University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.

Early the next morning Doctor Melbourne visited,
as usual, the mansion of Mr. Romain. All
was over. The old man had breathed his last.
The news of his decease was already abroad, and
exercised a very unfavourable influence upon the
general indignation against Leslie.

In a few moments he was once more at Mr.
Temple's. Since his last visit he had taken occasion
to inquire, and his suspicions of Flora's true
malady were more than confirmed. It appeared
now beyond a doubt, even to Mrs. Temple, that her
daughter had entertained a secret attachment for
Leslie; an attachment greatly enhanced by his late
danger and present situation. In the first place,
she knew, or at least thought she knew, him innocent.
The awful event which had involved his
reputation and happiness; the struggle of her
soul, necessarily concealed, even from a mother;
the shock of his arrest for murder—for the murder
of one of their familiar companions; the excitement,
the hope, the terror of the trial; the unexpected,
overwhelming news of his acquittal; the odium
and fearful peril which yet hung over him—all fell
with a blighting and crushing power upon a heart

which had never before known sorrow. The cold
and almost bitter sternness, too, with which, at
the trial, he whom in secret she loved, disclaimed
the possibility of affection on the part of either,
had gone to her heart like a poisoned arrow, and
left a wound rankling beyond the reach of medicine.

It appeared that she had attended the trial, not
on compulsion, but, as Mr. Loring had stated, voluntarily,
having privately written, on the first day,
the nature of the fact which she was able to testify.
The letter had been accidentally mislaid before it
reached the intended hand, which caused the lateness
of the period at which she was introduced.
How her sensitive and shrinking nature had endured
that ordeal, made more fiery by the inconsiderate
vehemence of the profession, the reader is already
aware. At her urgent request she had remained
with her father till the return of the verdict. Not
a sound had she uttered to betray the agony with
which she watched the ebbs and flows of opinion—
with which she beheld that haughty, that beloved
form, enduring, with fierce and unnatural calmness,
the cold inquiry—the quiet sneer—the rude gaze—
and the storm of denunciation from all the various
throng of judge, jury, counsel, and spectator. On
her return home commenced the attack, whose
frightful ravages had at length brought her to the
great world's edge.

Under these circumstances, the course to be
adopted was, to her parents, a source of painful
embarrassment. That Leslie was guilty, few, very
few pretended to doubt. The doctor ventured to
express a belief in his innocence; but he perceived
at once that it was in vain. Mrs. Temple, from
some secret antipathy, had conceived a dislike to
him, heightened, probably, by his open contempt

for her favourite Clairmont. She would not admit
the idea of his innocence.

“It is my duty,” said the doctor, at last, “to say
what I think. The mind and the body are so wonderfully
connected, by such subtle fibres—so intertwined
with each other in their millions and millions
of reciprocal influences—that I frankly declare
their mutual operations baffle the skill of
surgery, and may alike disappoint every hope and
every fear. They act upon rules independent of
our art. Your daughter suffers under no cold.
Her disease is in the mind. We must minister to
that. We must pluck from the memory the rooted
sorrow. If Mrs. Temple will allow me to confess
my thoughts—”

“Speak.”

“I believe Norman Leslie an innocent and noble
being. In faith, I know it. Juries and judges, editors
and the world at large, may be deceived by
evidence; but he who looks narrowly into the human
heart, when sickness is on it, when death is
near, cannot be deceived. He is innocent, and
your daughter loves him!”

“Doctor Melbourne does not advise me to link
my daughter with an assassin; rather would I see
her in her coffin.”

“That she should marry Leslie,” said the doctor,
calmly, “can be proposed by no one. That,
I know, circumstances do not permit; not the soul-stricken
youth himself would dare to dream of
union with her. But as he is now about to leave
this country for ever, should she know what I
know, that he loves her, and regards her as an angel
to be worshipped, and above his reach; could
she but once know, but once see this, she would
part from him with a healed and a peaceful mind.
Her heart would be relieved of its present burden.

If life must be borne, she would bear it with resignation.
If death must be encountered, she would
meet it with cheerfulness.”

“There is reason in your words,” said Mr.
Temple.

“And wormwood too,” added the wife, with a
haughty frown, her high temper rising even through
her grief.

“Emily,” said Mr. Temple.

She replied quickly,—

“I know what you would say, but I will never
consent. I wish I had burnt the letter, as before
this I intended. I do not believe, I never will believe
in his innocence. She shall never see that
letter.”

“Emily,” rejoined her husband, gravely, after a
moment's pause, “she shall see the letter.”

“Now, my dear, dear husband, you cannot, you
will not.”

“I can, and I will,” replied he, kindly, but
firmly.

He rarely opposed her; when he did, she knew
resistance would be utterly useless, and bit her lip
in silence.

“Doctor Melbourne,” said Mr. Temple, “I repose
in you the most implicit confidence. Your
opinion in the innocence of this unfortunate young
man coincides with my own. You must know he
has written to my daughter, very honourably enclosing
to me, with a hint of its contents. It was
his desire, he said, as in all probability he should
never meet her again, to express his gratitude for
her voluntary appearance at his trial, to which he
owed his life. He added, however, that the letter
might contain sentiments warm beyond the limits
of simple gratitude, and he trusted to my honour
either to give it to Flora or to burn it unread.

This conduct is that of an honest and high-minded
man. I sympathize with him sincerely. Flora
shall see the letter immediately; she is already
doomed. It is our only hope. I will speak with
her myself.”

She had requested to be left alone, and now lay
on her pillow, lost in thought. Oh how had she
suffered! It was not that the strength had left her
once perfect limbs; that her joyous voice had lost
all its tone of mirth; that pain had shot across her,
and laid its unrelenting hand upon a bosom whose
every feeling was pure, compassionate, and tender;
but thought had preyed upon her—despair had
stung her with its fiery fang.

Silence was in the apartment, broken by no
sound but such as harmonized with it, and rendered
it more eloquent and holy. It was an autumn
afternoon. The air was still, and bright with the
hues and warmth of a mellow heaven. The window
was open. A bird sat pluming his feathers on
a near branch, ever and anon pouring forth his
warbles, as if his little heart overflowed with a
gushing fulness of music and joy. A cluster of
half-blown roses gathered around the window, all
bright and lovely, as once had been her own cherished
dreams of life. Her soft blue eyes, after wandering
out over the painted sky, and upon the
bright green of the garden, rested upon the yet unshaded
flowers; and thought seemed passing
through her mind, with a darkening, deepening
tide, at first lapsing idly, soft, and tender, then
darting with a more impatient and wilder impulse.
At length she covered her face with her hands,
and tears burst through her whitened and delicate
fingers.

At this moment the door opened gently. It was
her father. He came alone, and held in his hand

a letter. She strove to brush away her tears,
hastily, almost guiltily. She could not. The more
she dashed them from her long, drenched lashes,
the faster, the heavier, they crowded forth. The
softened father, by a kind of intuition, entered at
once into her feelings. He approached and leaned
over her bed, his own eyes blinded with the heart's
dearest waters. Tenderly, almost convulsively,
he folded her to his breast.

“My daughter,” he said, “Mr. Leslie—”

He paused again, and looked not on her face as
he spoke. The kindness seemed understood. She
felt—why, how, she knew not—but she felt that
there was confidence between them, sacred confidence,
and unmingled, unbounded love. Yielding
to the gush and whelming flow of her feelings, she
placed her head on his bosom, and wept.

“My child, my child!” broke from his quivering
lips. They wept together.

In a few moments, after another embrace, and
imprinting upon her forehead a fervid kiss, he withdrew
in silence. The letter lay beside her. She
opened it tremblingly, breathlessly. Twice, through
the gathering and blinding tears, she essayed in
vain to find meaning in the characters that floated
indistinctly, and all blended together, before her
eyes. At length, raising herself from the pillow,
and putting back the long hair that fell unheededly
around her neck and face, she ran her gaze rapidly
over the lines. A flow of crimson suffused her
cheek. Her eyes softened. Her bosom heaved.
She pressed wildly the half-read page, again and
again to her lips.

Blissful moment! Death itself came now radiant
with light. No! no, she had not loved in
vain.