! He who would willingly pro- 
 tect her from every external evil, and save 
 her from every painful thought and feeling !
 
 102 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 He to whom she had given herself body and 
 soul for ever ! He whom she loved more 
 than words can express, and more than she 
 sometimes seemed capable of bearing ! How 
 could he do anything to injure her ! How 
 could she imagine that he would not care 
 for her happiness more than she could for 
 her own ! How could she harbour an evil 
 thought of him! 
 
 Yes, Leonora was right, this was the 
 touchstone of love. This power of confiding, 
 loving trust. It was easy to place confi- 
 dence where faith was never tried ; the true 
 trial was to maintain it under circumstances 
 which might — and which but for love, would 
 beget distracting, appalling doubts and 
 fears ! 
 
 Whether she had really profited by the 
 lessons of Leonora, or whether what she 
 had till this time been resolvin^r to do were
 
 CLARA HAERINGTON. 103 
 
 mere idle pretension was now brought to 
 the test. She was indeed put upon her 
 trial sooner than she expected, and under 
 circumstances more difficult — oh, how far 
 more difficult than she could have imagined ! 
 But who was allowed to choose the time, 
 the place, the circumstances of their daj of 
 probation ? Her day was come, her very 
 hour ! She would fulfil it ; she would prove 
 faithful to herself — to him ! She would 
 realize the picture which she had herself 
 imagined. She would act up to the stan- 
 dard which she had fixed for herself She 
 would " make him happy by bringing him 
 under the influence of tender and sweet 
 affections. She would break down the 
 reserve of his nature by the strength of 
 gentleness ! She w^ould struggle with his 
 irritability, she would bear with his conceal- 
 ments, by acting towards him with that
 
 104 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 trust, that cleYotedness, ^^Licli would prove 
 to liim that she \yas a true wife I" 
 
 She threw her note into the fire. She 
 instantly began to get ready for riding. 
 She was soon dressed. She almost covered 
 her little Bertha with kisses. Never before 
 had that child appeared to her so beauti- 
 ful — never before had she felt it to be so 
 dear to her! 
 
 She was at the window, watching for the 
 coming of the horses, half-an-hour before 
 they arrived. Punctually at tlie moment 
 they came. She was on horseback imme- 
 diately, and she rode rapidly to the place 
 appointed for the meeting. 
 
 No one was there. She was, indeed, a 
 quarter of an hour too soon. As she 
 anived at the spot, she heard the neigh- 
 bouring chapel clock striking a quarter to 
 two. Tliis was well. It would give lier
 
 CLARA HAllRINGTON. 103 
 
 time to prepare. She must not appear 
 agitated or excited. Tier success would be 
 — oh ! if she could achieve it ! — to welcome 
 in her usual manner that dear form — to 
 look with her wonted joy on those beautiful 
 features ! 
 
 As the cliimes rung out the next quarter, 
 Merton rode up to the spot. He was pale, 
 though he preserved his usual quiet man- 
 ner, and he cast on Clara an earnest and 
 searching glance ; hut when he saw her 
 beaming countenance, and heard her joyful 
 welcome, the colour returned to his lips ; an 
 expression of satisfaction, or rather of 
 triumph, gladdened his countenance, and 
 he addressed his wife by the most endear- 
 ing epithets. This pleasure, which shone 
 out with a softened lustre from his eyes, 
 and which seemed to be reflected from
 
 106 CLARA HARRmGTON. 
 
 ererj feature, sent tlirougli Clara's heart a 
 flood of jo J, which, in its turn, re-acted on 
 him ; for she gave unrestrained expression 
 to her happy emotions, 
 
 Thej quickened their pace. Thej soon 
 felt that peculiar exhilaration which the 
 motion of a well-bred, well-trained horse, in 
 rapid motion, gives to the rider. Clara was 
 a good horsewoman. Her soft, elastic, and 
 well-proportioned figure gave her an excel- 
 lent seat on horseback ; her riding dress 
 became her ; and altogether she afforded 
 one of the most graceful sights that England 
 can boast of, — a lady who rides well. Her 
 complexion, always transparent, had now a 
 bright and rosy hue, produced by the ex- 
 citing movement; and the sweet emotions of 
 which her heart was full, gave to her coun- 
 tenance an expression of surpassing beauty.
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 107 
 
 Her husband gazed on her with a pride and 
 satisfaction greater perhaps than he had 
 ever felt before. 
 
 The influence which the state of her 
 feeling, the result of her own confiding 
 affection, had thus manifestly produced 
 upon that of her husband, gave to Clara an 
 inexpressible pleasure. " Oh! mj Leonora/' 
 she said, inwardly, "if I could but make 
 you conscious of this — if you could but 
 witness this blessed result of your teaching ! 
 Yes, I am at last in the right path. Now 
 I see the meaning of this heavenly duty 
 Oh ! that I may never again fail in it V 
 
 They rode on and on. At last, on 
 turning suddenly a sharp angle in the road, 
 Clara saw, at a spot where several ways 
 met, a finger-post pointing the "road to 
 Richmond.'^ They were, indeed, already in 
 this very road, on their way to Richmond.
 
 108 CLARA HARKINGTON. 
 
 Clara's eyes instantly filled \ritli tears of 
 tender emotion. 
 
 " Thank you, my Gerard ; you are then 
 giving me the pleasure I have so long ^dshed 
 for. Thank you," she said, riding close up 
 to him, and giving him her hand. 
 
 He took her hand ; he gazed on her as if 
 he v^ere at this moment looking on all that 
 was dear to him in life. Suddenly he 
 dropped her hand, and his face became 
 crimson. Neither of them had observed 
 till he was close upon them, a gentleman 
 on horseback, who, however, had evidently 
 seen what had passed between them, for 
 there was a peculiar smile on his counte- 
 nance, as he slackened his pace on approach- 
 ing them. 
 
 Nodding familiarly to Merton, while he 
 stared impudently in Clara's face, he said : 
 
 " How are you, Ashford 1 I have just
 
 CLARA HARIUNGTON. 109 
 
 been to jour house, to call on Lady Ash- 
 ford, to apologize for not waiting on her 
 and jou last night." 
 
 Mr. Merton stared at him, apparently in 
 utter confusion and dismay. 
 
 " Your lady is not at home," he conti- 
 nued ; then riding closer up to Merton, and 
 looking at Clara, with an odious expression 
 in his eyes, he added, " Shall I say, if I 
 meet her ladyship, that I have seen you — . 
 in good company V 
 
 Merton hurried on in silence. 
 
 "What did he say r' cried Clara: 
 "What did he call you 1" 
 
 Merton remained silent. 
 
 " Why did he talk of coming to our 
 house last night '? Who is he V again 
 burst from her lips. 
 
 Merton hail turned from her, and ap- 
 peared not to hear her ; but began to point
 
 110 CLARA HARRINGTON?". 
 
 out tlie beauties of the landscape that lay 
 at their feet, as they now reached the top of 
 Richmond Hill. 
 
 But what to her was this richest speci- 
 men of the luxuriance of English scenery, 
 dark with the shades of its tufted woods ! 
 What cared she for that magnificent bend 
 in the calm, cold river ! "What beauty for 
 her was there in the soft, warm, deep 
 azure that bounded the horizon ! All 
 seemed a mockery to her. AVithout com- 
 prehending precisely the reason, slie was 
 conscious that she had received an insult ; 
 and she felt her heart swell, and her eyes 
 seemed blinded and dazzled. 
 
 An intoxication of happiness, especially 
 when founded mainly on a self-centred and 
 self-sustained train of thought, called up 
 at the command of the will, is apt, when 
 a fact is suddenly presented not in harmony
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. Ill 
 
 with the assumption on which the whole 
 superstructure of happiness is based, to end 
 in a painful revulsion. So it was with 
 Clara. Uncalled for bj her and perfectly 
 beyond her control, there now came back, 
 with ten-fold force, gloomy and suspicious 
 thoughts, which a few minutes before she 
 had believed gone for ever. 
 
 Directing his horse's head towards the 
 approach to a handsome villa, Merton 
 suddenly drew up and stopped. He turned 
 to address Clara ; he saw that there was 
 a cloud on her brow, which he did not for 
 the present even attempt to remove. 
 
 " I have business here,'' he said, " per- 
 haps it will not be very disagreeable to you 
 to wait five minutes. I shall not be 
 longer." 
 
 Then desiring the groom to ride "close 
 up to his lady, he said to him, " If I should
 
 112 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 be detained longer -tlian I expect, or if anj 
 carriages should come this Avaj, ^vhich 
 would disturb Mrs. Morton's horse, then 
 imraediatelj turn up that lane." 
 
 Five minutes passed ; they were uneasy 
 minutes. All the time Clara's horse made 
 her very uncomfortable by his efforts to 
 follow Morton's ; presently he neighed to 
 another horse feeding in the grounds, and 
 became still more restless as the latter 
 galloped close to the palings. Ten minutes 
 passed; still she was kept waiting, and 
 her difficulty to keep her horse quiet was 
 increasing with every minute's delay. 
 
 Suddenly, an open carriage, with ladies 
 in it, approached at a rapid pace the spot 
 where she was waiting with the groom 
 beside her ; then it drove round the turning 
 in the road and came straight towards 
 them.
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 113 
 
 At the sight of this carriage, with a look 
 of dismay, scarcely rememberiDg to touch 
 his hat, the groom said, in an accent almost 
 as dictatorial as that of his master, "We 
 must go up the road, ma'am." 
 
 " I choose to wait here," replied 
 Clara. 
 
 " But I dare not disobey master," re- 
 torted the groom. 
 
 At this moment Merton appeared at the 
 gate of the avenue, and the carriage passed 
 Clara, so that it met Merton about a 
 hundred paces from the spot where the 
 horses were standing. Clara could hear 
 exclamations from the ladies, though with- 
 out distinguishing the words they said. 
 Merton had stopped, was close by the 
 carriage door, leant from his horse upon 
 it and shook the hand of a lady, who kept 
 holding his in her own. She was a hate- 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 ful-lookiug, bold woman ; Clara could at 
 any distance feel sure of that. Merton 
 was smiling and talking eagerly. The 
 ladies looked towards her and then at 
 Merton, as if asking some question about 
 her. He answered with a gesture that 
 seemed to say he did not know anything 
 about her or why she stood there. She 
 was conscious that Merton saw her all this 
 time, and saw her angrily. 
 
 Just then the ladies looked away at 
 something on the other side, and Merton 
 at that moment made a gesture to the 
 groom, who thereupon, as if in despair, 
 caught at her bridle-rein with a view to 
 lead her into the lane. At that action 
 her insulted feelings boomed through every 
 pulse ; her head throbbed ; a sort of frenzy 
 seized her ; she shook off the servant's 
 hand and struck the spirited horse, on
 
 CLAEA HARRINGTON-. 115 
 
 which she was mounted, violently with her 
 whip. He reared, plunged, and, before 
 there was time for help, Clara lay beneath 
 him on the ground. 
 
 Exclamations — shrieks from the carriage 
 — Morton's embarrassment and terror — the 
 groom's dismay — what were they at such a 
 moment ! to the sufferer who lay there — 
 nothing. She was motionless and insensible, 
 while the frightened horse kicked her again 
 and again, in his efforts to raise himself. 
 
 Prompt efforts were made to rescue her 
 from her perilous position, and she was 
 carried into the villa. In about an hour 
 her consciousness returned, but her pain, 
 both of body and mind, was so dreadful, 
 that death would have been welcome to her 
 at the moment to end all at once. 
 
 Her moans gave the first indication to 
 those around her that life was not extinct. 
 
 1 2
 
 116 CLARA HAERIKGTON'. 
 
 There was a surgeon busied about her. She 
 was lying on a bed in a handsome room. 
 She was still dressed in her riding habit. 
 There were two ladies in the room, who 
 looted with anxious terror at her. The 
 surgeon's face was full of compassion. She 
 articulated a few words with difficulty, try- 
 ing to ask for Mertou. Perhaps he was 
 gone away, too angry with her to care 
 whether she lived or died. Perhaps that 
 dreadful result had come, which she had 
 been taught to expect would follow the dis- 
 covery of their marriage. A moment's 
 thought decided her course. She tried to 
 ask for him as if she were nothing to him. 
 Some one came hurriedly into the room ; it 
 was he ! — pale as death, — an expression of 
 agony on his face so intense, that Clara 
 could not but sec at once how deeply she 
 Wfts loved, — how severe the suffering that
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 117 
 
 had been caused bj her cahxmitv. The 
 warm current of love once more flowed 
 back to her aching heart. Love, which 
 would naturally have prompted her to lay 
 her suffering head on the breast of that 
 beloved husband, that she might die there 
 or live and suffer longer, and find her an- 
 guish soothed bj the expression of his sym- 
 pathy. But for her, love did none of this ; 
 it did more ; it chained her tongue, re- 
 strained her manner, attuned the expression 
 of her tender, loving eyes, and enabled her 
 at this solemn moment, which she believed 
 to be her last on earth, with death at her 
 side, accompanied by more than his usual 
 terrors, — with pain as her only handmaid, 
 — to look at Merton and address her feeble 
 accents to him, as if he were a stranger, 
 meekly requesting that she might see her 
 friend. Dr. Weston.
 
 118 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 Merton^s white, trembling lips were hardly 
 able to pronounce the assurance, that her 
 ■wish should be complied with. 
 
 Clara heard the expression of wonder on 
 the part of the ladies at his nervousness. 
 She also heard them ask for a Court Guide, 
 to find where this Dr. Weston lived. She 
 did not hear how he silenced them ; she 
 was conscious when they left the room ; she 
 then once more made an effort to speak, 
 Merton was in a moment at her side ; she 
 murmured, " Leonora Castelli." This was 
 all, for then came more pain and blessed 
 unconsciousness.
 
 CLAKA HAKRINGTON. 119 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Cease to lament for that thou can'st not help, 
 And study help for that which thou lament'st." 
 
 Shakespere. 
 
 We return to Leonora, whom we left 
 anxiously waiting for her brother, in his 
 library. Her suspense was at last at an 
 end, for a carriage drove past the window 
 and stopped, and two minutes afterwards 
 Dr. Weston was in the room.
 
 120 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 " I have seen Clara Harrington/' said 
 Leonora, hastening towards him. 
 
 " And your fears have been realized?" 
 
 " Far more than realized. Her letter 
 led me to suspect an unhappy marriage. 
 I have found her surrounded by luxury, 
 the object of a devoted love, and more 
 worthy of it than ever, — more lovely, — 
 more charming in her grace and sweetness ; 
 but the love is lavished on her by a man 
 who is not her husband." 
 
 " Impossible ! that cannot be, — her prin- 
 ciples and feelings on that point render it 
 impossible ; nothing could exceed the inno- 
 cence and purity of her character." 
 
 " But she has been deceived, — cruelly, 
 and heartlessly deceived. She is perfectly 
 unconscious that she is not a wife." 
 
 " How can this be"?" 
 
 " She went througli the ceremony of a
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 121 
 
 marriage, but it must have been a feigned 
 one. 
 
 " How do you know that V' 
 
 " I know the man who calls himself her 
 husband. His name is not Merton. He is 
 a nobleman, and was married last year to 
 a Scotch lady of rank.'' 
 
 Dr. Weston rose from his chair, and 
 walked in an agitated manner across the 
 room. 
 
 " Are you sure of what you say V said 
 he, suddenly stopping, and turning towards 
 his sister. " Do you know this man 1 and 
 did you see him yesterday V' 
 
 " I do not mean that I saw him there. 
 She expected him, but he did not come; 
 but I do know him." 
 
 " You may be mistaken. Why do you 
 speak so confidently 1" 
 
 '•' Because the circumstances which have
 
 122 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 come to mj knowledge place it bejond all 
 doubt. Besides, she showed me his picture. 
 You remember her taste for painting. She 
 has made a portrait of him, from memory, 
 in one of his frequent absences from her. 
 The picture she showed me is that of the 
 nobleman I speak of. Her beautiful child 
 also is his image." 
 
 " Leonora, this is a grave matter. I may 
 say, an awful one. Before we take a step 
 in it we must be sure to demonstration of 
 our facts. You may possibly be mistaken 
 still ; likenesses frequently deceive us, and 
 you probably only know this nobleman as 
 a casual acquaintance.'' 
 
 " No, I am not mistaken, — I wish I 
 could believe it possible ! But in order to 
 make you understand the cause of my 
 unhappy conviction, I must advert to cir- 
 cumstances painful to my memory, and go
 
 CLARA HARRINGTOK-. 123 
 
 back to times past, which jou and I rarely 
 touch upon/' 
 
 " I grieve to pain you, my dear Leonora, 
 but we must be clear on this point/' 
 
 " You remember meeting me at Dover, 
 and our making the journey together, when 
 I took refuge with you from the misery of 
 my most unhappy marriage. You remem- 
 ber it was then that we saw our dear 
 Clara for the first time/' 
 
 " I remember it perfectly/' 
 
 " And you recollect a joung nobleman 
 who was our fellow traveller for a con- 
 siderable time. It is he who is Clara's 
 pretended husband. He saw both Clara 
 and myself then for the first time, and he 
 has been destined to exert a strange in- 
 fluence over the fate of each of us. He 
 was the Lord Ashford you have often heard 
 me speak of But of the very painful
 
 124 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 circumstances ^vhich attended mj acquaint- 
 ance with him I have never informed jou. 
 I have wished to saj as little as I could of 
 the errors of my husband, and you in your 
 noble affection never asked any explana- 
 tions of me/' 
 
 " Because I have always had perfect 
 confidence in you," replied Dr. Weston, 
 looking at his sister with tender emotion. 
 
 " When I returned to Italy I again met 
 with Lord Ashford in Florence. Of that 
 return, so strongly opposed by you, and 
 which produced no result but bitterness, 
 I have just discovered another fruit. 
 Had I remained I should have watched 
 over Clara, and saved lier from this mis- 
 fortune. As it was, she was left too un- 
 protected in her perilous profession. If I 
 had then possessed the means now at my 
 command she should not have continued in
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON". 125 
 
 it. Circumstances at that time placed it 
 out of our power to afford her the pro- 
 tection she too much needed. I was in 
 a foreign country, and jou w^ere wholly 
 unable to devote yourself to such a 
 charge." 
 
 " I would have done so if I had compre- 
 hended the danger — if I could have fore- 
 seen the consequence." 
 
 " I apprehend she kept away from you V 
 
 "She did; I heard nothing of her for 
 many months." 
 
 " Her position was one of which she could 
 scarcely talk with freedom to a man. If I 
 had been near her, I might have shielded 
 her from this treachery." 
 
 " You met with Lord Ashford in Flor- 
 ence V 
 
 " Yes. He interested me extremely. 
 There was something ardent and enthu-
 
 126 CLAKA HARPJNGTOIT. 
 
 siastic in his character, though his aims 
 and motives were narrow and confined 
 within the circle of his caste. Bat he 
 had a chivalrous sense of honour, har- 
 monizing well with his uncommon beauty 
 of face and form, and a highly cultivated 
 intellect. There was with him, as his com- 
 panion, a baronet, older than himself, and 
 in every way inferior to him ; gross and 
 dissolute in appearance and manner. Led 
 by him, I do not doubt. Lord Ashford 
 fell into the dissipated set that surrounded 
 my husband, and I soon perceived that 
 they were drawing him into the habits 
 of a desperate gambler. I remonstrated 
 with Castelli in vain, but I resolved to 
 save my young countryman, if possible, 
 and I made so energetic an appeal to his 
 better feelings that I succeeded." 
 
 " It was worthy of yourself to do so."
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON-. 127 
 
 " Castelli soon perceived the change. I 
 made no secret of tlie part I had taken 
 in it; and the absurd jealousy, which gave 
 us all so much suffering, was the result, fol- 
 lowed by his public insult and challenge to 
 Lord Ashford. But the fever, which ended 
 in his death, put an awful stop to all.'' 
 
 Leonora shuddered as these events 
 crowded to her recollection, and for a little 
 while she sunk into a mournful silence. The 
 pressure of her brother's hand roused her, 
 and she continued, — 
 
 "I declined seeing Lord Ashford again, 
 though he made several attempts to induce 
 me to do so. After the first anguish of my 
 grief was over, endeavoured, as you know, 
 to find consolation in trying to repair some 
 of the many calamities which his libertine 
 course had brought down on many a poor 
 victim. But how little can time or money
 
 128 CLARA HARlimOTON. 
 
 — though I had now so much at mj dis- 
 posal — repair such injuries. 
 
 *'Lord Ashford^ I presume, must have 
 heard of mj intercourse with these outcasts, 
 for he wrote a strong letter of remonstrance 
 to me, on the crime of outraging the world. 
 Soon afterwards he returned to England. 
 It was not long after this that I received 
 a letter from Clara, which alarmed me. 
 It was written in all the enthusiasm of a 
 first love, but without naming the object 
 of it. I had learned too much in mj 
 miserable experience to trust to purity as 
 a safeguard in this world, and I prepared 
 instantly to return to her." 
 
 " But you were too late !" 
 
 " On the eve of my departure 1 received 
 another letter, that letter I have already 
 shown you ; written in an agony of grief 
 and shame. Mr. Mcrton, so she called
 
 CLARA HARRINGTOX. 129 
 
 her lover, Ikad endeayoured to make her 
 his mistress. Some of her expressions in 
 that letter now return to me with a fatal 
 import. ' Sooner/ said she, ' would I de- 
 scend alive into the grave. Mj mother's 
 degradation and all she had to suffer come 
 to me like a warning. Oh ! my Leonora, 
 if I were of the Catholic faith I would fly 
 to those good nuns in Italy, among whom 
 I spent the two happiest years of my life> 
 and become one of them, and renounce 
 this wretched world for ever." " 
 
 " Yes, I remember those expressions well. 
 They now seem like mournful forebodings of 
 an inevitable fate." 
 
 " I lost no time, as you know, in seeking 
 for her, but when I arrived in London she 
 was not to be found." 
 
 " But Lord Ashford — how do you iden- 
 tify him with this Merton T 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 CLARA HAllRINGTOK 
 
 " By a singular circumstance — " 
 
 Here she was interrupted by a violent 
 knock at the door Tvhicli had rapidly suc- 
 ceeded the sound of a horse's hoofs dashing 
 past the window. Dr. Weston received an 
 urgent message to see a gentleman who was 
 waiting for him in the next room. He left 
 his sister, but in a few seconds returned, 
 looking horror-stricken. 
 
 He was followed into the room by Lord 
 Ashford. A few hurried words from her 
 brother told Leonora of the accident that 
 had occurred. Dr. Weston was making 
 rapid preparations to go out. 
 
 Lord Ashford, turning to Leonora, said, 
 " Will you accompany Dr. Weston *? I was 
 on my way to seek you, to beg this favour 
 of you, at her request." 
 
 Leonora instantly began to prepare to 
 accompany her brother.
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 131 
 
 "Perhaps on the way," resumed Lord 
 Ashford, " you will explain to your brother 
 my position and Clara's. I trust I may 
 rely on his secrecy as a man of honour. I 
 know I may confide in you as my friend. 
 You will see the dangers that surround me 
 on every side. My wife, Lady Ashford, 
 and her sister, Mrs. Dalton, are there now. 
 I dread to go back, lest some accident 
 
 should have revealed yet I ought to rely 
 
 on the love of that suffering angel. On 
 her account, too, for God's sake, avoid 
 explanations." 
 
 Dr. Weston, to his repeated question, 
 "I may rely on jou'?" drily replied, "You 
 may.'' 
 
 As Dr. Weston walked coldly and stiffly 
 away, to inquire if the carriage were ready, 
 Lord Ashford stood leaning against the 
 wall, broken down with grief, pale as death, 
 
 K 2
 
 132 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 his hands trembling so violently that liis 
 hat and ^Yhip had both fallen on the floor. 
 He remained thus a few seconds, wholly 
 unconscious; then suddenly rousing him- 
 self, and seeing Leonora still there, he cried 
 out violently, "Why are you not gone'?'' 
 He then rushed out of the room, and 
 mounting his horse, rode away as furiously 
 as he had come.
 
 CLARA IIAKRINGTON. 133 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 "The everlasting No liad said; ^Behold thou art 
 fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine.'" 
 
 Carlyle. 
 
 The unlicappy Clara's life was endangered, 
 not only bj tlie injuries proceeding from 
 the fall from Lcr horse ; the following day 
 brought with it a certainty that fever, of a 
 very severe character, produced by the 
 mental anguish she had endured, had set in.
 
 134 CLARA HAERmGTON. 
 
 Throughout these sufferings, which lasted 
 for many weeks, her two friends watched 
 faithfully over her. Dr. AYeston, in addi- 
 tion to several other physicians and sur- 
 geons, called in by Lord Ashford, saw her 
 daily. But great as was their skill, all 
 they prescribed would have been unavailing, 
 but for the patient, intelligent, watchful 
 nursing of Leonora. She had a profes- 
 sional nurse to assist, for the duties to be 
 performed were incessant ; but her clear, 
 calm intelligence superintended the whole. 
 
 As soon as the physicians at Lord Ash- 
 ford's villa at Richmond felt convinced that 
 fever, not merely symptomatic, had attacked 
 Mrs. Merton, they announced the fact to 
 Lady Ashford and Mrs. Dalton, who were 
 still there. Notwithstandinsj the reallv 
 kind sympathy of the former, which would 
 have induced her to stay till the poor
 
 CLAKA HARRINGTON. 135 
 
 stranger's sufferings were mitigated, and 
 notwithstanding the restless inquisitiveness 
 of the latter, which had detected something 
 beyond mere pity or startled nervousness in 
 the agitation of her brother-in-law, so that 
 she would have risked a great deal in order 
 to remain on the spot, yet the word "fever'' 
 inspired both with so much horror, that 
 after the announcement they left the house, 
 remaining at the farthest extremity of the 
 grounds till the carriage was ready, and 
 they then proceeded to town. 
 
 " This is a wise precaution on the part of 
 her ladyship and Mrs. Dalton," said Dr. 
 Sackville., 
 
 Dr. Weston gave his usual quiet smile, 
 but said nothing. 
 
 When Leonora heard they were gone, 
 she expressed great satisfaction ; for she 
 had conceived an aversion — most unusual
 
 136 CLARA HARRINaTON. 
 
 with her — to Tklrs. Daltoii, and the absence 
 of this lady was quite a relief. 
 
 Nearly five weeks after the accident, 
 Leonora was watcliing by the sick bed 
 mournfully, but yet Avitli hope, for a change 
 for the better had taken place. Hitherto 
 Clara had scarcely spoken an intelligible 
 word. Her delirium had been that of 
 terror, and shown itself by screams and 
 paroxysms of horror ; but she had never 
 spoken so as to be intelligible. This stage 
 of the disease was now over. The medical 
 men had considered her for several days 
 decidedly better ; but though she looked as 
 if she knew those around Iier, slic had as 
 yet never spoken. Now, however, to 
 Leonora's inexpressible happiness, she ad- 
 dressed her by her name, and said, 
 anxiously : 
 
 " How long have T been ill V
 
 CLAEA HARRIifGTON. 137 
 
 " Nearly ^ye weeks." 
 
 " Mj God ! What lias become of 
 Bertha r 
 
 " She is safe and well," said Dr. Weston, 
 who had come in unobserved. 
 
 " She is safe and well ! — you tell me 
 so!" 
 
 *' She is safe, and as happy as she can 
 be without you. She has been all this 
 time with her nurse at Leonora's, and has 
 been seen by her or by me daily." 
 
 "Thank you both," replied Clara, and 
 closed her eyes. 
 
 After this they observed that she wept 
 bitterly for the first time. They left her 
 undisturbed for half-an-hour, when she 
 looked at Dr. Weston earnestly and said : 
 '•' Leonora used to try to persuade me that 
 all the dispensations of God are benevolent. 
 Why to me alone are they so cruel V
 
 138 CLARA HAERINGTON. 
 
 " There are occasions when thej do indeed 
 appear criieV lie replied, as he took a seat 
 by her side, " but such occasions do not 
 occur to you alone. Think of the numbers 
 who perish daily in misery and grief, hunted 
 to death by their sufferings in this world. 
 You are no exception. You are not the 
 only sufferer." 
 
 " But do the numbers whom God 
 creates for this misery prove His benevo- 
 lence?" 
 
 " God never creates nor permits misery 
 for its own sake ; but to secure a happiness 
 by its means greater than could have existed 
 without it. We are bound to have faith in 
 this result, even when we cannot perceive 
 how the means are capable of producing 
 it, if we believe that He is perfectly benevo- 
 lent." 
 
 " But may not the Evil One," said Clara,
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON". 139 
 
 in a low terrified voice, " may not he take 
 possession of us here and hereafter V 
 " Not without God's permission/' 
 Clara tried to reply but she was too weak. 
 She only said, " Go on talking in this man- 
 ner ; it is what I desire to hear. I wish I 
 could believe as I think you do. I wish you 
 would explain more to me of what you 
 mean.'' 
 
 " When you are well again, and strong 
 enough to enter on the consideration of such 
 subjects, we will, if you wish it, talk further 
 on them. At present, all I would suggest 
 to you, is to consider what is the real end of 
 our existence. I will tell you in a few 
 w^ords what is my opinion. It is this — that 
 by the cultivation of our faculties and en- 
 dowments of all kinds, we may increase our 
 own capacity for real happiness, and that of 
 as many others as we are able to influence.
 
 140 CLARA IIAKRIXOTON. 
 
 Belieying this, and believing that ererj event 
 is watched over and foreseen, and of course 
 permitted or rather appointed by the Creator 
 and Governor of all things, so that not a 
 sparrow may fall to the ground unless it is 
 His will ; then it follows that every event 
 must be sent for our benefit sooner or later. 
 It may be that many things that seem of 
 great importance to us, and from which 
 (taking this view of the matter) we might 
 look for some great result to ourselves, only 
 influence us individually by the general 
 influence they exert over others, or perhaps 
 the world in general. It is the power to 
 realize this last view which enables martyrs 
 cheerfully to suffer and die for the good of 
 the whole world. They have arrived at the 
 highest degree of benevolence towards others, 
 and happiness connected with them of which 
 men are capable — that of loving their neigh-
 
 CLAKA IIAr.PJNGTON^. 141 
 
 bour as themselves ; wliile tlie greatest hap- 
 piness ^vliich we can enjoy individually is 
 that of contemplating and adoring the 
 majesty and goodness of God." 
 
 "But if you think that God foresees 
 every event, that He creates the circum- 
 stances which produce the event, and tliat 
 He guides and disposes us, who are to woi'k 
 out the events, where is our merit in doing 
 rightly? We cannot choose to do anything 
 but as He wills. I am, then, nothing but a 
 mere instrument in His hands/' 
 
 " We are none of us more than instru- 
 ments in His hands. But we will not enter 
 on the difficult question of free will till you 
 are better. Comparatively few, however, 
 who have thought carefully on the subject 
 deny that the Infinite Creator has foreseen 
 and pre-ordained every event, and that His
 
 142 CLARA HARRINGTO.V. 
 
 power and goodness are as complete as His 
 fore-knowledge. It follows, then, that we 
 cannot act but as He has pre-ordained." 
 
 " What a horrible, what a humiliating 
 thought!" 
 
 " Horrible and humiliating, indeed, and 
 full of terror, if we fear God instead of loving 
 him as our Father, but full of blessed com- 
 fort if under our heaviest afflictions it 
 enables us to saj : ' It is Thy hand — Father, 
 thj will be done.' " 
 
 Silence ensued for some minutes, when 
 Leonora whispered to Dr. Weston : — " You 
 have driven away the Evil Spirit. Look 
 how calmly and sweetly she sleeps. We 
 have seen no rest like that descend till now 
 on those dear eyes." 
 
 After this, whenever she was strong 
 enough, Clara returned to this subject,
 
 CLARA HARRINGTOIT. 143 
 
 either with Dr. Weston or Leonora, and 
 though it fatigued her in some degree, jet 
 Dr. Weston encouraged it ; first, because 
 he was anxious, by raising her thoughts 
 above the present moment, to prepare her 
 for what would probably soon follow, and 
 also to divert her attention from those 
 distressing events, which, strange to say, 
 she had never in the remotest manner 
 alluded to, nor had she once mentioned 
 Bertha's name since her first question. 
 
 It was about a fortnight after this period 
 that Leonora, having been obliged to 
 remain in town all night, was surprised 
 on her return to find Clara dressed and in 
 another room, and observed that the locket 
 containing the miniature portrait was lying 
 by her side. Clara's manner was rather 
 excited and her face flushed, and in reply 
 to the anxious inquiring look of Leonora,
 
 144 OLAEA HARRINGTON-. 
 
 slie said, "Leonora, I did not tell vou 
 last night what I have done ; I scut a 
 message to him by the servant left here," 
 she added bitterlj, " under the pretence 
 that he was mj seryant. I sent for this 
 man and made him take a letter to his 
 master from me. I appointed a meeting 
 with him to-daj. lie sent back word that 
 he would come. It is now eleven ; in an hour 
 he will be here, and then all will soon be 
 over. 
 
 " Leonora," she continued, " I know every- 
 thing. I have been looking at this picture 
 to accustom myself to the sight of his face. 
 I have known it ever since that day — 
 everything. What is to become of me, or 
 how I am to act, you shall know when I 
 have seen him." 
 
 " You will come with me to Italy," said 
 Leonora, " and Bertha shall be our child.''
 
 CLARA HAPtRIXOTOI^. 145 
 
 " Perhaps God will let me die," replied 
 Clara. 
 
 At this moment the sound of a horse's 
 feet was heard on the gravel beneath ; then 
 a hastj step on the stairs ; the next instant 
 he was in the room, and Leonora Avas 
 gone. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 146 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " I stoop 
 Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud. 
 It is but for a time : I press God's lamp 
 Close to my breast : its splendours, soon or late. 
 Will pierce the gloom." 
 
 Robert Browning. 
 
 For a few moments Clara lay with her 
 head on his bosom, her ejes closed, and 
 her hands convulsively clasped in his. 
 Then she slowly raised herself, pressed a 
 long kiss on his lips, and sat down at a 
 little distance from him. Lord Ashford 
 was alarmed. There was an expression
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 147 
 
 in her eyes such as lie had never seen 
 before ; she was changed more than by 
 the effect of illness. In that pale face, 
 and those large shining eyes, there was an 
 expression which touched him to the heart, 
 and before a word was spoken he felt that 
 she knew all. But he would not betray 
 his consciousness of this. It would be less 
 embarrassing not to notice it ; he would try 
 to talk ; he would endeayour to calm and 
 soothe her. But she instantly stopped 
 him, and rushing into the midst of the 
 dreadful ordeal through which she knew 
 she must pass, she said : — 
 
 " Something has become known to me, 
 which you have tried to conceal. I know 
 that your name is not Merton ; it is Lord 
 Ashford." 
 
 Slie paused a moment. 
 
 " But there is more than this something. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 Oh, mj God ! dreadful indeed ! Gerard — 
 I believe that I am not your wife — Ladj 
 Ashford is your wife ; and more dreadful 
 than all, I know that you have deceived 
 me — I know it is so." 
 
 These words were uttered quickly, as if 
 she spoke against her will, hurried on by 
 some stern necessity. Then, as suddenly 
 she flung herself at his feet and clasped his 
 knees, w^eeping as if her heart would 
 break. 
 
 " I cannot endure to give you this pain," 
 she said, " seeming to accuse you of doing 
 wrong. But let it induce you to forgive 
 me, that it is not from a wish to upbraid 
 you that I have told you this, but because 
 much remains to be done in consequence 
 of it. Now listen to me, for I have 
 thought well of what I am going to say, — 
 and you must help me. I must look back,
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON-. 149 
 
 — oh, I must look back !" and her thin, slight 
 frame shrank together, presenting scarcely 
 more than a shadowy form, as she lay there 
 on the ground on her knees at his feet. 
 
 " For one year we were happy, but then 
 came suspicion and jealousy. You called 
 these feelings groundless ; but it was not so. 
 The complaints I made were worse than 
 fruitless ; at least tlieir only result was 
 bitterness, and so I soon learned silence. 
 I have latterly avoided giving any expres- 
 sion to what I felt, but this has been only 
 a change to a life of constant restraint, for 
 the feelings have continued the same. I 
 have been shut out from all intercliange of 
 confidence with you, at least in all that re- 
 lated to yourself. On that subject I have 
 been kept in entire ignorance, and you do 
 not know how dreadful it is to feci your- 
 self excluded from all that belons^s to him
 
 150 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 whom you love. You can form no idea of 
 it, for I have not had a thought, till lately, 
 ■which I did not reveal to you, and the 
 reason for my keeping this back was, that 
 any approach to the subject made you angry 
 and both of us unhappy. But I will not 
 dwell on this ; I have only alluded to the 
 subject for a reason which I will tell you 
 presently.^' 
 
 Her voice had become lower, and her 
 pale cheek still more wan, till she ceased 
 altogether to utter a sound, and appeared 
 sinking down on the ground. 
 
 Lord Ashford, in the utmost agitation 
 and dismay, moved forward to raise her, 
 but she eluded his touch, and almost screamed 
 out, — 
 
 " No, no ! do not let me feel your touch ; 
 I cannot bear it ; I must go on," and her 
 eye brightened, and a flush spread itself
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 151 
 
 feyerishlj over her cheek, as she continued 
 speaking very fast. 
 
 " You knew that nothing could have 
 induced me to become your mistress. That 
 is a dreadful word, — but a true one, — and 
 this you have made me. — Is it not true ?*' 
 
 He gave no answer. 
 
 " Is it not true that Lady Ashford is 
 your wife? and that during your absence 
 from me last autumn she became so ?" 
 
 He was about to speak when she inter- 
 rupted him, saying earnestly, — " Do not 
 tell me an untruth. You must be sincere 
 now ; you must tell me the strict truth, and 
 I know it is as I have said.." 
 
 And she looked at him with a face of 
 such deep, earnest entreaty ; and her anguish 
 so overpowered any intention he might have 
 formed of still keeping up the deception he 
 had hitherto practised towards her, that
 
 152 CLARA HARRINGTON-. 
 
 slowly, and as if mechanically, lie replied, — 
 " Yes, it is so, — at least what you have 
 said is, in point of bare fact, true/' 
 
 As he uttered the words which destroyed 
 the hope she had, in spite of all, cherished, 
 Clara's eyes closed, and she became deadly 
 pale. Lord Ashford started up, and with 
 fervour pressing her to his heart, covered 
 her with kisses, saying hurriedly and pas- 
 sionately, — 
 
 " You are my wife, my real wife in heart 
 and soul. You hnew from the first that 
 there was an impassable barrier between us, 
 I mean as my ostensible wife. It was im- 
 possible for mc to explain it, for you could 
 not be expected to understand why the 
 difference in our rank would have rendered 
 such an act peculiarly inexcusable in me, 
 possessing the opinions I do, and from this 
 circumstance and others, exerting a most
 
 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 153 
 
 important influence over tlie minds of my. 
 contemporaries. Some men of mj rank 
 have, I am aware, made such aUiances. 
 I have always considered them inconsis- 
 tent both with duty and honour. But I 
 loved you from the first, alone, and with- 
 out any participation with any other human 
 being. Nothing can change my love ; it 
 will last as long as my existence endures." 
 
 His voice was tremulous with emotion, 
 and, after a moment's pause, he continued, — 
 
 " I knew that I should make you happy, 
 if I could keep away doubt and suspicion 
 from your mind. You were innocent of 
 any guilt in the matter ; that I willingly 
 took upon myself for your sake ; and for 
 some time I hoped that I should succeed, 
 and that you would rest satisfied on the 
 subject of my family from my assurance, 
 that it was for our mutual happiness that it
 
 154 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 should remain so. I cannot enter into tlie 
 reasons 'svliich made my — my connection 
 with Lady Ashford necessary, — but it was 
 so, — in short here again duty impelled me, 
 — however, we will not talk of her, she has 
 nothing to do with us, — she interferes with 
 no feeling that I have for you, — you are the 
 whole world to me, — I love no one but you, 
 and without you my life would be a curse/' 
 
 She looked up — but not at him; her eyes 
 were fixed on vacancy as she repeated his 
 last words in a feeble unconscious tone : — 
 " Life would be a curse/' 
 
 Lord Ashford went on : — " God knows 
 how earnestly and incessantly I have 
 endeavoured to keep this circumstance 
 from your knowledge. I have lived a 
 life of constant care and anxiety, trying 
 to save both you and Lady Ashford from 
 this suficring. I could have made you
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON-. 155 
 
 both liappj if you would but have allowed 
 rue. And now, Clara, try to hear me, to 
 understand my words, for if this misery is 
 protracted it will kill us both. All the 
 mystery which has so distressed you is 
 passed. You know all. You know why I 
 am compelled to be absent, and compelled 
 to keep my home with you a secret — a 
 cherished secret ; and you know, also, that 
 you are my own, only beloved one, on whom 
 all that I am depends, alone." 
 
 Clara's eyes, before wild and vacant, be- 
 came fixed upon him, their expression 
 changing into pity and tenderness. For a 
 moment he thought he had conquered. She 
 was indeed overpowered, but soon recovering 
 herself, she said firmly : — 
 
 " No, this cannot be. I believe there are 
 women with difierent views who might bear 
 the position. I can not. I should have
 
 156 CLARA HARPJNGTON. 
 
 nothing to sustain me ; for my reason, such 
 as it is, sees in it only a great sin so to live. 
 There is more than this. When I was only 
 suspicious that you ^yere not entirely faith- 
 ful to me, it made me so wretched, that I 
 have often been nearly mad, as the proofs 
 came one by one before my mind. But 
 now suspicion would be certainty — certainty 
 that when you were away from me you 
 were with another — with a wife ! When I 
 rose up from my sleepless pillow, to look 
 out at the still, cold morning light, and 
 knew that its calm eye looked into mine, 
 telling me that I was alone, and that you — • 
 you were with another ! — Oh, my God ! help 
 me, save me !" 
 
 And her prayer was heard. She lived 
 through all the passionate love, anger, en- 
 treaty of the man she loved. She heard 
 his tenderness, his indignation, his grief;
 
 CLARA HAERmGTON". 157 
 
 she endured the picture he presented of his 
 own wretchedness and desolation ; of the 
 ruin to which she was about to reduce hira, 
 as a man who could never hope again for 
 good or happiness, or to do good, or to give 
 happiness — that hardest blow of all to her 
 loving heart. She sat at the table, her head 
 resting on her arms, weeping incessantly, 
 and waiting for the moment when God 
 would permit her to die. At length a car- 
 riage drove up to the house. The sound 
 was unheard and unheeded by both. With- 
 out a moment's preparation the door of the 
 room opened, and Lady Ashford with Mrs. 
 Dalton stood before these two wretched 
 beings. 
 
 To her, to the afflicted Clara, their pre- 
 sence was totally unknown ; she neither 
 moved nor spoke, but sat there weeping 
 tears from the heart. Lord Ashford had
 
 158 CLAKA HARRINGTON. 
 
 been pacing up and down the room at the 
 moment, his hair dishevelled, his face con- 
 vulsed, with anguish — but instantly when 
 he saw who was before him, he was trans- 
 formed into the polite, attentive husband of 
 his honorable wife. He handed her and 
 her sister to seats. A few words, in a low 
 tone of voice, passed between them. And 
 Clara at last became conscious that some 
 one had entered the room ; she heard his 
 voice speaking, and not to her. She raised 
 her head, and though he was at a distant 
 part of the room and spoke very low, she 
 heard him say these words : — 
 
 " She has lost her husband ; she has just 
 learned it.'' 
 
 Lady Ashford seemed to say something 
 kindly about her, and the other lady asked 
 whether " his lordship had told her of it, 
 and how he had learned it, and whether he
 
 CLAEA HAEKINGTON-. 159 
 
 had known the husband;" Lord Ashford 
 made no reply, but on Lady Ashford 
 repeating her sister's question, he said : — 
 
 " Yes, I once knew him ; there have been 
 painful circumstances." 
 
 Clara had risen up, she stretched out her 
 arms as if imploring for mercy, and with a 
 long, piercing scream fell to the ground. 
 
 Leonora who had remained in the adjoin- 
 ing room. Dr. Weston who had recently 
 arrived, both entered hurriedly, and without 
 heeding any one else, raised her tenderly in 
 their arms and laid her on the sofa. Lord 
 Ashford, in spite of the indignant repulses 
 of Dr. Weston, helped them in their tender 
 care, and Lady Ashford too. The latter 
 had stood aloof at first, not from any unkind 
 feeling or suspicion, for she had neither, but 
 from a sort of awkwardness at finding her- 
 self witness of a scene where feelings stronger
 
 160 CLARA HAREINGTO>T. 
 
 than any she could . sympathize with, were 
 called into action ; in circumstances where 
 she was quite ignorant how to act, and 
 where all her knowledge of the ordinary rules 
 of good breeding was of no avail. But still 
 she was of a kindly though cold nature, 
 and was desirous of doing anything she 
 could to help this " poor soul," as she called 
 her. 
 
 Mrs. Dalton was far more active, but her 
 motive was pure curiosity, unmingled with 
 any thing but perhaps bustling self-import- 
 ance, and occasionally the words " absurd," 
 "this is too much," "this would do in a 
 tragedy," were muttered between her sarcas- 
 tic lips. 
 
 There were, however, those prcsant whose 
 perceptions were equally acute, and whose 
 wills were as determined as her own, and 
 who had resolved to shut out all knowledge
 
 CLAEA HARRINGTON". 161 
 
 on the subject from her inquiring mind. 
 After a brief consultation bet^veen Leonora 
 and Dr. Weston, when they had succeeded in 
 restoring some degree of animation to their 
 wretched charge, and after a few hurried 
 words of explanation to Lady Ashford, Dr. 
 Weston lifted Clara in his arms intending 
 to carry her down stairs, but either from 
 agitation or want of strength, he staggered 
 under the burden, unable to pass Mrs. 
 Dalton who stood in the doorway, and 
 there was a momentary pause. Lady Ash- 
 ford rang the bell for a servant's help, 
 Mrs. Dalton still stood in the doorway ; 
 when Lord Ashford pushing them all aside, 
 seized Clara in his arms and carried her 
 down without a word being spoken by any 
 one. Leonora followed close after him, 
 and as he reached Dr. Weston's carriage, 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 CLARA HARRINGTON". 
 
 she stepped rapicllj forwards, opened the 
 carriage door, sprang into the seat, and 
 Lord Ashford laid the cahn, white face 
 on her friend's bosom ; pressed a long, 
 last kiss, on that nerveless hand which 
 he placed tenderly down, and then hurry- 
 ing back through the hall, full of wondering 
 faces, passed into his own private room. 
 The last thing Dr. "Weston heard as he 
 descended the stairs, was the sharp noise 
 of the key turning in the lock of that 
 door. 
 
 Lady Ashford who had followed Dr. 
 Weston, appeared at the carriage door 
 before he was seated, and occupied herself 
 kindly in placing pillows and cushions so 
 as to support the sufferer, as she lay there 
 with scarcely a sign of life. Dr. Weston 
 desired the coachman to drive to Leonora's
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON". 163 
 
 residence, and in tlie same state of un- 
 consciousness in which she had been carried 
 into Lord Ashford's house she was taken 
 from it for ever. 
 
 She had lost her husband ! 
 
 M 2
 
 164 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " When these tides do meet and strive, 
 And both swell high, but Love is higher still ; 
 This is the truest satisfaction of 
 The perfectest Love : for here it sees itself 
 Endure the highest test." 
 
 Old Dramatist. 
 
 The state of fever into ^vliicli Clara 
 relapsed, was more severe and protracted 
 than that from which she had just re- 
 covered. Yet slie did not die. Cherished 
 and supported bj her two faithful friends,
 
 CLARA HAERINGTO^. 165 
 
 slie struggled tlirougli the physical effects 
 of the shock she had sustained ; the mental 
 effects were still to be endured. 
 
 The suffering of Leonora was for a time 
 greater even than that of Clara, for she was 
 utterly hopeless of the recovery of her 
 friend. She was also possessed by a hor- 
 rible fear that Lord Ashford would destroy 
 himself; and often implored Dr. Weston 
 to return to Richmond, or to make inquiry 
 about him. This, Dr. Weston steadily re- 
 fused. He seemed to entertain the utmost 
 aversion and contempt for the conduct he 
 had witnessed, and his reply to her was, 
 that if there were feelino; enouo-h in him 
 to justify her apprehension, it was so much 
 the better for his own sake. 
 
 Her anxiety on this point, however, was 
 soon relieved. A messenger arrived from 
 Lord x\shford with a packet addressed to
 
 166 CLAKA HARRINGTON. 
 
 Dr. Weston. It contained a few words to 
 himself, and a letter for Clara, to be given 
 to her on the first favourable opportunity, 
 when her health would permit her to read it 
 with safety. 
 
 Several weeks passed away before Dr. 
 Weston judged it prudent to make any 
 mention of this letter to Clara. At length 
 he gave it to her. It began abruptly, the 
 first part having been torn ofi" by the writer, 
 and there were numerous erasures. 
 
 What words were legible were the fol- 
 lowing : — 
 
 " My first care must be to make what 
 provision is possible for you. I have been 
 in search of a suitable house for you, and I 
 have found one in Surrey, calculated, I trust, 
 to give you comfort, and where your soli- 
 tude may be rendered less irksome by your 
 occasionally visiting the respectable society
 
 CLAKA HARRmaTON. 167 
 
 in your neighbourhood. You will continue 
 to bear the name that has been jours for 
 some years. You will be considered as one 
 who has recently lost her husband/' (here 
 several lines were scratched out.) "I, too 
 have lost/' (Here there was another era- 
 sure.) " The past is a dream — the future 
 you have turned to desolation. 
 
 " I shall beg Dr. Weston to put you in 
 the way of receiving the income which I 
 have secured for yourself and your child. 
 I have one request to make. It is, that 
 you do not on any occasion appear in 
 public with Madame Castelli. Without 
 casting the slightest imputation on her 
 individually, I object most seriously to her 
 opinions and the line of conduct she has 
 thought proper to adopt. There are also 
 reasons for this request, personal to myself. 
 I beg of you that your intercourse with her
 
 168 CLAEA HARRINGTOIT. 
 
 maj be of tlie strictest privacj. I know 
 liow you will devote yourself to tlie educa- 
 tion of your child. You have shut me out 
 for ever from taking any part in it. Still/' 
 (here the letters were so blotted, the paper 
 looking as if it had been wetted, that the 
 words were illegible. The only concluding 
 words that could be read were :) " Bless and 
 protect you both." 
 
 No language can describe the distress of the 
 unhappy Clara while endeavouring to read 
 and comprehend the true meaning of these 
 lines, trying Avith the utmost earnestness, but 
 in vain, to make out the erased and blotted 
 words ; then reading the whole letter again 
 and again, and dwelling with sobs of anguish. 
 on the allusion to his own sufferings, till at last 
 Dr. AYeston, who had watched her in silence, 
 sat down by her in affectionate anxiety and 
 took her hand in his. This action seemed
 
 CLAEA HARRHsTGTOX. 169 
 
 to recal lier from the sad contemplation in 
 which she was absorbed, to her present 
 melancholy state. She did not attempt 
 to speak, but placed the letter in Dr. 
 Weston's hands. She watched his face 
 as he read, and the moment he had finished 
 she took it from him, and placed it before 
 Leonora, watching her with equal earnestness. 
 
 The perusal of this letter excited in 
 Leonora great emotion. She paced up 
 and down the room, her thoughts fixed 
 on Clara's wrongs and sufibrings, and on 
 Lord Ashford's selfishness, and the de- 
 plorable consequences of his guilty violation 
 of truth, and his outrage against afibction. 
 
 " What is to be done V she said at 
 length. " If it were my own case I should 
 have no difiiculty ; but before anything 
 more passes among us, let Clara tell us 
 her own feelings."
 
 170 CLARA HAERINGTOK 
 
 " Mj course is clear/' said Clara, in a 
 quiet, almost solemn tone of voice ; " I shall 
 comply in all respects with Lord Ashford's 
 request." 
 
 Leonora ran towards her, and Dr. AVeston 
 looked earnestly at her, as if greatly sur- 
 prised. 
 
 Leonora's face was crimson, and con- 
 trasted strangely with the pale cheek of 
 Clara. 
 
 " No," cried she, in an excited manner, 
 "no, my dear Clara. Do not accept 
 this man's money ! Come with me to 
 Italy. I have sufficient for us both, and 
 Bertha shall be our child. Do you not 
 think, my brother," continued she, turning 
 to Dr. Weston, " that this will be our 
 proper course." 
 
 Then, without waiting for a reply, she went 
 on with increased earnestness :
 
 CLAEA HAKEINGTON. l7l 
 
 " I do not doubt tliat Lord Asliford has 
 loved you ; that he does love you, Clara, 
 that he loves you as much as he can love any 
 one. I can clearly see how everything that 
 has happened, may be compatible with his 
 love, with such a love as his must be, slave 
 as he is to the world. But what I earnestly 
 desire is to see you accept all that has be- 
 fallen you with faith that it has been sent 
 to open for you the gate to a better and 
 higher life, I want you to be one of those 
 who are sanctified and purified by sufiering, 
 so that you may resign happiness to gain 
 blessedness. No dependent on a slave can 
 be blessed. But she who is capable of per- 
 ceiving that she has her own part to act, 
 her own duties to perform to herself and 
 others, may be so, though deep and lasting 
 sorrow be in her path. She will feel that 
 there are higher objects in life than the
 
 172 CLARA HAIlRINGT02f. 
 
 pursuit of peace and pleasure in abject 
 submission and subserviency to another, 
 even tbough that other be the man for 
 whom she has the tenderest love. If, indeed, 
 she may walk with him, if she maj be his 
 companion in a mutual progress, if she may 
 be sustained and guided by him, as he may be 
 encouraged and strengthened by her, if it be 
 God's will that she should enjoy the bless- 
 edness of a riglit-placed, heart-felt love, 
 such as this, her happiness is supreme. But 
 if this be denied her, if she cannot so love, 
 if she must suffer, let it be by the hand of 
 God, not by the cruel tyranny of a man to 
 whose happiness it is clear the tenderest 
 sympathies of a woman's nature cannot be 
 necessary, since he has outraged them. In 
 tlie hands of God there may be blessednessj 
 even amid tears of grief and the privations 
 of want, but to be in a position in which it
 
 CLAEA HARRIXGTOX. 173 
 
 will be possible to sec only with that man's 
 eyes, to feel only as that man may please 
 to dictate, to have no sense of duty, but 
 such as may be conformable to that man's 
 code of rectitude and propriety — oh ! there 
 will be in this a bitterness of wretchedness 
 that cannot, must not be endured." 
 
 " All you say may be true," replied Clara. 
 "I cannot dispute it with you, but at this mo- 
 ment I will not think of myself. I perform 
 my highest duty in forgetting myself for 
 him." 
 
 "After the past has disclosed to your 
 eyes what that man is, is it possible you can 
 so think and feel V said Leonora. 
 
 " You do not sympathise with me ;" replied 
 Clara, timidly and feebly, holding out her 
 small and now thin and delicate hand to 
 her, " but the bitter wretchedness of which 
 you speak, would be in my heart, if I should
 
 174 CLARA HAERINGTON. 
 
 feel that I have failed in any part of my 
 duty to him/' 
 
 " Self sacrifice may be carried too far," 
 replied Leonora," in a some^Yhat subdued 
 tone. " The forgetfulness, the annihilation 
 of self is a duty towards Him, who has given 
 us our being, and who has assigned to each 
 individual his place and part in the great 
 plan of providence ; but no fellow-creature 
 stands in this relation to us. No human 
 being has a right to deprive another, first of 
 happiness, and then of the benefit of misery. 
 You have lost happiness, dearest Clara, I 
 fear, for life; and now, you would place 
 yourself in a position in which it is impos- 
 sible that tlie dreadful sorrow you have 
 passed through should be turned to the 
 highest account. There are those who are 
 blessed in and by happiness, giving and 
 receiving it almost without measure or
 
 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 175 
 
 alloy, and theirs is the lot we naturally 
 desire. There are others who are made 
 better, perhaps even happier, by adversity ; 
 but to miss improvement, nay, even to suffer 
 degradation by the very cause that deprives 
 us of happiness, this is a case of unmitigated 
 evil, such as we are taught to believe cannot 
 exist in the plan of God's providence. If 
 God be good he cannot inflict pain for its 
 own sake ; every kind and degree of it must 
 be a means to an end ; a higher and better 
 end than could be obtained without it ; and 
 it is a part of wisdom to receive the angel 
 of pain, as His messenger for good. His 
 mighty and awful minister, who does not 
 visit us in vain.'' 
 
 " If,'* continued the ardent speaker, " you 
 accept Lord Ashford's proposal, by that 
 very act, you return into the common world 
 which has never yet, under the most favour-
 
 176 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 able circumstances, yielded happiness ; but in 
 jour position, to fulfil the conditions laid 
 down bj Lord Ashford, to carry out the life 
 proposed by him, would be, not so much a 
 life of sorrow, as one of daily and hourly 
 deception, which some accident will be sure 
 to disclose, and w^hich the world never dis- 
 coyers without punishing unrelentingly with 
 shame and scorn." 
 
 A shudder passed through the frame of 
 Clara and without speaking she turned her 
 eyes full of tears on Dr. Weston and with a 
 tender, deprecating expression, seemed to 
 implore him to remove the painful impres- 
 sion caused by the words of her friend, and 
 to justify a decision the reverse of that 
 which she counselled. 
 
 Before they spoke, however, there was 
 an expression on his lips which made her 
 feel that the advice she desired, and the
 
 CLAEA HAllUINGTOX. 177 
 
 sanction wliicli would liave been siicli a 
 solace to lier, would not be received from 
 him. With a calm voice, but deep feeling 
 Dr. Weston said : 
 
 " There is one consideration that Leonora 
 has not adverted to, which Clara herself 
 will think decisive. Where there is love 
 founded on respect, there is no giver or 
 receiver ; what is possessed bj one is com- 
 mon to both ; naj, there is more than this, 
 — there is a sweet pleasure in the conscious 
 disregard of any nominal distinction in 
 fortune. There are cases, too, in which 
 even charity inilicts no degradation on its 
 object ; but the woman who allows herself 
 to be supported by the money of the man 
 who has outraged her affection, and for- 
 feited, and most justly forfeited, her esteem, 
 cannot regard herself with self-respect." 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 The colourless cheek of Clara became of 
 an ashy paleness ; her lips moved, as if to 
 reply, but no sound came from them. 
 
 "I know the consolation which this un- 
 happy moment requires," continued Dr. 
 Weston ; " I know how necessary it is that 
 you should be sustained by the sympathy 
 of your beloYcd friends, in the course which 
 your heart dictates to be that of duty ; but 
 a wrong decision on this matter would 
 imply a misconception of a moral distinc- 
 tion, which cannot be disregarded by any 
 one without suffering, but which, in your 
 case, would add disgrace to wretchedness." 
 
 These last words brought the colour 
 back to Clara's cheeks, and she replied, 
 with a voice tremulous with emotion and 
 weakness : 
 
 '' I cannot argue this matter with you.
 
 CLAKA HARRIIs^GTON. 179 
 
 Right or wrong, I feel tliat I have no 
 clioice, and I desire none. Be the conse- 
 quences to myself what they may, be it 
 wretchedness, be it even disgrace, let them 
 come. I will give him no unnecessary pain 
 — I will deprive him of no consolation that 
 I can aflford him. Compliance with his 
 expressed wish, where that can be, may be 
 some solace to him — will be blessedness to 
 me, though it may bring me additional 
 suffering." 
 
 The two friends looked at each other 
 with an expression of pity, not unmixed 
 with admiration, but remained silent. 
 
 '' I cannot have your sympathy, dearest 
 friends," continued Clara, mournfully ; " that 
 is already an additional suffering come to 
 me in its worst shape. But I must bear 
 the burden laid upon me. lie has told me 
 his wish. I know his state of feeling — I 
 
 N 2
 
 180 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 know it from the words which he has 
 attempted to erase, as well as from those 
 which remain. My heart tells me that it 
 may be some small comfort to him to think 
 of me under the circumstances he has pro- 
 posed, and for the present, at least, I cannot 
 withhold that comfort from him."
 
 CLARA 11ARRTNGT0N-. 181 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 " Sucli transitions are ever full of pain. Thus the 
 eagle, when he moiiltS; is sickly ; and, to attain his 
 new beak, must harshly clash off the old one upon 
 rocks." — Carlyle. 
 
 Neither of her friends tlioudit ao-ain of 
 
 o o 
 
 altering her determination. All their efforts 
 were now turned towards affordins; her 
 such consolation as affection alone can 
 give. 
 
 Afterwards, when alone with Leonora, 
 Dr. Weston said :
 
 182 CLARA HARRINGTOI^. 
 
 " We were wrong. In pure natures, the 
 heart is a truer guide to a right course than 
 reason, and often makes our philosophy look 
 very much like casuistry. Even the high 
 notions which you, Leonora, endeavoured to 
 place before her view, we must admit were 
 poor and narrow, compared with that feel- 
 ing of deep and generous love which fills 
 her heart, and guides her course, and which 
 she must pursue or die. My appeal to her 
 supposed that love was extinguished in her 
 heart ; but, on the contrary, it is clear that 
 even in her happiest days she was never so 
 much under its influence as now. My argu- 
 ment, therefore, was a fallacy which love 
 taught her to perceive, and love must bring 
 her the only comfort of which her situation 
 admits, — the consciousness that she has in- 
 flicted on him no needless sufibring, that she 
 has done everything in her power to soothe
 
 CLARA HAERINGTOK 183 
 
 him. But I cannot conceal from jou mj 
 uneasiness about her." 
 
 " You fear she will die," cried Leonora. 
 
 " She has never recovered from her fever; 
 there is an unnatural paleness in her cheek, 
 and an expression in her eje which fills me 
 with apprehension." 
 
 " Yet she is physically stronger than I 
 should have expected," replied Leonora; 
 " and we have just seen how clearly she can 
 think, and how decidedly she can act." 
 
 " What I fear is the efiect of the shock 
 she has sustained on that fragile and 
 delicate frame. The effect of a mental, 
 like that of a physical shock is not always 
 immediately manifested/' 
 
 " Tell me plainly what you fear," said 
 Leonora. 
 
 " That the state of excitement should be 
 followed by one of dulness and torpor,"
 
 184 CLAEA HAREINGTON-. 
 
 he replied ; *' the degree of which will 
 indicate her danger/' 
 
 And the fear of the physician was not 
 without foundation. After the decision 
 which Clara had formed, and in which 
 both her friends now encouraged her, she 
 sank into a state of unnatural calmness. 
 She did not weep, vshe did not complain ; 
 and, excepting at particular moments, when 
 some sudden thought passed through her 
 mind, or some familiar sound or word 
 awa,kened memory, she did not appear even 
 to suffer. She sat in a state of listlessness, 
 alarmingly disinclined to move ; sJie was 
 even apt, while in company with her two 
 dear friends, to fall into a momentary 
 slumber, and her nights, with occasional 
 painful exceptions, were passed in deep 
 and heavy sleep. She assented passively 
 to whatever was proposed for her, but
 
 CLARA PIARRINGTOIs^ 185 
 
 appeared to forget immediately CYerjthing 
 relating to the matter. A deep and 
 raournful sigh occasionally escaped from her 
 bosom, and moments occurred of extreme 
 restlessness and agitation without any ex- 
 ternal cause, which contrasted painfully 
 with her usually quiet motionless state. 
 As he gazed on her pale cheek, and looked 
 into her cold apathetic eyes, tears some- 
 times came into those of her watchful 
 physician, and Leonora sat long hours, 
 day and night, silently by her side, often 
 without obtaining a single look of recog- 
 nition. Thus passed many weeks, and the 
 only sign from whicli Dr. Weston gathered 
 hope that she would ultimately pass safely 
 through this dangerous state, was that her 
 physical strength did not decline. 
 
 It was one of tlio evidences of the 
 terrible severity of the blow bv whicli this
 
 186 CLARA HARRINGTOX. 
 
 poor sufferer bad been overwhelmed, that 
 Avben an event occurred wbicb imperatively 
 obliged Leonora to leave England, to fulfil 
 a duty which she felt it would be a crime 
 to forego, Clara seemed to be scarcely 
 conscious of it, or to comprehend the 
 anguish which Leonora was wholly unable 
 to conceal. It was about a month after 
 her departure that Leonora received the 
 following letter from Dr. Weston. 
 
 Letter from Br, Weston to Leonora. 
 
 " I am afraid you will have received but 
 small comfort from my former letters. I 
 could not conscientiously give you any. 
 I saw no sign of amendment ; but during 
 the last few days, I have fancied I could 
 perceive a slight change for the better in 
 her appearance and manner. Yesterday 
 I was agreeably surprised to hear her
 
 CLAEA HAKRINGTON. 187 
 
 express a wish to remove to the new abode 
 which she has long known is ready for her. 
 I said nothing to encourage or discourage 
 the propasal, for I wished to be satisfied 
 whether it was anything more than a mere 
 passing thought, and I am now anxiously 
 awaiting the assurance of improvement, 
 which the recurrence to the subject of her 
 own accord will afford. From the account 
 I have gathered from Susan, I think it 
 certain that she has lately slept less 
 heavily, and the expression of her coun- 
 tenance is somewhat less cold and listless. 
 None of the symptoms which I appre- 
 hended, as indicative of a slow, organic 
 change in the brain, have come on ; neither 
 has she wasted ; on the contrary, her 
 appetite is returning in some degree, and 
 I hail as good omens these indications, 
 slight as they are, of restoration to life.
 
 188 CLARA 'HAlirJXGTOX. 
 
 " I am encouraged in mj hope by her 
 having to-daj made more inquiry than she 
 had hitherto done about jou, and by the 
 expression of a ^ish that you were with 
 her to help her and 'share her pleasure' 
 (that was her own expression) when she 
 should remove. Still she takes little or 
 no notice of our dear Bertha, and is at 
 times just as listless and ^torpid as when 
 you left us. 
 
 " Many letters have passed between Lord 
 Ashford and myself, but none between 
 them. He avoids it and she acquiesces 
 silently. I have purposely abstained from 
 mentioning his name to her and she has 
 never pronounced it to me." 
 
 A fortnight later Dr. Weston's letter was 
 dated from Woodlands, Surrey, and was
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 189 
 
 written upon the whole in a still more 
 encouraging tone. 
 
 " You will perceive,'^ he said, " by my 
 date where we are. I brought our poor 
 Clara and little Bertha here yesterday. She 
 herself proposed the removal a second time, 
 and with increased earnestness, and I 
 thought the proper period for the change 
 had now come. I was not without hope 
 that the removal itself would act as an 
 excitement to her, the slightest expression 
 of which would have been a satisfaction to 
 me. It was necessary, as a preliminary 
 step, that she should adopt the dress of a 
 widow, which you know Lord Ashford had 
 made a point of her wearing. When she 
 came into the room in this dress I could 
 see that she had been weeping. I involun- 
 tarily started as I turned, deeply impressed
 
 190 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 and shocked at the melancholy sight. She 
 looked at me with an expression which 
 entered my heart, and produced there a 
 feeling of most bitter anguish. She ran to 
 me, clasped my hands fervently, leant her 
 head upon my bosom and shed floods of 
 tears. Yet there was a firmness and deter- 
 mination in her manner which gave me a 
 secret pleasure, and her very tears were to 
 me bright hopes. I helped her to the 
 carriage, and we passed rapidly the dis- 
 tance of twenty miles in profound silence. 
 The clear atmosphere, the refreshing green 
 of the fields, the beauty of the distant hills, 
 the cheerful or rather the exultant notes 
 with which the air was full in some of the 
 woody slopes we passed, all had for her 
 no existence, and gave to me the feeling 
 of sadness which is so common when the 
 eye looks on Nature's brightness and glory
 
 CLARA HAREINGTOl^. 191 
 
 through an aching heart. As I gazed on 
 her, in the depth of her prostration, and 
 then looked into the clear earnest eyes of 
 Bertha, who sat silently watching the 
 objects that we passed in rapid succession, 
 sometimes uttering a low, scarcely audible 
 chaunt to the clouds, the birds, the flowers, 
 in her own wild way, I felt that no two 
 creatures were ever before cast upon the 
 world who more needed the help of strong 
 practical minds to take care of them. 
 
 " I had purposely arranged it so that 
 the time of our arrival should be in the 
 evening, that she might immediately retire 
 to rest if she should be much fatigued by 
 the journey, or if, as was not unlikely, one 
 of those paroxysms of grief, in which you 
 have so often seen her, should return. 
 There was, however, no want of physical 
 strength, and as soon as we entered the
 
 192 CLARA IIAEPJXGTON. 
 
 house she walked eagerly all round the 
 room, as if she vrcrc in search of some lost 
 object ; she ran up-stairs, and proceeded 
 from room to room, examining everj^ article 
 of furniture with earnest and disappointed 
 looks. Everything was new, everything 
 was changed ; not the simplest thing be- 
 longing to her old home had been removed 
 to this. Even her splendid dressing-box 
 was replaced by another, and there was 
 not a single article b}^ which association 
 could recal the past. She stood, when the 
 full perception of this circumstance entered 
 her mind, like a person stunned by a blow. 
 Her limbs trembled. For a few minutes 
 she was in a state of bewilderment. Then 
 I observed the colour come rapidly into her 
 cheek, and mantle to her very forehead. 
 ' Is it possible !' exclaimed she. ' Can 
 he have meant thus to tell me that love
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 193 
 
 is dead ; that there is to be for rae no 
 more memory of the past than if I were 
 in my grave !' 
 
 ** She then sat down calmly, covering her 
 face with her hands. In a few moments 
 she sprang again upon her feet, with a 
 degree of strength that surprised me. 
 ' Oh !' cried she, ' if it is so easy to him ! 
 — If he grudges me the memory — the very 
 thought — Ah, my friend, take me away !' 
 
 " I ran to her and supported her, but I 
 deemed this self-communion with her heart 
 and her destiny too sacred to be interfered 
 with by another, and I was silent. 
 
 " Some moments passed, during which 
 her agitation was extreme. ' It is so,' said 
 she at length, in a tone of voice, the quiet- 
 ness, the firmness of which, contrasted pre- 
 ternaturally with the agitation of her frame; 
 
 yoL. I. o
 
 194 CLARA HARKIXGTOI^. 
 
 ' I know it is so, and it is well to see and 
 understand the truth/ 
 
 " She again paused. 
 
 " There is a state of profound emotion, 
 when the soul looks, as it were, into itself, 
 and the lips unbidden give audible utter- 
 ance to the result of this self-questioning. 
 There is in the voice then something 
 strange, abstract, and peculiarly solemn ; 
 and such was hers as she continued : 
 
 " ' Yes it is so. Death has come to us 
 while yet w^e seem to live ; death in the 
 truest sense, — the death of all which made 
 it bliss to live. Life, then, to us has passed 
 away. It was true kindness to teach me 
 this, and I accept the lesson. And he — 
 he, too, is dead, and thus he tells it me.' 
 
 " The shudder that passed through her 
 frame was indeed like the last convulsive
 
 CLARA HARPJNGTOK 195 
 
 throb of life ; and the insensibility that 
 followed resembled that of death. And as 
 she herself justly expressed it, it was in its 
 truest sense * death ; the death of happi- 
 ness ; the death of that which makes it 
 bliss to live/ 
 
 " I am certain that the struggle is now 
 over. The truth of her sad fate, in all its 
 hopelessness, all its desolateness, has en- 
 tered her heart. If she were to return at 
 once to full consciousness, her only feeling 
 could be the desire to die ; but a state of 
 comparative unconsciousness will be merci- 
 fully interposed before her new life can 
 open to her view. We do not know how 
 physical death prepares us for the spiritual 
 life which will succeed it ; but we may 
 perceive something analogous to it in the 
 manner in which painful events sometimes 
 prepare us here for entirely new states of 
 
 2
 
 196 CLARA HAERIXGTOX. 
 
 intellectual and moral being. Perhaps the 
 }3oint at which we commence our new and 
 everlasting life, will not be more distant 
 from that which closes our mortal existence 
 than the diversities which distinguish some 
 of the great epochs of our present state. 
 
 " It was with some difficulty that Susan 
 and I succeeded in placing her in bed. 
 Though the state of fainting did not remain 
 long, yet her consciousness was very imper- 
 fect for many hours. I was anxious about 
 her, and remained with her the w^hole night. 
 Susan also never left her bed-side, and her 
 calm composure, mingled with tenderness, 
 soothed her. Susan, I am convinced, is 
 acquainted with the real facts, but to her 
 mistress she appears to know nothing. She 
 is an unspeakable assistance and comfort 
 to me, for w^hile she comprehends the spirit 
 and aim of my instructions I can depend
 
 CLARA HARRINGTOIT. 197 
 
 on her carrying tliein out to the letter. 
 There is a tranquillizing effect on the sick, 
 even while they appear to be unconscious 
 of it, in the very presence of an intelligent 
 and affectionate nurse ; the softness of the 
 step ; the gentleness of the voice ; the con- 
 siderateness of the silence ; the promptitude 
 and firmness, yet delicacy of the help, when 
 help is really needed, contributing almost 
 as much to the recovery, especially in sen- 
 sitive natures, as the skill of the physician. 
 
 " The feverish state in which she passed 
 the greater part of the night was succeeded, 
 towards daybreak, by a tranquil sleep. 
 Oh ! my sister, I know nothing which God 
 has given to soothe the sufferings of poor 
 humanity so precious as that first hour of 
 gentle sleep that follows the restlessness of 
 fever. I often see it mark, nay, determine 
 the fate between life and death. I made
 
 198 CLARA HAERIXGTON". 
 
 a sign to Susan to remain perfectly still, 
 that not a moment miglit be abridged of 
 the time so beneficently employed by Nature 
 to carry on her work of restoration. 
 
 " I stole from the chamber and passed out 
 into the fresh air of early morning. Per- 
 haps the hope which had sprung up in my 
 heart that the crisis of the fate of our sweet 
 friend was passed, and that she was again 
 our own, gave a lustre in my eyes to the 
 solemnity of the glorious chariot in which 
 the sun came forth on this morning to bless 
 the world ; but I thought as I stood on the 
 green sward of mossy turf, and saw the god 
 appear above the woody heights of the dis- 
 tant hills, that I had never before seen any- 
 thing so magnificent. 
 
 " The lawn on which the drawing-room of 
 the cottage opens is a table-land command- 
 ing a view of an extended range of undu-
 
 CLARA HAllEINGTOIT. 199 
 
 lating ground consisting of hill and vallej, 
 the slopes everywhere clothed with the 
 richest green, and much of the rising ground 
 covered with copse-wood, but studded here 
 and there with picturesque groups of forest- 
 trees. The cottage itself is on high ground, 
 but sheltered from the chalky and somewhat 
 arid heights to the north-east by a wood 
 entered from the lawn, and through open- 
 ings of which you see the rich and diversi- 
 fied fore-ground. The verandah which ex- 
 tends round the whole of this side of the 
 cottage is covered with roses, honeysuckles, 
 and jasmines. There is a beautiful little 
 green-house full of the choicest plants. The 
 lawn is, in fact, a terrace a furlong in length, 
 and almost a hundred yards in breadth. Its 
 velvet turf is embroidered with flower-beds, 
 cver-greens, and flowering shrubs, with a few 
 fine oak, beech, and lime-trees, and at one
 
 200 CLARA HARKINGTON. 
 
 point there is a group of four or ^Ye gigan- 
 tic firs. Where the terrace begins suddenly 
 to slope down towards the wood, there 
 stands a grand cedar-tree, and birch and 
 box-trees of large size skirt the wood. The 
 wood itself is intersected by numerous wild 
 paths, which lead every now and then to a 
 point of view that commands some picture 
 of particular beauty in the plain below ; at 
 one time composed chiefly of woods that 
 half disclose and half conceal the villages 
 they embosom ; at other times of single 
 objects, as a wind-mill or a farm-house, but 
 everywhere sparkling through the whole 
 appears the little river beneath with its 
 sloping banks of hop-gardens. 
 
 " On returning to Clara I found her awake 
 and tranquil. She held out her hand to me 
 with a faint smile and said : ' I will show 
 my gratitude to you for your watchful kind-
 
 CLARA HAPJUNGTON. 201 
 
 ness. Life cannot be altogether desolate 
 which still possesses such a friend/ 
 
 " A new trial was before her in the first 
 yiew she should obtain of the extraordinary 
 beauty of which I have endeavoured to give 
 you some conception. Those to whom na- 
 tural beauty is a solemnity, a festival, are 
 depressed and overwhelmed by it in certain 
 mental states, and the more completely, the 
 more perfect the beauty. But still after a 
 time such beauty in such natures has a 
 powerful influence in soothing the troubled 
 spirit, and in unconsciously re-awakening in 
 it a feeling, at least akin to hope. 
 
 " Towards evening she left her chamber 
 and sat with me in the drawing-room. She 
 had apparently recovered considerably from 
 the impression of tlie shock of her first arrival, 
 but what I did not like in her was her 
 extraordinary calmness. It was mere quie-
 
 202 CLARA HARRINGTOIT. 
 
 tude of the bodj, the perturbation of the 
 soul, it was clear to me, being still intense. 
 I was still impressed with the nobleness of 
 the mind which, embodied in so delicate a 
 frame, could thus resolutely struggle with a 
 grief that cast the shadow of death over 
 the whole of life, in which there was an awe- 
 struck perception of the darkness of the 
 shadow, and an undoubting conviction that 
 the only remaining part of life was to pass 
 through it. 
 
 "Amidst all this intense sufferinsj her slii^ht 
 figure has lost but little of its usual roundness, 
 and retains, unaltered, its wonderful symme- 
 try. As she sat motionless in the elegant 
 room, her dress adding greatly to her pale- 
 ness, she appeared to the imagination the 
 personification of a youthful bride, who, 
 having expected her bridegroom at the altar, 
 had found him at the tomb. Bertha stood
 
 CLAEA HARRINGTON". 203 
 
 at her side quiet, silent, sensitive, her 
 mother's sorrow casting a strange expression 
 of mournfulness over the wild joyous face, 
 her rosy fingers twisted around the scarcely 
 larger fingers of her mother, and making 
 painfully manifest the absorbingness of the 
 affliction, in the picture presented of the 
 child trembling with sympathy, and the 
 mother unconscious of the feeling, and hardly 
 sensible of the presence of the child. 
 
 " It was a lovely evening and the moon 
 lighted up with its pale clearness one part 
 of the foliage which bordered the lawn, 
 while it seemed to add a deeper darkness to 
 the broad shadow cast upon the opposite 
 group of fir-trees. Each of us felt the 
 beauty, and each was conscious of the 
 other's feeling, though neither spoke. How 
 much communion often passes between
 
 204 CLAKA HARRINGTON. 
 
 mind and mind ; between soul and soul in 
 these silent moments ! 
 
 *' Suddenly the mother as well as myself, 
 w^ere alike startled at the clear low voice of 
 Bertha, who breathed in a soft whisper, 
 rather than spoke the words : — 'Oh, how 
 dearest Leonora will love this little home/ 
 
 " ' Yes,' echoed her mother passively, 
 * Leonora will love this home/ 
 
 "She looked at me and then at Bertha, 
 and seeing, I believe, in both our coun- 
 tenances an expression which affected her, I 
 saw for the first time, the sign of returning 
 animation in hers. She rose, and leading 
 Bertha to me and folding both of us in her 
 arms, she said with a gush of feeling, which 
 was most delicious to me : — * Yes, and we 
 will make it a home, — our home/ 
 
 " Soon afterwards I was surprised, but
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 205 
 
 more deliglited to hear her request me to 
 read to her. It is the first time she has 
 shown the least inclination or power to read, 
 or hear read, even her most favourite authors. 
 " She requested me to read from a book 
 of extracts which I have made, and of which 
 I spoke to her some dajs ago. I brought 
 it down here with me in the hope that it 
 might some daj attract her attention. I 
 began bj reading the following passage : — 
 ' The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself 
 out ; its howl went silent within me ; and the 
 long deafened soul could now hear ; it was 
 as if the hour of change drew nigh ; here, as 
 I lay the heavy dreams rolled gradually 
 away, and I awoke to a new heaven and a 
 new earth. The first preliminary moral 
 act. Annihilation of Self, had been happily 
 accomplished ; and my mind's eyes were 
 now unsealed.
 
 206 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 " ' Pore-shadows, call them rather fore- 
 splendours of that Truth and Beginning of 
 Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Like 
 the mother's voice to her little child that 
 strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown 
 tumults ; like soft streamings of celestial 
 music to my too exasperated heart came 
 that Evangel — with other eyes would I now 
 look upon my fellow man — with an infinite 
 love, an infinite pity. Poor, wandering, 
 wayward man ! Art thou not tried and 
 beaten with stripes even as I am — and thy 
 bed of rest is but a grave. my brother, 
 my brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my 
 bosom and wipe away all tears from thy eyes. 
 
 " ' Thus was I standing in the porch of that 
 Sanctuary of Sorrow ; by strange steep ways 
 had I too been guided thither, and ere long 
 its sacred gates would open, and the Divine 
 depth of sorrow lie disclosed to me. There
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 207 
 
 is in man a Higher than Ioyg of happiness ; 
 he can do without happiness, and instead 
 thereof find blessedness ! Was it not to 
 preach forth this same Higher, that sages 
 and martyrs, the poet and the priest in all 
 times have spoken and suffered ; bearing 
 testimony, through life, and through death 
 of the Godlike that is in man, and how 
 in the Godlike only has he strength and 
 freedom 1 "Which God-inspired doctrine 
 art thou also honored to be taught ; 
 Heavens ! and broken with manifold afflic- 
 tions, even till thou become contrite and 
 learn it ! thank thy destiny for these ; 
 thankfully bear what yet remain : thou 
 hadst need of them ; the self in thee needed 
 to be annihilated. By benignant fever- 
 paroxysms is life rooting out the deep 
 seated chronic disease, and triumphs over 
 death. On the roaring billows of time, thou
 
 208 CLAEA HARRINGTO>f. 
 
 art not engulphed, but borne aloft into tbe 
 azure of eternity. Lore not pleasure ; love 
 God. This is the everlasting Yea, ^yhereia 
 all contradiction is solved ; wherein whoso 
 walks and works, it is well with him !' 
 
 *' ' There have been walkers in this path/ 
 said Clara; 'many and honoured arc the 
 names that have set us the example of a life 
 of self-devotion perilling happiness, nay, 
 even sacrificing it, for the sake of the highest 
 happiness of others.' 
 
 " ' It is the noblest course presented to 
 the human being,' I replied, *the percep- 
 tion and the pursuit are Godlike ; at least, 
 it is this that forms the nearest approach to 
 the Godlike that can be made by man.' 
 
 "*But to make the least step in this 
 course,' replied Clara, 'requires extraordi- 
 nary strength both in the intellectual and 
 moral nature : and to make great advances
 
 CLARA HARRmGTON. 209 
 
 in it, is in the power only of the intellectual 
 and moral giants of our race/^ 
 
 " ' On the contrary/ I said, * the true 
 requisite is not strength but purity. The 
 child in strength with an innocent child's 
 innocence, may make no slight advancement 
 in the path/ 
 
 '' ' Yes, it is so,' she replied, ' and I must 
 not apply the false solace to my conscience, 
 that I am too weak for the performance of 
 the task/ 
 
 " I made no answer, and the silence into 
 which we both fell, each occupied with our 
 own train of thought, was at last broken by 
 Clara, who said, ' I wish you Avould read 
 to me the description of the initiation of 
 Consuelo. You told me you have the 
 extract/ 
 
 *•' ' Yes,' said I, ' it is here, but I doubt 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 CLARA HARRINGTON 
 
 whetlier the description is suited to jour 
 present state of mind/ 
 
 " ' I have a notion/ she replied, ' that it 
 would console me, perhaps strengthen me/ 
 
 " I was afraid to comply with her request, 
 jet I felt assured that if she could bear the 
 description at all, it would have a beneficial 
 influence on her, and I immediatelj began 
 to read an account of the trial of Oonsuelo, 
 from the moment when, having passed from 
 a hall in which had shone the brightness of 
 a hundred torches, she entered a place 
 lighted onlj bj the flame of her little lamp, 
 and could distinguish nothing but a luminous 
 mist difi*used about her, which her sight could 
 not penetrate. Clara listened with rapt 
 attention to the historj of the strange trials 
 devised to test the strength and faith of this 
 wonderful woman. She was deeplj affected
 
 CLARA HAERINGTOIf. 2ll 
 
 at the description of Oonsuelo's emotion 
 during the last trial that awaited her, when 
 * seeing no more and ceasing to suffer, with- 
 out being warned bj any feeling of physical 
 pain, her soul and her body existing no 
 longer but in the body and soul of violated 
 and mutilated humanity, she fell straight 
 and stiff upon the pavement, like a statue 
 detached from its pedestal/ 
 
 " But when her judge, aiding Consuelo to 
 rise, said to her, ' My sister, you have 
 passed victorious through all your trials,' 
 Clara stopped me. 
 
 " ' Ah !' cried she, ' she was victorious to 
 be crowned with happiness. I have been 
 weighed in the balance, and have been found 
 wanting.^ 
 
 " ' She was sustained through her trials by 
 love,' I replied, ' and love in her was so 
 strong and holy, that she would have borne 
 
 p 2
 
 212 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 her trials with the same resolution, if at the 
 end her dreaded judge had pronounced : — 
 " Happiness is not allotted to you ; your 
 higher destiny iS to be blessed.'^ ' 
 
 " ' Consuelo was strong enough to bear the 
 sentence/ returned Clara, * and would have 
 found blessedness in self-sacrifice and in de- 
 votion, but hers was a nature to rebound 
 from a pressure and weight which would 
 crush me/ 
 
 " ' Consuelo,' I said, ' was physically 
 stronger than you, and could travel over 
 mountain and valley with a more untiring 
 step : and it is very likely that this robuster 
 organization would render her work, on some 
 occasions, less difficult to her, but still the 
 true glory of her character is the rectitude 
 and firmness of will which, whether difficult 
 or easy, made her resolutely perform the 
 duty the occasion required, leaving the rest
 
 CLAEA HAERINGTON. 213 
 
 with undoubting faitli in her great task- 
 master's hands/ 
 
 " I continued to read : — 
 
 " And you, Albert, if you are here, if 
 you listen to me, you ought at least not to 
 refuse to call me your sister, to extend 
 to me your hand, and assist me to walk in 
 the rough path which leads you to God/ 
 
 " She looked earnestly at me, and, after a 
 few moments silence, she whispered almost 
 inaudibly : — 
 
 " ' The cup is bitter, but if I must drink 
 of it, oh, God ! give me strength/ 
 
 " That was a sincere prayer, my sister, 
 and God will answer it/' 
 
 Three days later Dr. Weston writes : — 
 
 " I determined to remain till our friend, 
 like Consuelo, had passed through the last 
 trial that awaited her. Clara's was in-
 
 214 CLARA HAREINGTON. 
 
 comparably the hardest ; for Consuelo had 
 to pass through darkness and horror to 
 brightness and happiness, but Clara through 
 scenes of surpassing beauty to desolation 
 and despair. 
 
 " I availed myself of my authority as a 
 physician to prescribe gentle walking, and 
 after having suggested on two or three 
 occasions, without, however, making much 
 impression in the direction I desired, the 
 probable improvement in her strength that 
 would follow exercise in the fresh air, I at 
 last said to her, ' I own to you I am uneasy 
 about the effect upon you of your first walk 
 in the wood, and I cannot leave you until 
 you have passed through the ordeal. It 
 must be passed, and I must be near you at 
 the time. It will be restorative both to 
 body and mind when once you have accus-
 
 CLARA HARRIKGTON. 215 
 
 tomed yourself to this lovely scenery. In 
 the mean time, I see you are suffering 
 from your apprehensions of the effect which 
 the first sight of it may produce upon 
 you/ 
 
 " ^ I will go/ she replied, turning pale. 
 ' I will overcome this foolish dread.' 
 
 " ' Oonsuelo was obhged to go through 
 her trial alone,' said I, ' and so must you, 
 Clara.' 
 
 " She turned her soft tearful eyes upon 
 me, with an expression of heart-felt grati- 
 tude, and pressing my hand to her lips, she 
 said, 'Dear and true friend: yes, I know 
 it.' 
 
 " After a pause she resumed quietly but 
 with deep emotion, ' He has shown so much 
 love, — love in all that he has provided for 
 me, love in what he has withheld, that I
 
 216 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 wish to see it first alone, to consecrate it all 
 to him ; alone, I can speak to him in spirit 
 with none to hear but God/ 
 
 " At the same moment she passed with a 
 firm and rather hurried step upon the lawn. 
 She then walked slowlj but unhesitatingly 
 forward ; and the cedar-tree which seemed 
 to spread out its broad branches to envelope 
 her in its dark shadow, soon concealed her 
 graceful figure from my view. 
 
 "She was absent upwards of an hour, 
 and without allowing her to be conscious 
 that I was near her, I still kept sufficient 
 watch upon her to be certain that she was 
 safe. I believe sLe spent the greater part 
 of the time in fervent prayer. She re- 
 turned exhausted but calm, with the 
 expression of holy resignation on her coun- 
 tenance.
 
 CLAKA HARRINGTON. 217 
 
 " I said to her in mj lieart as I gazed 
 upon her, ' Mj sister, you have passed vic- 
 toriously through all your trials.' 
 
 "And she has done so, for when the 
 feeling of resignation has entered the heart, 
 the tumult of emotion is over, and peace is 
 near at hand/'
 
 218 CLAEA HAEKIKGTON. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " Though nothing can bring back the hour 
 
 Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flo'wer j 
 
 I do not grieve, but rather find 
 
 Strength in what remains behind : 
 
 In the primal sympathy, 
 
 Which having been, must ever be, 
 
 In the soothing thoughts that spring 
 
 Out of human suflfering." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 A week later. " Woodlands r 
 "I HAVE seen her every day since I last 
 "wrote to jou, for my visits have been a 
 comfort to her, and she still needs all that
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 219 
 
 can be done to sustain and strengthen her. 
 Since the evening when she asked me to 
 read to her she has sometimes read to her- 
 self, which is a great point gained ; but she 
 is still subject to occasional fits of abstrac- 
 tion and bewilderment, which call for the 
 exercise of every artifice that friendship and 
 aJSection can devise to re-awaken her interest 
 in life. 
 
 "Your idea is, therefore, a very happy 
 and a very timely one, and it is so sweet 
 and characteristic a suggestion on your part 
 that it ought to be successful. 
 
 " The little messenger arrived in perfect 
 safety and excellent health and spirits. I 
 left town early in the morning, and reached 
 the cottage as I desired, before Clara had 
 left her chamber. Bertha ran to meet me, 
 and I had some difficulty in concealing my 
 treasure from her quick eyes. Breakfast
 
 220 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 was prepared for me, and Clara sent me a 
 message bj Bertha that she should be glad 
 to see me in her own room. I had taken 
 Susan into mj secret, and arranged with 
 her, who remained unseen in the dressing- 
 room, the moment when tlic handkerchief 
 should be removed. 
 
 " Suddenly I heard a little chirp ; so also 
 did Bertha, who started up and looked 
 quickly round, but Clara did not notice it. 
 Another louder chirp ; then the child, whose 
 curiosity was excited, struggled to spring 
 from my knee, and while I was endeavour- 
 ing to detain her, your bullfinch at once 
 burst into his clear song. He went quite 
 through his sweet and pathetic Italian 
 melody, and then began it again. I was 
 almost frightened at the effect on Bertha. 
 She stopped and grasped my arm with both 
 hers ; then, with her deep eyes gazing
 
 CLAEA HAERINGTON-. 221 
 
 towards the open door, and her parted lips 
 and cheeks white with agitation, she sat 
 quite stilL When he ceased, she sobbed 
 out, ' Oh ! more, more !' Clara, after the 
 first few notes, started up in bed and listened 
 as eagerly as Bertha, with the tears flowing 
 down her cheeks. At last she said, ' That 
 comes from Leonora. It is her favourite 
 air. Who is it ? It sounds like a spirit !* 
 And truly it did sound like some enchanted 
 soul still clinging to the earth and commu- 
 nicating with it by that one favourite melody 
 repeated again and again. After they had 
 listened for a few moments more, I said, 
 ' Yes, it does come from Leonora ; and it 
 is a messenger to you of love and of hope.' 
 
 "I went for him. Bertha's ecstacy ex- 
 ceeds my power of description. She trem- 
 bled violently as she laid her hand on the 
 cage. The bird thought the little fingers
 
 222 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 had something for him, and jumped from 
 his perch to them. The child was a Httle 
 alarmed at his familiarity at first, but when 
 I put some of his seeds in her hand, and 
 opened his cage-door, when he perched on 
 her trembling fingers, and when she saw 
 him eat, she gave cries of delight, and then, 
 as he stood on one of her fingers, and again 
 poured out his song, no words can describe 
 her rapt astonishment and delight. On 
 ceasing his song, he gave that caressing 
 little sound which is peculiar to him, and 
 immediately hopped up to Clara, putting 
 his bill against her lips. Tears continued 
 to flow down her cheeks, and she repeated: 
 ' Leonora, my Leonora !' Upon this Bertha 
 put her arms round my neck, and whispered 
 in her mysterious way : ' The little bird 
 speaks Leonora.' 
 
 " I regard the experiment as entirely
 
 CLAKA HARRINGTON. 223 
 
 successful. Bertha's ecstacy will have re- 
 paid you for all your trouble and care ; but 
 the effect on Clara will be happy and, I 
 trust, permament. I am sure she will take 
 care of the bird, will always see in him a 
 messenger of tenderness and love from her 
 dearest friend ; and as she and Bertha 
 have made me a voluntary promise to 
 attend to him together every morning and 
 evening, at a particular hour (and I can 
 depend on Bertha's faithfulness), this asso- 
 ciated service may help to re-awaken her 
 interest in Bertha herself. 
 
 "Certainly, these piping bullfinches are 
 wonderful creatures, retaining the simpli- 
 city of their bird nature, while they acquire 
 the most finished musical attainments. I 
 do not wonder at Bertha's astonishment, 
 and I fully expect Clara will be roused to
 
 224 CLAEA HARRINGTOIT. 
 
 express to you herself the pleasure you have 
 afforded her." 
 
 A fortnight later, 
 " I was congratulating myself that every- 
 thing was going on well at AYoodlands, when 
 I was suddenly summoned here the day 
 before yesterday, by a note from Clara, 
 written in the greatest anxiety and distress, 
 on Bertha's account. This dear child has 
 a violent attack of inflammation. When I 
 arrived, I found her in bed, her skin burn- 
 ing hot, her eyes glistening, her mind 
 rambling, and her little aching body unable 
 to remain in the same place or posture a 
 moment. I thought her alarmingly ill, and 
 my anxiety about her increased every hour. 
 I found Clara at her bed-side, in a state of 
 distraction, for her grief was increased by
 
 CLAIM HARRINGTON. 225 
 
 the consciousness that slic was herself in 
 part to blame for this illness. 
 
 " It seems that, during Susan's absence 
 for a day, Clara had been seized with one 
 of those fits of abstraction, which have not 
 yet entirely left her, though they are less 
 frequent, and less protracted. Bertha had 
 been left to herself nearly the whole day, 
 wliich happened to be intensely hot, with 
 heary showers of rain ; and while over- 
 heated, had fallen asleep under the cedar- 
 tree during a thunder-shower, and had never 
 changed her wet clothes. The consequences 
 have been two days of great suffering to 
 the child, of extreme anxiety to me, and of 
 intense affliction to Clara, on whom, how- 
 ever, the effect will bo ultimately beneficial; 
 for she is now fully roused to the conviction 
 that, beyond a certain point, there is a 
 selfishness in grief which it is criminal to 
 
 VOL. 1. Q
 
 226 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 indulge ; and all tlie mother's tenderness 
 and anxiety being now awakened in her 
 bosom, she will, I am satisfied, from this 
 time take a mother's charge of her beloved 
 chHd." 
 
 And she did so. From this period, she 
 entered on a new life, in which she advanced 
 uncertainly at first, but with a resolution 
 which added to her bodily and mental 
 strength daily. Trains of painful thought 
 and feeling still, indeed, sometimes made 
 her falter in her course ; but they never 
 stopped it. She paid the most earnest 
 attention to her little girl's education ; 
 and, in order to acquire the power of 
 really performing this duty, she availed 
 herself of the means within her reach for 
 her own improvement. 
 
 Under the guidance of her beloved friend
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 227 
 
 and physician, she engaged herself in a 
 thorough course of self-education, not read- 
 ing for luxury, but profit, nor shrinking 
 from the study even of those severer works 
 which benefit less by the knowledge they 
 communicate, invaluable as it may be, than 
 by the mental vigour which the mastery of 
 them imparts. 
 
 Whether a thought, indistinct, unac- 
 knowledged, passed through her mind that 
 the time might come when these pursuits 
 would be useful to her, it is certain that the 
 objects of her study were sometimes only 
 dimly seen through tearful eyes, and that 
 for a time her trembling hand was unable 
 to work upon them. Her Bertha^s im- 
 provement, however, was the obvious and 
 immediate object of these studies, and in 
 the cultivation and communication of these 
 a most exquisite interchange of love sprang 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 up between mother and cliild. In tliis 
 manner, the autumn and winter passed 
 away peacefully, and not a day closed in on 
 them without bringing the revrard of its 
 useful and conscientious employment in 
 advanced knowledge and strengthened affec- 
 tion. 
 
 Clara steadily refused every invitation to 
 mix with the society of the place. The 
 victim of deception felt too keenly its bitter 
 consequences in her own sad fate to prac- 
 tise it herself. Her only effort with regard 
 to the external world was to attract no 
 notice ; and with no near neighbourhood, 
 and her quiet, unobtrusive mode of life, this 
 was no difficult object to obtain. 
 
 On recovering from sickness, when the 
 improvement is sufficiently advanced, there 
 is something peculiarly refreshing and invi- 
 gorating in the first keen air of returning
 
 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 229 
 
 spring. On those clialkj downs, in the 
 shelter of those wooded hills, the keen air 
 of early spring becomes softened ; and on 
 Clara, who was very much in it, the effect 
 was surprising. As she watched tlie first 
 primroses beginning to clothe the beautiful 
 turf beneath the bare trees, and hailed the 
 appearance of the starry wood-anemone, 
 the colour gradually came back into her 
 own cheek ; and when, as spring advanced, 
 she sat listening to the exultant song of the 
 nightingale, she felt that she was a new 
 creature. 
 
 And now came to her a sweeter voice 
 even than that of the niolitino-alc, — her 
 beloved Leonora's, whose expected return 
 was at length realized; and with that voice 
 mingled Bertha's, and with that again the 
 quiet, cheerful voice of the physician and 
 brother. And those who have never, in
 
 230 CLAEA HAEPJNGTON. 
 
 such dear society, wandered througli the 
 woods of Kent and Surrey, inhaling the 
 perfumed air, and drinking in the strains of 
 song from the triumphant nightingale, can 
 scarcely appreciate the pure pleasures they 
 enjoyed in those lovely spring nights and 
 days. 
 
 And in the enjoyment of such calm hap- 
 piness, increasing in health of body and 
 peace of mind, Clara and her child con- 
 tinued, with no remarkable event to note 
 the progress of time, for five years. Lord 
 Ashford's naDie was rarely mentioned be- 
 tween her friends and herself, and, by 
 degrees, he ceased to write even to Dr. 
 Weston.
 
 CLARA HAEEINGTON. 231 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 *' But my best, worthiest masters/' said the Student 
 Ansehnus, " do you not observe, then, that you are 
 all and sundry corked up in glass bottles, and cannot, 
 for your hearts, walk a hair's breadth." — Hoffman. 
 
 No one can wonder at the concep,tion and 
 prevalence of the doctrine of Manicheeism. 
 The traces of a benevolent Creator are mani- 
 fest and indubitable, but the signs of a 
 divided empire between a good and evil 
 principle are visible on the surface of every 
 kingdom of nature, the physical, the organic, 
 the intellectual, and the moral. Philosophy
 
 232 CLARA HARKINGTOI?-. 
 
 and religion enable ns to look bejoncl tlie 
 surface, and the deeper tlie pliilosopliy and 
 the purer the religion, the clearer and 
 brighter is the light they offer to lead us to 
 the magnificent conception of one uinverse, 
 one intelligence, one all pervading plan^ 
 worked out by diverse means, some appa- 
 rently opposing and clashing, but all really 
 bringing about in the end the undeviatiiig 
 result, designed by goodness, executed by 
 ■wisdom, and secured against miscarriage by 
 Omnipotence. 
 
 If there be anything relating to human 
 beings in whicli the principle of evil is pre- 
 dominant, it is in education. The object of 
 physical education is to develop the bodily 
 frame in such a manner as to produce 
 sound and vigorous health, and the object of 
 mental education is to develop and direct tlic 
 intellectual and moral fcelinirs in such a
 
 CLARA HARFJXGTOX. 233 
 
 manner as to produce a sound and well- 
 regulated mind. 
 
 For the proper development of the 
 bodily frame, there must be a certain supply 
 and adjustment of the physcial agents 
 which excite and maintain the action of the 
 wonderful processes that constitute life, 
 namely : air, light, temperature and food. 
 We shut up the infant in a close room ; 
 make it breathe the impure air of the city ; 
 keep it in the greater part of the day and 
 night, in a high artificial temperature ; send 
 it out occasionally, most inappropriately 
 clothed, into the cold and damp of xhe ex- 
 ternal atmosphere, and habitually gorge it 
 with coarse, stimulating, and even irritating 
 food. The consequence is that the organs 
 arc unduly excited, and pass into unhealthy 
 action, interrupting and deranging the pro- 
 cesses of growth ; preventing the full
 
 234 CLAKA HARRINGTON. 
 
 development of the several parts of the 
 frame in their just order and proportion, 
 diminishing in the same degree the attain- 
 ment of strength and vigor, and thus laying 
 the foundation of positive disease and 
 premature decay. 
 
 The foundation of a sound and healthy 
 mind mast be laid in a sound and healthy 
 body. When the important elements of 
 health and strength are obtained, for the 
 proper culture and direction of the intel- 
 lectual and moral faculties, there must be a 
 certain supply and adjustment of the two 
 great agents, that excite and constitute the 
 state of sentient being, namely : pleasure 
 and pain. These are to the mind what ex- 
 ternal physical agents are to the body, and 
 we abuse the former still more than the 
 latter. The pleasure we give to the infant, as 
 far as it is under our control, we give blindly,
 
 CLARA HARRmGTOI^. 235 
 
 without reference to its quality or degree, 
 aud without regard to the susceptibility 
 of the subject and its influence upon it; and 
 in like manner we presume to inflict pain, 
 without watching or even noting the re-action 
 on the physical processes, or the results on 
 the intellectual and moral states of the 
 sufferer. The consequence is that the moral 
 faculties are unduly or disproportionally 
 excited ; that desires, passions, emotions are 
 produced and fostered, which are mis- 
 chievous, either on account of their excess 
 or their direction ; that false aspirations are 
 formed; that wrong aims and motives are 
 suggested and acted on ; and, in fine, that the 
 mind is perverted, and the heart corrupted. 
 When we consider what a work it is to 
 rear, through infancy to childhood, and 
 through childhood to youth, such a complex 
 and delicate piece of mechanism as the
 
 236 CLARA IIARRIInGTOX. 
 
 human frame, and to develop and direct 
 througli the same periods such powers and 
 aspirations as those of tlie human mind, so 
 as to produce a sound and vigorous body, 
 and an intelligent, disciplined, pure mind, 
 fitted for the performance of the duties of 
 life, and, proportionally, for the communi- 
 cation and reception of happiness ; and 
 when we consider the want of knowledge, 
 the want of skill, the want of perception 
 even of the very object to be aimed at, in 
 those on whom the management of infancy 
 and childhood commonly falls, we cannot 
 wonder at the kind of men and women that 
 at present people the earth. The few wlio 
 chance to come out of the ordeal with an 
 uncrippled body and an unenfeebled mind, 
 generally owe their happier fate to a mother 
 endowed by nature with an unusual propor- 
 tion of sound sense, whose perceptions and
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 237 
 
 impulses have been quickened and guided 
 bj an extraordinary degree of maternal lore. 
 The children of such rare mothers are the 
 salt of the earth. Such a mother certainly 
 Lord Ashford would not have had, even if 
 she had lived to protect and guide him 
 through his infancy and childhood ; but had 
 she been preserved to him, her intelligent 
 and gentle nature would have greatly miti- 
 gated the evils of his lot. Unhappily, how- 
 ever, she died in giving him birth, and 
 during the four years that his father survived 
 her, neither the little girl of three years old, 
 nor the only son and heir to the family title, 
 received from their surviving parent the 
 slightest mark of affection or care. Per- 
 haps their presence reminded him unplea- 
 santly of his neglect of their mother, and 
 of the outbursts of violence which embit- 
 tered and shortened her existence. Little
 
 238 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 Constance was left to the charge of a gover- 
 ness, who happening to be of a kind and 
 sweet disposition, fostered the amiable qua- 
 lities of the child. Gerard fell into the 
 hands of nurses of the ordinary intelligence, 
 and passed through the usual routine of par- 
 rot talk, threats, coaxing, flattery, pampered 
 indulgence, and corporal punishment in the 
 form of slaps, boxes on the ear, and yiolent 
 shakings of the shoulders, after the approved 
 manner of the discipline of common nur- 
 series. By his third and fourth year he 
 began, however, to perceive that he was a 
 personage of consequence ; and by the close 
 of another year, he had learnt that he was 
 born to rank and wealth, and was fully satis- 
 fied that he was greatly superior to the com- 
 mon herd of persons aroimd him, who only 
 lived to serve him, and to obey his impe- 
 rious will. Other points of information
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 239 
 
 had also made a considerable impression on 
 his mind; such as that he was strong, hand- 
 some, healthy, and very much more worthy 
 of admiration in all these respects than his 
 sister Constance, who was pale, delicate, and, 
 in common estimation, rather plain-looking, 
 and the inference he not unnaturally de- 
 duced, was that he had a right to every 
 enjoyment which everything and every 
 person could minister to him ; his sister, 
 her time, her playthings, her submission, 
 her devotion, all included ; a homage which 
 Constance was only too ready to pay him, 
 for she was complying and obliging to every 
 one, and she doated on her brother. 
 
 Under these circumstances, before he had 
 completed his fourth year, the Honourable 
 Master Gerard Ashford had grown into a 
 little tyrant, and such were the fits of un- 
 controllable raire into which he often fell in
 
 240 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 the indulgence of his tyrant powers, that 
 those around him began to be seriously 
 alarmed. The slaps, boxings, and shakings 
 had even less success than formerly ; the sug- 
 gestion of a dark closet, nay, even the hor- 
 rors of a black man that eats up naughty 
 boys, were hardly more effectual ; but now 
 the happy thought occurred, that a " serious 
 nurse" might be of service, consequently he 
 was taught his Catechism, and set to learn 
 some of Dr. Watt's Hymns. The effect 
 was decided. The untameable little rebel 
 began at last to tremble and turn pale, as 
 they taught him to repeat, — 
 
 " There is a dreadful Hell, 
 And everlasting flames ; 
 There sinners must with devils dwell, 
 In darkness, fire, and chains." 
 
 Still the desired result was not obtained ; 
 no progress was made in controlling his
 
 CLAEA IIARRIXGTOX. 241 
 
 violence, or in subduing any evil propen- 
 sity ; the only appreciable effect was that, 
 to all the trouble he had formerly caused 
 them, he now added that of disturbing 
 them at night by waking up with screams 
 of terror, and insisting on lights being 
 brought, and on some one sitting by his side 
 tiU morning. 
 
 All resources were now exhausted, and 
 the comfortable conclusion arrived at, that 
 Master Gerard's was a hopeless case, and 
 that the dreaded spirit, who had been called 
 in to humble and subdue him, had marked 
 him for his ov/n, when the whole establish- 
 ment was broken up by the death of his 
 father, and the poor little sinner became 
 Lord Ashford, a peer of the realm and an 
 hereditary legislator, destined to exercise 
 his high office in due course of years, but, 
 meantime a minor, left, together with his 
 
 YOL. I. R
 
 242 CLAEA HARRIKGTON. 
 
 sister, to the charge of his uncle, General 
 Ashforcl. 
 
 On examining into the affairs of the de- 
 ceased nobleman, thej were found to be in 
 a wretched state, a course of reckless dissi- 
 pation having left the property loaded with 
 debts. The general, a man of rigid justice, 
 set himself to repair the family property, 
 by devoting nearly the whole of the revenues 
 of the estates to the payment of the credi- 
 tors ; and, in order to carry out the frugality 
 which was necessary for this purpose to the 
 fullest extent, he placed the two children in 
 a country house belonging to himself, in the 
 north of England, under the care of a 
 governess, in whom he reposed implicit con- 
 fidence. He had no family himself, and 
 Lady Helen, his wife, did not like children. 
 She was a woman of fashion, much courted 
 in society, and would have found these
 
 CLARA HAREIFGTON. 243 
 
 orphans a great trouble in her own establish- 
 ment. She and the general, therefore, satis- 
 fied themselves that thej did their duty by 
 their charge, in providing them witli so ex- 
 cellent a teacher as Miss Dillworth, in ap- 
 propriating to their use this old mansion- 
 house in a healthy part of the country, 
 where they lived in the simple manner 
 rendered necessary by their father's extra- 
 vagance, and in visiting them every year at 
 a stated time. 
 
 How dreadful is the despotism which is 
 often exercised over children ! Dreadful, 
 for it not only destroys their present happi- 
 ness, but often renders them incapable of 
 enjoying happiness in their future lives. 
 None but those who have witnessed or felt 
 its witliering, crushing power, can estimate 
 the corrupting influence on a child's nature 
 of a life of perpetual fear and depression. 
 
 R 2
 
 244 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 The most selfish spoiliog and indulgence is 
 innoxious compared with it. No cliild can 
 long remain under such an influence without 
 haying its faculties crippled, and its nature 
 vitiated. 
 
 Miss Dillworth's goyernment was a cruel 
 tyranny, and at the same time a pure des- 
 potism, for she had contriyed by her specious 
 manners and self-confidence to create so high 
 an opinion of herself in the minds of her 
 employers, that they never interfered with 
 lier. She accordingly produced on her two 
 pupils in an unmitigated degree the conse- 
 quences of such a treatment, the effects 
 difi*ering in each according to their dif- 
 ferent characters. Constance was one of 
 those gentle, modest, timid children, who 
 require encouragement and a kind of foster- 
 ing tenderness to develop the beautiful 
 qualities that lie buried in the lieart. She
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 245 
 
 was most afFectionatc in nature, full of 
 reverence, and almost over-an^ioiis to do 
 right. To resist or to disobey, never so 
 much as occurred to her. She was intelli- 
 gent, and delighted to learn. The little 
 Lord Ash ford was of a totally dijBferent 
 nature, and as has been seen, had already 
 been rendered violent, proud, and selfish ; 
 but it is difficult to say for which of these 
 two children Miss Dillworth's system was 
 the worst. 
 
 The house was old-fashioned and gloomy, 
 and the grounds round it were dreary, espe- 
 cially in winter At that season the gover- 
 ness would sit close to a good fire, enveloped 
 in a shawl, and it was some compensation 
 for the martyrdom of saying a lesson to 
 her that it brought the children near the 
 warmth.
 
 246 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 " Answer directly, Lord Ashford. Geni- 
 tive plural pf musa," screams Miss Dillwortb. 
 The little lord is held tightly by the point 
 of his chin all this time. His answer is to 
 pout his lips out beyond his nose ; he re- 
 ceives a box on the ear, staggers off as far 
 as the door at one thrust, and is ordered to 
 the dark garret till he can say it. 
 
 "What are you crying there for. Miss 
 Ashford V next exclaims the lady in a loud 
 harsh voice. " Come and do your vulgar 
 fractions directly." 
 
 Constance was sitting at the farthest pos- 
 sible distance from the fire, on a high wooden 
 stool without a back, looking blue with cold, 
 her feet in a wooden machine called stocks ; 
 stooping from weakness in the back, trem- 
 bling and crying with pity for her poor 
 brother. She obeys instantly, and the pale
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 247 
 
 delicate girl stands before her governess, 
 gazing into her sharp black eyes with a kind 
 of fascinated stare. 
 
 " When the numerator is double in yalue 
 to the denominator, what is the value of the 
 vulgar fraction in integers 1 " 
 
 A bewildered look, and " I don't quite 
 know,'' is the answer. 
 
 " Do vou mean to tell me," shouts Miss 
 Dillworth, seizing her by the arm with a 
 grasp that makes the blood rush to her 
 cheeks from the pain, " do you mean to tell 
 me, madam, that you pretend not to know 
 the value of twenty-four-twelfths V 
 
 "' Tweuty-four-twelfths \ The value ^— 
 AVait for one moment. I will try. The 
 integer and the numerator \ Oh yes, the 
 denominator. One minute longer ! " 
 
 After being shaken violently, and struck 
 several times, Constance is seated with a
 
 248 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 slate to work the question. But the figures 
 swim before her eyes ; the pencil falls from 
 her trembling hand ; she has no power in 
 her brain to comprehend. 
 
 To be accused of carelessness, stupidity, 
 and wilful obstinacy follow in turn. Then 
 would come long and severe punishments, 
 bitter tears and lamentations, confused, 
 hopeless efforts to discover what course to 
 take to avert such misery in future ; despair 
 and a longing for death, frequent hopes that 
 the governess would inflict some such serious 
 hurt on her as to induce inquiry on the part 
 of her relations, some vague ideas of running 
 away, and once or twice a thought of drown- 
 ing herself, but never a determination to in- 
 form her uncle and aunt of what she endured. 
 If this seems straugo and unnatural, let a 
 reference be made to the annals of oppres- 
 sion all the world over ; above all, to tlie
 
 CLARA HARRINGTONT. 249 
 
 condition of slaves. There is a power ia 
 extreme tyranny which absolutely paralyses 
 its victims, and takes from them even the 
 thought of resistance. This is only too 
 certainly true. The results to Constance 
 Ashford, confirmed by six wretched years of 
 such a life as this, were an absence of intel- 
 lectual progress, a moral cowardice, an ap- 
 pearance of insincerity induced by a nervous 
 trepidation (though wonderful to say, she 
 never lost her truthfulness) and a total want 
 of self-confidence ; evils which it cost her 
 years of discipline and struggle to surmount, 
 and which she never thoroughly conquered, 
 while her pliysical frame was still more 
 injured, and a lasting delicacy of health, 
 with frequent and severe suffering were her 
 lot through life. 
 
 On her brother the results were, morally, 
 still more pernicious, though his strong phy-
 
 250 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 sical frame escaped comparatively uninjured. 
 He resisted his tyrant often with full effect, 
 and many a time returned with rage the 
 blows he received, but being in the end 
 generally conquered by the superior strength 
 of his antagonist, tlie passions of hatred and 
 vengeance were aroused in him. He longed 
 for the power to be a tyrant in his turn ; 
 the violence of his temper increased, and 
 when the severe lectures he received after 
 these outbreaks j)roduced any effect, it was 
 merely that of slavish fear, grafted on the 
 former lessons of his serious nurse. His ter- 
 ror alone, and in the dark was dreadful, and 
 it was no unusual thing for Constance to 
 steal out of her own room, and to sit by his 
 bed-side durin^f the lonn^ cold winter nmhts 
 till he was fast asleep, at the risk of being 
 terribly punished had she been discovered. 
 •'Don't go, Constance, don't go away,*'
 
 CLAEA HAKRINGTOK 251 
 
 the poor child would whisper softlj, if she, 
 fancying he was asleep, tried to withdraw 
 her hand from his grasp. " I shall hear 
 the chains rattling if you go ;" and then 
 Constance would settle herself again, 
 though exhausted with fatigue and tremb- 
 ling at the thought of her dreaded gover- 
 ness. 
 
 " Those are the flames of hell," whis- 
 pered he one day to Constance in a 
 terrified voice, as they were gazing together 
 at a gorgeous crimson sunset. 
 
 It was the peculiar misfortune of this 
 child that even his sister's pure and devoted 
 affection produced a demoralizing effect 
 upon his mind, for her services and sacri- 
 fices simply increased his selfishness. For 
 her suffering, even though incurred for his 
 sake, he cared nothing if he himself escaped 
 punishment ; she never had a moment's
 
 252 CLARA HARRINGTOK 
 
 peace if he were in trouble, but he could 
 beat his hoop or play ^Yith his dog as 
 merrily as ever though she was shut up 
 fasting in a cold room, or shedding bitter 
 tears over her tasks. 
 
 A plan which Miss Dillwortli hit upon 
 to save herself trouble was probably sug- 
 gested by the extreme sympathy on the 
 part of Constance. It had been ordered 
 by the General that his nephew should 
 begin Latin when he was scarcely five 
 years old, and still unable to read English. 
 The abortive eiTorts to make him compre- 
 hend the declension of a Latin noun were 
 repeated without success day after day, 
 till at last a 'cane was applied to the 
 shoulders of tlic writhing, screaming child. 
 Constance's tears, anguish, and prayers first 
 brought upon herself an ample share of the 
 chastisement, and afterwards suggested the
 
 CLARA HAEPJXGTO^. 253 
 
 plan of throwing tlie responsibility of her 
 brother's lessons npon her. It was decreed 
 that she should teach him, and that if ho 
 was not perfect slic should be punished. 
 The consequence was that Constance's time 
 and energy were so occupied about Latin, 
 that she learned it and scarcely anything 
 else, while her brother learnt nothing ; for 
 all that could be done for him she did, and 
 all that he could not or would not do she 
 suffered for. The increased severity to 
 which she Avas thus subjected was probably 
 the means of bringing this miserable period 
 of her life to a close. Some rumours 
 reached the General, set afloat by the 
 servants, that occasioned him to discharge 
 Miss Dillworth, and to remove the two 
 children to his own house in Oxfordshire. 
 
 Their life was now at least peaceful, and 
 after the thraldom they had escaped, it
 
 254 CLARA HAERIXGTON". 
 
 seemed as if thej were in a heaven upon 
 earth ; but still, in comparison with more 
 favoured children, little was done for them 
 to make them happj. General Ashford 
 was a stern, reserved man, and did not 
 take much notice of the children. Lady 
 Helen simply saw that their comforts were 
 properly attended to, engaged masters of 
 the ordinary accomplishments for Con- 
 stance, and advised that the little lord 
 should be sent to school to be prepared 
 for Eton ; all this being done, she left 
 Constance pretty much to herself, and when 
 visiting in the neighbourhood or absent in 
 town she confided her to the care of the 
 housekeeper. Constance's life was probably 
 saved by this new home, for, delicate as she 
 always continued to be, her improvement 
 in health and strength was soon most 
 striking, and when young Lord Ashford
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 255 
 
 returned for liis holidays he had ceased to 
 scowl and stare like a maniac, and had 
 assumed the aristocratic appearance and 
 manners of a young nobleman in the 
 capacity of an English school-boy. But 
 the change in both was only on the surface. 
 None of the evils, intellectual and moral, 
 which had been inflicted on Constance by 
 her governess were mitigated in the slightest 
 degree ; and her brother had become a 
 tyrant over little boys, and was noted 
 for pride and violence among his com- 
 panions. His selfishness towards his sister 
 was also precisely the same, and his depen- 
 dence on her help as great as ever. He 
 did not scruple to occupy her time, curtail 
 her hours of recreation, and get her blamed 
 for inattention to her own lessons while 
 she worked in this way for him. When 
 at home, also, he was a continual source of
 
 256 CLARA HARPJKGTOX. 
 
 anxiety to her from liis carelessness to his 
 uncle's Tvdshes, his iin punctuality, his lazi- 
 ness in the morning, his taking his own 
 pleasure at his own time, instead of attend- 
 ing to the requisitions of the family ; and 
 many sleepless nights did she spend in 
 contriving devices for screening him from 
 the consequences of his various faults. 
 
 During the whole of this time she w^ould 
 have been astonished if any one liad 
 noticed her disinterested conduct. She 
 did not know, 'indeed, that she was pur- 
 suing any course of action at all. She 
 scarcely felt that she was an individual 
 being, except that, sometimes in the dreary 
 hours of the night, her dissatisfaction with 
 herself, with her petty cares and aimless 
 life, would force upon her imagination 
 some of her brother's former terrors ; when 
 she would tremble and turn cold at the
 
 CLARA HARRINGT02T. 257 
 
 idea of deatli and what miglit succeed it. 
 She had no tender mother, no sympathizing 
 friend to whom she could open her fearful 
 heart, or from whom she could ask help 
 and comfort. It would have been difficult 
 for her, humble-minded as she was, to pour 
 out her thoughts and feelings even to a 
 mother or friend ; but under the circum- 
 stances in which she was placed no mortal 
 knew them. 
 
 There occurred a break in this sad and 
 chequered life which may have had more 
 influence for good upon it than so trifling 
 a circumstance is usually supposed to be ca- 
 pable of affording. It was a short season of 
 gaiety. Constance was asked to spend the 
 Christmas vacation with a family distantly 
 related to that of the Ashfords at their 
 country residence. It vras a gay and 
 aristocratic neighbourliood, and she sud- 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 CLARA HARRINGT0J7. 
 
 denlj found herself engaged in a round of 
 parties, dances, and festivities. Without 
 being pretty, she was very elegant in her 
 whole appearance and manner, and there 
 was beauty in her gentle and sweet 
 expression, though not in her features. 
 She became popular, was courted and 
 admired, and the novelty and surprise 
 inspired her with a joy that was almost 
 overwhelming. She became the liveliest 
 and gayest in the circle. But even before 
 the close of her visit her brother began to 
 poison her pleasure with his selfish require- 
 ments. He was preparing for Oxford, 
 and wanted her assistance ; she returned 
 home and resumed her labours for him ; 
 her place in the dance was filled by 
 others, but she was long remembered and 
 regretted. 
 
 She was twenty when her brother went
 
 CLARA HARRmGTOIT. 259 
 
 to Oxford, and she might now have spent 
 much of her time in society with her uncle 
 and aunt, had not her uncertain health 
 unfitted her for a life of gaiety. The 
 General, who had never been ill in his life, 
 was so much annoyed whenever she could 
 not fulfil an engagement, that by degrees 
 she declined all invitations, and when the 
 spring returned she begged to be permitted 
 to remain alone in the country, instead of 
 going to town. There was considerable 
 opposition to this request, and had she not 
 had a motive for perseverance beyond 
 herself, she might not have succeeded in 
 her plan ; but she knew that her brother 
 had already contrived to exceed the sum 
 allowed him at College, and she was glad 
 to be saved the expense of a London 
 season, in order that she might have the 
 
 s 2
 
 260 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 means of helping him out of her own not 
 very ample income. 
 
 The morning of the departure of the 
 family for London came. A large party 
 of country neighbours, visitors for some 
 days in the house, had taken leave of the 
 General and Lady Helen. As their car- 
 riages rolled away one after another, each 
 seemed to remove a load of weariness from 
 Constance. At length she stood watching 
 the carriage that took them also away, her 
 eyes following them through the whole 
 extent of the long avenue ; and it was 
 some time after their departure that she 
 found herself almost unconsciously in the 
 library. 
 
 Never before had she felt so free and 
 unfettered. She was alone ; her brother 
 was not near her ; her uncle and aunt
 
 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 261 
 
 were gone ; slie was witlioiit any depress- 
 ing influence of any kind, and a feeling new 
 and strange came over her. As she looked 
 round the room, and saw all its treasures 
 at her command, she seemed to spring up 
 like some elastic body previously pressed 
 down by a heavy weight. She had been 
 often in this room before, but the world of 
 thought and feeling whicli was there, and 
 with which it was in her power to make 
 herself acquainted, had never before struck 
 her. 
 
 There are moments when, without any 
 very apparent cause, we suddenly awake 
 to a consciousness that an epoch of our 
 life is closed. Into this unusual state of 
 self-reflection Constance had unexpectedly 
 fallen. The main events of her gentle 
 course passed in memory before her. Her 
 childhood full of tears ; her youth without
 
 262 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 joy or brightness ; lier womanhood, on 
 which she was now entering, presenting to 
 her no interest or aim ; and finding her 
 but ill prepared for the discharge of any 
 serious duty in life. She was, indeed, pure, 
 humble, resigned, patient, fearful of nothing 
 so much as of giving offence or of inflicting 
 pain, and finding the truest pleasure in 
 ministering to others ; yet had she been 
 capable of perceiving the truth, she could 
 not have escaped the suffering of remorse ; 
 for she would have been painfully conscious 
 that the sole result of her life was mis- 
 chievous; that her cares and toils for her 
 brother were so many cruelties to him, 
 injuring his character irreparably. As it 
 was, she by no means felt any degree of 
 self-satisfaction in her view of the past ; 
 she felt that her life was passing away in 
 a course of misapplied energy, but to this
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 263 
 
 she was resigned, because life was to her 
 indiyiduallj of little value. Such a cha- 
 racter would indeed be the happiest result 
 of education if this world were such as 
 ascetics describe it, — a world where plea- 
 sures are offered to be refused ; where 
 senses are created to be crushed ; where 
 intelligence is imparted to be neglected, 
 and where aspirations that raise men only 
 below the angels are fostered to be disap- 
 pointed. 
 
 A new world had now opened to Con- 
 stance. Her first impulse on finding herself 
 mistress of her time, with a fine library at 
 her command, was to take down some for- 
 bidden works of fiction, but an unconscious 
 impulse of delicacy restrained her; and at 
 the same moment. Chance, one of God's 
 angels, directed her eye to books of a 
 grayer but not less forbidden cast, though
 
 2f)4 CLAEA HAERINGTOX. 
 
 no one had ever tliouglit it ^vortli while to 
 proscribe them to her. She began to read, 
 and here, hours, days, and weeks passed, 
 while her mind awoke as from a long sleep. 
 New and wonderful things were made clear, 
 and as it were, great scales fell from her 
 eyes. She rose early to read ; she break- 
 fasted alone, and with thoughts undis- 
 turbed, and then wandered among the early 
 flowers of spring, and enjoyed the beauty 
 of the gardens and woods which the people 
 of fcishion desert for crowded London at 
 the most lovely time of the year. Here, 
 without any companions but the new ideas 
 awakened in her, the beauty of nature first 
 spoke to her heart. It seemed to her that 
 she had before " eyes that saw not, neither 
 did they comprehend." She was able, in 
 after life, to remember the very moment 
 when, walking near a wood of larches
 
 CLARA HAKRINGTON. 265 
 
 and birdies, the exquisite perfume of the 
 newlj awakened leaves first attracted her 
 attention, and ^ylien she felt " this is 
 beautiful." She returned to her books, and 
 the days wore on till the sunset called her 
 out to admire and rejoice, and again till 
 late at night she read and thought, and 
 then slept peacefully to awake to new 
 thoughts and enjoyments, and a fresh day. 
 
 The newly-awakened mind and heart 
 were ready for love, and love came. Her 
 brother visited her, and brought with him 
 a college companion, Mr. Grey, a man of 
 wit, accomplishment, and various infor- 
 mation ; considerably the senior of Lord 
 Ashford indeed, a widower, and the father 
 of two children. He had entered himself 
 at the University in order to take a degree ; 
 as often happens with men of his standing 
 in life, in order to accomplish some object
 
 266 CLARA HARRINGTOX. 
 
 connected with a profession or other views 
 in life. He had been struck with the sel- 
 fishness of his friend's feelings with regard 
 to his sister, and the interest this had 
 awakened increased into admiration when 
 he had spent some days in her company, 
 and very soon into love, which was returned 
 with all the devotion of her tender nature. 
 No sooner did her brother perceive this 
 growing attachment than all his jealous 
 feelings were roused ; he could not brook 
 any rival in the affection and service he 
 had all his life considered to be his right, 
 and when Mr. Grey became an avowed 
 suitor for her hand his decided opposition 
 was proclaimed, and he took a dislike to 
 his former friend that soon amounted to 
 hatred. Mr. Grey was not a man of rank, 
 but was well connected, and was much 
 sought in fashionable society; still the
 
 CLAEA HAERINGTON. 267 
 
 General and Ladj Helen declared the 
 matcli to be below their niece's proper 
 expectations, and Constance, who had 
 hitherto been little esteemed, now seemed 
 of immense importance in the family. 
 She, accustomed to sorrow and self-sacri- 
 fice, was ready to yield, but Mr. Grey 
 would not relinquish her, and at last wrung 
 a reluctant consent, or rather a gloomy 
 permission from the uncle. Lady Helen 
 was inexorable, and Lord Ashford declared 
 he would never forgive nor see his sister 
 again. She was married from a friend's 
 house, her heart torn by opposite and 
 contending feelings. Lord Ashford was 
 present, though unknown to her. Li his 
 restless rage he could not stay at home, 
 but concealed himself in the church with 
 a half purpose to forbid the marriage 
 proceeding ; but he allowed it to pass,
 
 268 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 because lie knew lie could only have 
 delayed it, and could not prevent it. 
 
 The consequences of this marriage to 
 Lord Ashford were what might have been 
 foreseen. He became in everything the 
 very opposite to his former friend ; and 
 because Mr. Grey was liberal in politics 
 and religion he declared himself of the 
 opposite party, and immediately after 
 taking his degree, went abroad with Lord 
 >Strathfinnan, a Scotch peer. It was on 
 his return to England that he met Dr. 
 "Weston and his sister Madame Castelli, in 
 the Dover coach, and that he saw for the 
 first time that young girl who was destined 
 to exert so great an influence over his fate. 
 He lost sight of her for a few years, but 
 in the interval he formed an acquaintance 
 with Leonora in Italy, and his imagination 
 became excited about Clara by observing the
 
 CLARl HARRINGTON. 269 
 
 tender interest which Madame Castelli felt 
 for her. He found himself frequently and 
 involuntarily musing over her remarkable 
 beauty and grace. 
 
 It was a natural consequence that he 
 should seek her out on his return to 
 London. His fancy soon ripened into 
 an uncontrollable passion, and he quickly 
 perceived that it was returned with ardent 
 devotion. He did not scruple to make her 
 offers of such a nature as a man of rank 
 conceives to be the only befitting one to 
 a person in her station. But he found to 
 his astonishment that he had to deal with 
 a character firm in principle, though the 
 heart was tender and devoted, and the 
 spirit guileless as a child. He struggled in 
 vain with his passion ; he contended in 
 vain with licr resolution. At length he 
 resorted to deception, blinded to the
 
 270 CLAKA HARRINGTON. 
 
 heinous nature of liis action by sophistries. 
 He pretended to repent and was forgiven. 
 He arranged the means of a false marriage, 
 and became to Clara an adored husband; 
 while she, by her lovely nature and her 
 fascinating grace and beauty, "^established 
 an influence on him that was strong as life 
 itself. 
 
 Meanwhile, his sister, Mrs. Grey, had 
 enjoyed a few years of happiness, which 
 would have been perfect but for one alloy 
 — her husband's thoughtless extravagance. 
 In vain she exhorted him to greater pru- 
 dence, in vain she reminded him he was 
 a father. She was too yielding to resist 
 strongly. She loved him so much that she 
 could not believe he was wrong, and the 
 end was, that in the fourth year of their 
 marriage she was left by his sudden death 
 in what at first appeared to be beggary.
 
 CLARA HAERINGTOK-. 271 
 
 All her own small fortune had been spent 
 as well as his. 
 
 She was obliged to rouse herself from 
 the grief at his loss bj the pressure of the 
 difficulties that surrounded her and the 
 thought of his two children. For their 
 sakes she struggled against sorrow. A 
 cruel letter from her brother assisted to 
 awaken her failing energy. He reminded 
 her of her obstinate opposition to his 
 opinion in her marriage, pointed the moral 
 in her present punishment ; but offered her 
 a home, with the condition that she came 
 alone and left Mr. Grey's children to the 
 charity of Mr. Grej's relations. 
 
 From the hour that she read this letter it 
 seemed as if a new power was breathed into 
 her ; the very extremity of her grief built 
 up a strength within her. She shook off 
 the bonds which had so long enslaved her
 
 272 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 and the seed sown in her solitary thoiiglits 
 and studies sprang up into life under tlie 
 shade of the wino-s of the ^rcat iinoel of 
 Pain. She felt that she had a soul, that 
 she was a child of God, a free spirit in the 
 universe, an heir of His eternity. She put 
 order into her affairs, collected out of the 
 wrecks of the fortune that had been 
 squandered a very small income, without 
 selling the estate, which, by good manage- 
 ment, she expected to redeem for the 
 children, took a cottage near it in the 
 village of Shirley, and there devoted herself 
 to their education with all the love and 
 care of a mother. 
 
 Lord Ashford declared that since she had 
 rejected his last and highly generous offer, 
 he would never make her another over- 
 ture, nor would he ever assist her, what- 
 ever might be her necessity. Assistance
 
 CLARA HARRmGTON. 273 
 
 slie never needed, nor would she Lave 
 accepted it from liim, but to affection her 
 heart was always open, and as time and 
 grief soften hard hearts, so it was that his 
 softened towards her. He could not live 
 under such an influence as that of Clara, 
 nor feel a love so tender as he in truth 
 did feel for her without being made a 
 better man, and in his happiest moments 
 with her, his thoughts often turned to the 
 sister who had fostered his infancy and 
 childhood, and been the comfort of his 
 youth. He was humbled also by his po- 
 sition as to Clara. In spite of all the 
 sophistications by which he contrived to 
 persuade himself that he was doing nothing 
 really inconsistent with honour when he 
 deceived her by a false marriage, but that 
 on the contrary, by saving her from any 
 guilt by this deception, and taking it all 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 CLAEA HAERINGTOIT. 
 
 on himself, lie was practising a sort of 
 chivalrous deed, yet in his secret heart he 
 felt that he was no longer the pattern of 
 pure propriety which he desired to be. 
 By degrees he and Constance began an 
 amicable intercourse once more. The kindly 
 feeling haying begun, it was preserved by 
 her increasing strength of character which 
 resisted his efforts to domineer over her, 
 and at last he found that in all his 
 troubles and vexations it was to her he 
 resorted for help and comfort. A new 
 interest also sprang up for him in his 
 visits to her. Charles Grey, her step-son, 
 whom with his sister Ellinor, she had edu- 
 cated with the greatest care, repaid her 
 with all the affection of a warm heart and 
 fine nature. He inherited the best and 
 most noble parts of his father's character, 
 and his watchful educator saved him from
 
 CLAKA HARHiNGTON. 275 
 
 falling into the faults and errors of it ; 
 and whatever may have been the attrac- 
 tion which the father formerly exercised 
 over Lord Ashford in their days of friend- 
 ship, the son now appeared to possess the 
 same, for Lord Ashford became strongly 
 attached to him, and formed a resolution 
 which he kept, of providing for his future 
 education in a manner suitable to his birth. 
 Little Bertha was born about this time, 
 and Lord Ashford's marriage with the 
 Honourable Miss Grant of Strathfinnan (a 
 great heiress) soon followed. He married 
 her, persuading himself that he was only 
 doing what was his duty towards Mrs. Grey, 
 in making himself master of this immense 
 property, as his own was as little as a peer's 
 could be. He said that as he had others 
 to provide for, he was bound to have wealth 
 at his command. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 CLARA HARRINGTOIT. 
 
 Real and inevitable sorrows soon poured 
 in upon him. He more and more needed 
 the help of Constance, and she sometimes left 
 her peaceful home to visit him, but her influ- 
 ence could not control him. His character 
 became harsh, his temper resumed its vio- 
 lence, and his old tendency to bigotry and 
 intolerance once more burst out and gained 
 the mastery.
 
 CLARA UAKEmCTOX. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " But they 
 Pursued their serious folly as of old." 
 
 Shelley. 
 
 It was the spring season in London, and 
 a period when it happened that the sub- 
 ject of public morals in connection with 
 education, was much discussed, both in pri- 
 vate and in the Houses of Parliament. 
 There had been a debated going on for some
 
 278 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 time on tlie question, and tlie members of 
 the House of Lords had listened with more 
 than ordinary attention to the speech of a 
 peer whose well known spotlessness of cha- 
 racter and strictness of religious principle 
 made him an authority of considerable weight 
 on the subject in question. 
 
 Lord Ashford had argued that education 
 should not be given to the many ; that to 
 confer it on them would lead to the inevi- 
 table violation of the principles of nature, 
 morality, and religion. In classical anti- 
 quity, he said, in the great republics of 
 Greece and Rome, wherein every man was 
 a citizen, the order of society had required 
 the institution of slavery. "Were we now, 
 in this free and Christian nation, prepared 
 to advocate a return to so demoralising an 
 institution '? Yet, educate the masses, and 
 to this we must resort. If all are educated,
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 279 
 
 whence are to come the hewers of wood and 
 the drawers of water ? The great attributes 
 of humanity, the sense of honour, the love of 
 fame, the pursuit of glory — these are all 
 inconsistent with servile occupations. The 
 order of nature had from the beginning, 
 appointed different castes or degrees of rank 
 and possession. To one it had been given 
 to rule, to others to obey. To one to inherit 
 name and wealth ; to others to toil. So it 
 had ever been, so it would always be. Nay, 
 the progress of civilization enhanced and in- 
 creased these diversities, by the increase of 
 numbers to the masses of mankind. " To 
 educate the masses, then,^^ his lordship pro- 
 ceeded in a tone of deep feeling, "is but 
 to awaken wants, to excite aspirations which 
 will but add mental suffering to their pre- 
 sent hardships, and moral responsibility to 
 their present limited sphere of duty. As
 
 280 CLARA HARRINGTON 
 
 long as the many are totally ignorant, their 
 pleasures must be simple, and not difficult 
 of attainment, and their virtues easy ; but 
 the moment they know more, more will be 
 required of them. Beware, then," con- 
 tinued he, " of awakening faculties which 
 can never be exercised, of exciting desires 
 w^hich can never be gratified, of squandering 
 ten talents on those to whom nature had 
 never intended to give even one, lest you 
 bring millions, of whom without your ill- 
 judged zeal nothing would have been ex- 
 pected, under the dreadful doom which shall 
 be pronounced on those who have neglected 
 to improve the treasure committed to their 
 charge, and are sentenced to outer darkness, 
 "where is weeping and gnashing of teeth." 
 
 A very dull evening party was drawing 
 to a close at his house, in Grosvenor Square, 
 when Lord Ashford, after attending to his
 
 CLARA HARRINGTOlf/ 281 
 
 parliamentary duties, entered tlie drawing- 
 room ; and his arrival was liailed with 
 satisfaction by the few who had not yet left 
 it for gayer circles, for few men could talk 
 better or be better company, when he 
 chose, than his lordship. But notwith- 
 standing this, and the prettiness and live- 
 liness of Lady Ashford, tbeir parties were 
 almost always dull. Most of the clever 
 men in town, and the most distinguished 
 persons in almost every class, were to be 
 met with there. Some of the wittiest things 
 were frequently said in their rooms; the 
 best and most recliercM dinners, and the 
 finest wines in London, were at their table; 
 the most beautiful engravings, the newest 
 books, lay about the drawing-rooms, and 
 the suites of rooms themselves were fur- 
 nished and arrayed in the most fashionable 
 and costly style; and yet every one felt
 
 282 CLAEA HARRINGTON. 
 
 oppressed while striving to the utmost to 
 do and saj the very best. 
 
 Any man of sufficient importance in 
 society, who was quite sure of the roundness 
 of his period, and the sharpness of his point, 
 and felt that the moment to let his arrow 
 fly had arrived, and that he was in the best 
 possible mood to aim it — any man thus 
 quite sure of himself, was equally sure of 
 having brought himself forward on the best 
 possible theatre, — his wit would be received 
 and recorded. But, alas ! for the unhappy 
 wight, whose claim to attention was not 
 recognized, whose humour did not flow fast 
 enough, or whose courage faltered ; no 
 word of help or smile of encouragement 
 would be put forward to his succour. In 
 his misery would he be left. He might 
 even be required to explain the meaning 
 and object of his joke. But, in fact, an
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 283 
 
 abortiye effort was very rarely made, for all 
 small talk or small wit was killed at once, 
 like the weakly children of the Spartans, by 
 the hard treatment it received. Lord Ash- 
 ford's rooms only sheltered the strong. It 
 is true there were exceptions, but only in 
 favour of persons of the highest rank ; they, 
 indeed, were privileged to be as dull and 
 stupid as possible. 
 
 Mrs. Dalton, Lady Ashford's sister, was 
 remarkable for an acute perception of the 
 ludicrous. She was perfectly unsparing of 
 the feelings of any one whatever; not to be 
 daunted herself; possessed of humour 
 almost amounting to wit, and of a flow of 
 talk in a Scotch accent, which she pur- 
 posely heightened and so managed as to 
 make her appear the more piquant and 
 original. She alone was enough to terrify 
 any ordinary beginner in the art of conver-
 
 284 CLARA HARKINGTON. 
 
 sation, and most mercilessly did she run 
 down any unlucky aspirant who happened 
 to do or say a foolish thing. The most 
 audacious and impudent roues have been 
 known to turn pale and falter if they 
 chanced to feel her eye fixed on them. The 
 result was, that between Lord Ashford's 
 moroseness and Mrs. Dalton's satire, weak 
 human nature was but ill at ease around 
 that dinner-table and in that evening circle. 
 Perhaps there was something chilling, too, 
 in the very rooms tliemselves. Everything 
 was in admirable taste, and perfectly correct 
 and handsome; but how different was the 
 effect of the whole to that of the little room 
 where we first saw Clara. There was, 
 indeed, no bad taste in the more splendid 
 rooms, but there was no grace. 
 
 Then there was never any music. Lord 
 Ashford said he had no taste for music;
 
 CLARA PIARRINGTON. 285 
 
 perhaps lie dreaded lest some tone should 
 awaken a chord that would have thrilled 
 too painfully. There was nothing ever 
 going forward at these parties except whist, 
 played with a solemnity and skill which 
 made every one dread to pass near the 
 awful, ill-tempered looking quartet. There 
 might be a few sets of ecarte players ; but 
 they played and betted very higli. Any- 
 thing trifling or merry was never heard or 
 thought of in that house. No young 
 people were ever known to be guilty of 
 flirtations there. Nay, it is said that a 
 party at Lady Ashford's had been fatal to 
 more than one contemplated match, — the 
 young lovers having got so chilled, and 
 been made so uncomfortable, that they gave 
 it up by mutual consent. 
 
 Lady Ashford had the constitutional 
 Scotch bashfulness, though, of course, she
 
 286 CLARA HARRINGT0I7. 
 
 was too well-bred to indulge it; and was 
 not without a slight, but verj slight, taint 
 of Scotch formality and awkwardness. She 
 had, perhaps, less real feeling than Lord 
 Ashford; but they knew nothing of each 
 others feelings in any way. They had 
 never descended together into the depths of 
 any emotion. They only lived on the sur- 
 face of life, and went on in a straight, un- 
 deviating track. She was extremely cold 
 in manner, and never expressed pain on any 
 subject. The greatest extent of manifesta- 
 tion she ever evinced was a momentary 
 flush when Lord Ashford said severe and 
 bitter things, which he was apt to do to his 
 less favoured associates. He was never in 
 the least degree unkind or harsh to her. 
 She might have had one real feeling, — a 
 tenderness for her little girl, of five years 
 old ; but Lord Ashford so constantly
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON-. 287 
 
 thwarted all her plans of education, so took 
 all the control out of her hand, that she 
 was obliged to shelter herself in as much 
 indifference as she could muster. She 
 never attempted to oppose him, and this 
 tended to increase the natural coldness of 
 her manner. 
 
 Her little girl, Matilda, was of quite a 
 different character ; indeed, she was the 
 striking and onlj contrast to everything else 
 in or about the house. Strong, robust, per- 
 fectly healthy, and uncontrollably self- 
 willed, loving, trusting, fearless, she broke 
 through all restraints and all decorum. 
 Had she been in the least degree timid or 
 nervous. Lord Ashford would probably 
 have cared little about her at that age, or 
 would have been severe to her, as he was to 
 every one else. But the very few times 
 that he was angry before her, she at first
 
 288 CLAKA HARKINGTON. 
 
 lauglied, thinking it was a joke, and then 
 seriously scolded him for it. She loved 
 him far more than her mother, and he 
 doated on her. Even he was made happy 
 by her mirth, and her love was so precious 
 to him, that if she happened to appear care- 
 less or indij0ferent to him, it put him out of 
 spirits. 
 
 It will not be wondered at that little 
 Matilda was not easily to be managed by 
 servants, or any one else who attempted it. 
 The only person to whom she was in the 
 least obedient, except her father — for of 
 her mother she was totally careless — was 
 Charles Grey, who was now about fifteen, and 
 second in his regard, though at an immense 
 distance, only to Matilda herself. Lord 
 Ashford had a horror of nursery maids, and 
 still greater antipathy to governesses, from 
 recollections of his own wretched childhood;
 
 CLAEA HAERINGTON. 289 
 
 SO that Matilda was almost always with 
 himself; and it was a strange contrast to 
 see that joyous, merry, round face, with its 
 large wide-open eyes, that looked like day- 
 light itself, sporting about the hard, stern 
 man, who sat brooding over his painful 
 existence. When he was out, Matilda was 
 generally in the drawing-room ; and there 
 she was on this evening on which we intro- 
 duce the reader to Grosvenor Square. 
 
 The moment Lord Ashford entered the 
 room, the little girl, who had refused to let 
 Charles take her up-stairs, because she knew 
 her father was to speak in the House, and 
 she chose to see ]iim after it, ran to him, 
 placed her hand in his, and at the first op- 
 portunity climbed on his knee. Lord Ash- 
 ford was in good humour with himself. He 
 had made a speech, with which he was well 
 satisfied, and now he felt it agreeable to 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 CLARA HARRINGTON". 
 
 enjoy his own thoughts while he played with 
 Matilda, and " to fight his battles o'er 
 again," with the conscious pride of an 
 orator. But he was destined to be dis- 
 turbed out of his agreeable reverie, and 
 that by a gentleman who was not easily to 
 be put down, being so exceedingly well 
 stocked with self-conceit, that it was im- 
 possible to make him conceive that his 
 vapoury talk and rambling stories, were not 
 full of wit and cleverness. 
 
 " Ah, Ashford 1" exclaimed Sir Frederick 
 Buckton, who had been laughing and talk- 
 ing vehemently with Mrs. Dalton, at some 
 story he had been telling her, " Ah, Ashford, 
 I am glad to see you again I It is six years 
 since we met ; but by G — , my lord, if it 
 had not been in your own house, I should 
 not have known you ; you are grown old like 
 myself. I was just telling Mrs. Dalton,'' he
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 291 
 
 continued, laughing loudly, " of an adven- 
 ture of mine. Can I do anything for little 
 Miss Ashfordi Does she wish for her 
 nurse?'' 
 
 Matilda's answer was a frown, so Sir 
 Frederick went on, unabashed by Lord Ash- 
 ford's look of total indifference. 
 
 '• Ah, my lord ! we are older men since 
 ve met last." 
 
 " Oh, yes, older and wiser no doubt," 
 said Mrs. Dalton, who had drawn nearer ; 
 *' but pray don't let me interrupt what you 
 were going to say." Her eyes glowed mali- 
 ciously as she spoke. 
 
 " I was only going to tell you, my lord,'* 
 said the baronet, who was beginning to 
 falter in his intention of telling his story, 
 " that when I was last in Florence, I met 
 with an old acquaintance of ours, — that 
 
 u 2
 
 292 CLARA HAERINGTOI^\ 
 
 very clever, somewliat learned, and some- 
 what accomplished person, — " 
 
 " All these qualities must have made this 
 person peculiarly well fitted for a friend of 
 yours, Sir Frederick,'' said Mrs. Dalton, 
 who could never repress a sarcasm, even 
 when its object happened, as in the present 
 case, to be rather a favourite with her. 
 
 " Oh, I disclaim any particular friendship 
 in the matter, Mrs. Dalton,'' he replied. 
 " It was my Lord Ashford who really had a 
 romantic sort of Platonic tendresse for this 
 charming widow, at that time the wife 
 of the greatest roue in Europe, who used to 
 listen to his youthful sallies of eloquence 
 by the hour together. Am I not right, 
 —Eh! Ashford r' 
 
 *■' I really have not the honour to know 
 what you are talking of," replied Lord 
 Ashford.
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 293 
 
 " Lord Asliford is at a loss to know which 
 charming widow joii mean, Sir Frederick," 
 said Mrs. Dalton, with an ill-natured glance 
 at her sister, who stood near. 
 
 Lady Ashford instantly moved to another 
 part of the room, and engaged in conversa- 
 tion Avith a lady who sat apart on one of 
 the sofas. 
 
 " Madame Oastelli, I mean," resumed Sir 
 Frederick, " I met her really under such 
 outre circumstances, and in such odd com- 
 pany, that upon my soul I considered my- 
 self entitled, ha-ha-ha, to, — " 
 
 " I beg to know," interrupted Lord Ash- 
 ford hastily, " what there is so very remark- 
 able, in your having met in such circum- 
 stances as you arc pleased to indicate, a 
 lady, so well known to admire what is eccen- 
 tric, and to delight in notoriety?" 
 
 " The remarkable part of the story is,
 
 294 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 that she was one of the first persons I saw 
 in England/' 
 
 " For God's sake, Mrs. Dalton, let Sir 
 Frederick finish his story/' said Lord Ash- 
 ford, who saw her mouth open for another 
 voUej. — " Well, sir !" he continued to the 
 unlucky baronet, who perhaps would have 
 stopped altogether, had not his story con- 
 tained a sting, and had not Lady Ashford 
 again joined the group at this moment. He 
 went on again therefore. " I arrived in 
 town from the Continent last week, and 
 found a summons waiting me to go instantly 
 to my uncle's, who has taken a place i 
 Surrey for a year, — Surrey is a pretty 
 county on the whole." 
 
 A gesture on the part of Lord Ashford, 
 as if he were going to move, nailed the 
 baronet to his point, and he went on mor 
 rapidly.
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 295 
 
 " On Sunday I had, as in duty bound, 
 accompanied my worthy aunt to church, and 
 afterwards was indulging myself with a stroll 
 in the woods with my cousin Frank, — I 
 must have the honour of presenting Frank 
 to your ladyship some propitious hour, — but 
 I am coming to the gist of my history, so 
 pray excuse me. We stumbled upon a rural 
 group sitting in the wood, and Frank, who 
 is a bit of a puritan in his way, was for 
 sheering off; but no such thing, I con- 
 fronted the party, and whose face do you 
 think was the first that turned round, — why 
 Madame Castelli's, the charming Florentine 
 widow. I made up to her, presuming on 
 old acquaintance, in spite of a very forbid- 
 ding manner which she chose to assume, and 
 to my amazement, who do you suppose was 
 her gay cavalier, — no less a man than that 
 fellow Weston. You know whom I mean*
 
 296 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 the pliilosopliic doctor of whom we have 
 heard so much lately/' 
 
 " She was listening, I suppose," said 
 Mrs. Dalton, with a sneering laugh, " to his 
 philosophic sallies of eloquence in ex- 
 change for others at present out of her 
 reach." 
 
 " Absurd !" said Lord Ashford, con- 
 temptuously. "Dr. Weston is brother to 
 Madame Castelli." 
 
 " Ah — yes — yes — I remember now," said 
 Mrs. Dalton, who listened with more atten- 
 tion. 
 
 " Indeed ! ah — well," said Sir Frederick, 
 " I made him a low bow, offered my arm 
 to the fair Castclli, as she had risen from 
 the ground. But, oh. Lord — No ! she re- 
 fused it with a very regal air, took the 
 Doctor's arm, and, accompanied by a silent, 
 veiled damsel, they walked away, leaving
 
 CLAKA HARRINGTON. 297 
 
 me plante there ; and devilishly like a fool 
 I felt, I assure you.'^ 
 
 " No, that is not possible !" said Mrs. 
 Dalton. 
 
 " I was so silly as to tell Frank, and he 
 was quite shocked at such an encounter, 
 because it was Sunday. He said he sup- 
 posed she must be living with a lady, rather 
 a suspicious person, who visits nobody, and 
 who rents a cottage belonging to the same 
 man from whom they have taken Wood- 
 lands Hall. Well, I have not come to the 
 cream of the jest yet. I wouldn't go to 
 church in the evening, and while they were 
 there I strolled through the wood, in hopes 
 of seeing the cruel black eyes which re- 
 pulsed me in the morning, and I came 
 upon a gate which, as it was not fastened, 
 I walked through, and found myself in a
 
 298 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 devilish pretty garden, and as good luck 
 would have it, \7alking in it, and with no 
 grave doctor to be preferred before me, 
 there was our widow, and with her —now 
 prepare yourself, my lord, — the loveliest 
 creature I ever beheld. — Madame Castelli 's 
 a handsome woman, but upon my soul 
 nothing to her, — and I instantly recognized 
 the fair one I had once met on horseback 
 with your lordship some half dozen years 
 back, and whose face has haunted me ever 
 since. I hope I don't make your ladyship 
 jealous." 
 
 Not a muscle of Lord Ashford's face 
 changed. Lady Ashford looked as per- 
 fectly unconcerned as possible, and Mrs. 
 Dalton, instead of filling up the awkward 
 pause, as might have been hoped, remained 
 in total and grave silence, knowing, pro-
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON". 299 
 
 bablj, that tliat was the most disagreeable 
 thing she could do. 
 
 " Well, I accosted the fair ones ; but the 
 lovelj unknown immediately went into the 
 house, while Madame Castelli gave me a 
 sort o' warning to quit the premises, and, 
 bowing with the most insolent audacity, 
 she followed the unknown. I had nothing 
 for it but to beat a retreat.'^ 
 
 Mrs. Dalton, finding that nothing more 
 was likely to be said, exclaimed, — 
 
 " Well, but the jest, — you have not told 
 us the jest.'' 
 
 " Ah — my Lord Ashford knows that — 
 don't you, my lord ?" 
 
 Lord Ashford muttered something which 
 seemed to end with the word " idiot," but 
 made no more audible reply, and the 
 baronet and his story would probably have 
 given place to some other topic, but just
 
 300 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 then little Matilda, ^'ho was sitting on her 
 father's knee, and who had kept her eyes 
 frowninglj fixed on the speaker during the 
 whole time of his story, being an accurate 
 observer of expression, as all clever children 
 are, had detected the annoyance he was 
 inflicting, and in this awkward pause had 
 slipped down from Lord Ashford's knee, 
 climbed upon a chair close to Sir Frederick, 
 and gave him as hard a blow on his face as 
 her strength would allow. 
 
 This was the work of an instant; the 
 whole party was not a little dismayed, but 
 the baronet took it quite good naturedly ; 
 Lady Ashford apologized, and Mrs. Dalton 
 said the honourable young lady deserved 
 a good whipping. Sir Frederick had just 
 succeeded in getting the little struggling 
 creature in his arms, and was proceeding 
 to inflict a kiss on her, which he told her
 
 CLARA HARRINGTON. 301 
 
 was the only return a gentleman could 
 make to a blow from a ladj, when Lord 
 Ashford called out, in a voice of thunder, 
 
 " Charles, take Matilda up-stairs to your 
 mother,'^ and Matilda threw her arms round 
 the boy's neck, and was tenderly carried 
 away by him, sobbing violently with the 
 excess of agitation into which the scene 
 had thrown her. 
 
 '' How long do you remain in town. Sir 
 Frederick'?" said Lady Ashford, trying to 
 say something civil. 
 
 " I return to Woodlands Hall this day 
 week,'' said he. " I am unhappily detained 
 till then from any hope of further adven- 
 tures there by duty at the palace, but I 
 live in hope." 
 
 Soon afterwards the party dispersed, and 
 Lord Ashford went up to the rooms occu- 
 pied by his sister, Mrs. Grey, who, having
 
 302 CLARA HARRINGTON. 
 
 come to town, was paying a visit of some 
 days at her brother's house, and had been 
 attacked with a slight illness, which had 
 prevented her joining the party down-stairs 
 on this eyening. 
 
 END OP VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : PBINTED Bl HAERISON AND SON, BT. MARTIN S LANE. 
 
 /

 
 ^:^ 
 
 &»3.' 
 
 
 J^^ 
 
 J-- \ 
 
 
 /■■*^'. W<
 
 ^J^RSITY OF 'LUNOIS-UHHANA 
 
 3 0112 041 
 
 678589