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CHAPTER XLV.

Oh! if thou teach me to believe this sorrow,
Teach thou this sorrow how to make me die!

SHAKSPEARE.

JEANNETTE was almost a stranger to moral fear; but when she beheld the deep shade on Lindsay's brow, instead of the gladness that should have been there, she experienced an inward tremor that all but deprived her of the power of speaking. She was conscious of it; and, exerting herself to overcome it, her first words were

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Lindsay, I have disobeyed you-I have seen Mrs. Grant."

"You may spare yourself the trouble of confession, Jeannette,-I know it already."

"I wished you to do so; but I had hoped you would have heard it first from me."

"It is of little consequence from whom we learn that which is beyond remedy. You can never, Jeannette, make amends for this one act of disobedience. I had such powerful reasons for what I asked!"

"You should then have revealed them to me, Lindsay." "I could not--Matilda knows I could not. She knows too, Jeannette, that you are the last woman in the world that ought to risk an imprudent or a thoughtless action."

Matilda looked imploringly at Lindsay, to warn him that he was on dangerous ground. In vain he continued-"The very last! Jeannette, you know not what you have done!"

Jeannette felt she was over blamed, and her repentance consequently decreased. In a very different tone and opposite spirit to what she had hitherto spoken, she replied

"This is cruel! You assume a rigour that you cannot feel. What I have done is neither morally nor religiously wrong." "Assume!-Would to Heaven that what I now feel were only assumed! Jeannette, if you attempt to justify what you have done, you will drive me to madness."

Jeannette paused before replying. She saw that her husband's feelings were strongly excited, and she was conscious that her own were also; she had therefore some check on her expressions, but not a sufficient one.

"You are unjust to me, Lindsay. You give me a command, which I am induced by very peculiar circumstances to transgress. Your reasons for issuing that command you do not reveal to me, and yet you ungenerously reproach me with their force. This, in another, I should call tyrannical." "Matilda gently approached her, and whispered-" Hush, hush! Jeannette."

"No, my dear Matilda, I must now speak. What concealments have I ever had from him? Let Lindsay now give me those reasons of which he has only hitherto spoken darkly let me hear why I am the last woman in England who should venture to risk her reputation."

Her cheek glowed with indignation as she spoke, and she looked at Lindsay fixedly, awaiting his reply. Lindsay returned that look, and exclaiming suddenly-" Must it be!" continued: "Then, Jeannette, hear me; but remember, always remember, that this is of your own seeking.'

Jeannette fearlessly confronted his gaze; and Lindsay, scarcely pausing, proceeded :-" Jeannette, your mother's name was once on the public lip what Mrs. Grant's is now." "My mother! Lindsay. Oh, you mock me!-you do not, you cannot think it true!"

"I know it to be so."

They were the last words he spoke in anger. He had no sooner uttered them than he trembled with apprehension at what he had done. Jeannette listened; then, turning to Matilda, said " Do not you, my sister, contradict him?”

Matilda threw her arms around her, and in the lowest whisper breathed--" I cannot."

Jeannette stood as if transfixed by the intensity of her surprise, and she once more said with vehemence

"It is not true!" But the sentence had no sooner escaped her than the truth she had so boldly denied with her lips fell upon her heart with a conviction almost freed from doubt. Past events, once enveloped in mystery, as their solution was thus first presented to her, rushed upon her mind with the celerity and destructiveness of a whirlwind. At one "fell swoop" they swept from her heart every past and pres

ent delight, every strong affection, every enjoyment of memory, every darling vision of hope; yet with the delirium of extreme wretchedness, she strove awhile to escape from the shock of conviction. She threw herself at Lindsay's feet, and implored him, as he loved her, to recall his words. When she asked him to do so, he would gladly, if it had been possible, have surrendered existence itself, to have recalled the last few minutes of his life. She said, "Speak to me!-speak to me!" in accents that pierced him to the soul; but he could not. The strong-built, powerful Lindsay had not at that moment the strength of his infant. A long, painful, and oppressive silence followed,--a silence that often afterward recurred to the memories of each. Lindsay was the first to break it. "Jeannette," he said, in the low and thrilling tone he had used when first he ventured so to call her; but it was all he uttered,--he could not speak his purpose. It was sufficient to rouse her from the stupor of grief into which she had sunk, or rather it called forth the outward demonstration of that sorrow which could not speak. Jeannette met Lindsay as he approached her, and throwing her arms around him, wept long and passionately on his boNo upbraidings could have moved him so deeply; he felt, and he felt truly, that all feelings of unkindness towards him had merged in the one terrible affliction with which he had so unhappily made her acquainted. He felt, too, that the repentance already awakened within him was as useless, as unavailing, as the bitterness of her innocent sorrow. kissed her pale forehead, and his tears fell in torrents over her. She returned those kisses with fervency: he hoped and thought he was forgiven; and so he would have been, if it had been a question of forgiveness. Resentment lives on the surface only of the heart,--not in its depths. No human being, suffering as Jeannette then suffered, could feel anger : she knew well that her grief could never end, but all beside was peace.

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She made repeated efforts to check her weeping; for, as she told Lindsay, "she had much to say." He implored her to be calm. "I am-I am! but I never could control my tears; and when I think of what I am about to say, I cannot wonder: but Lindsay, dear Lindsay, here, and now, we part!"

"Part, Jeannette !-what can, what may you mean?"

"This, Lindsay!—that you leave me, and for ever!" And she again threw her arms around him, and her tears again burst forth as she begged Matilda to fetch or send for her darling child. Her little girl was brought, and as she clasped her wildly to her bosom Lindsay mingled his caresses with hers and said, "dear, dear to both!" Oh what a chord was there touched! Jeannette felt as if her heart would break to reply to it as she meant to reply, and she gasped for breath as she said

"Dear to both-and belonging to both!-she is yours and she is mine. Oh, Lindsay! to which do you assign her?"

Lindsay was dreadfully agitated and alarmed by the energy and resolution of her manner; but he could see what answer would sooth her, and he said unhesitatingly—“ to you!"

"Blessings! eternal blessings be yours for it!" She for one moment seized his hand and pressed it fervently to her lips; but suddenly, as if afraid of yielding to the influence of feelings that were fast rising within her, she resigned it abruptly, and turning to her sister, said, "come with me! Matilda-come with me!" and retired to her own room.

CHAPTER XLVI.

-Ha! where keeps Peace of Conscience,
That I may buy her? Nowhere: not in life.
MASSINGER.

LINDSAY made no offer either to detain or follow Jeannette; he hoped much from the calm and judicious conduct of Matilda. His thoughts were too much occupied by the evil he had inflicted on her sister to think as much of Matilda on this distressing occasion as he ought: yet he had doubly rived her heart. She suffered at the same moment from her mother's disgrace and her sister's sorrow, but she was also truly sorry for Lindsay. He had said that which never could be forgotten, and for which, she thought, if all others

forgave him, he could never forgive himself. Her heart bitterly reproached him, but she said not one word to wound him; she followed Jeannette at her bidding, and hoped to sooth, though she could not console her; but she was soon made to feel how futile was every attempt either to reason with or to strengthen her. She had to listen to broken exclamations, to bitter regrets,—to affectionate appeals. She had patiently to wait through long intervals of silence, which she hoped were given to prayer.

Jeannette, taking her babe in her arms and putting back its beautiful hair, exclaimed

"Oh! even you are changed to me! The likeness I once traced with so much happiness, my fair child, is now a stamp of ignominy on your brow!" And she put the innocent being from her with a mingled feeling of anguish and horror. Matilda strove in vain to reawaken in her the sentiment of maternal affection, and she judiciously took the child away. Lindsay begged for admittance, but Jeannette would not hear of it.

“No,” she said to Matilda, “let him not ask it:”—and Lindsay and Matilda both hoping that a few hours would effect a change in her feelings, no urgent opposition was made to her wishes.

A note was sent to Mr. Langham to apprise him that in consequence of Jeannette's indisposition Matilda would not return home. Mr. Langham, immediately on receiving it, came to Jeannette; and as soon as his name was announced to Matilda as wishing to see her, Jeannette gave orders that he should be admitted. She begged Matilda to darken the room, that her father might not see she had been weeping; and she checked her tears, and stilled her sobs, in order to receive him.

After she had replied to all Mr. Langham's affectionate inquiries, and listened to his anxious recommendations to take care of herself, her grief again burst forth. It appeared to Matilda, that the presence of her father had made her for one moment cherish the delusion that what grieved her was impossible; for she broke forth—" no-no-it cannot be— and my dear father will tell me that it was not-and I may again love her memory as I loved her."

"What does she allude to, Matilda ?"

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