University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

That same night there had been a gay
and sumptuous ball in London, at the prime
minister's. The king had himself honored
it with his presence for an hour or two;
and all that was gay and witty, great, beautiful,
wise, noble, or in any way distinguished,
had been assembled round the monarch's
person. Nothing could possibly
have been more brilliant in the shape of a
fête, nothing at the same time more magnificent
and merry.

But the ball had come to an end, as all
earthly pleasures will, even the purest and
the most enduring; and once ended had
left the heart full of bitterness and ashes,
or at the best vacant and exhausted. The
guests had departed to their homes, to
abuse one another, and criticise, as it might
be, the ostentation or the meanness of their
entertainers. The crash of carriages and
the din and quarrelling of drunken servants
had subsided into stillness; the lights were
extinguished in the ball-room; the flowers
were fading on the walls; the tables were
strewn with the relics of the splendid supper;
and who was now the happier, for the
wild gayety, the lavish luxury, the vast expense?

In a large airy bed-chamber situated in
the corner of a stately house in Spring
Gardens, the newly created marquis's, the
lady Fanny Asterly was sitting by an open
window that overlooked the beautiful and
quiet Thames, pensive and melancholy, and
undressed, as if for bed; yet she sat there
as she had sat for above an hour, and taken
no thought of the time, nor dreamed of
lying down since she dismissed her woman.

That evening she had been the beauty of
the ball-room, the admired by all men, the
observed of all the observers. Adulations
had flowed into her ears in one continuous
stream of silvery music; homage the most
devoted, attentions such as must gratify
every female heart, even when those who
tender them are but regarded lightly, had
been paid her on all sides.

Even the monarch had remarked her
charms with an observant eye, and struck
with her graceful manners and rare beauty,
had desired that she should be presented to
him. Beauty could have no greater triumph
than Fanny Asterly's had met at
that high festival. Nor, while the triumph
lasted, had she been insensible to something
akin to gratified ambition, to the high
perilous excitement of successful vanity,
and conscious superiority.

Her cheek had flushed with a warmer
and more bright carnation; her eye had
beamed more exultingly than its wont, as
she swam through the mazes of the voluptuous
dance, the cynosure of every eye;
and heard the stifled hum of admiration
which followed her steps every where—
that hushed and sincere applause, paid by
the heart to loveliness, which every woman
understands, and to which she who is insensible,
can scarcely be called woman.—
Greater or less it may be, but not genuine,
very woman—not that sweet fascinating
compound, whose very weakness is
so far more adorable than any strength of
mind or purpose; whose very virtues are
so much made up from, and complicated
with, those weaknesses, that you can
scarcely destroy one without throwing
down the other; whose very love of pleasing
and thirst for admiration are perhaps
half the secret of the pleasure which she
inspires—the admiration which she wins
from half reluctant reason.

And Fanny Asterly was not insensible,
nor yet ungratified—for she was indeed all
woman—sweet, gentle, innocent and amiable;
yet in her every phase of thought, in
her every fault, her every charm, a very,
very woman. Yes! she had been pleased,
delighted, almost intoxicated by the events
of that evening; yet now, though she had
not one thought or deed for which she
could reproach herself with justice, it was
with no sense of pleasure that she recurred
to the events of the ball.

She felt annoyed and angry with herself
that she should have been pleased and
amused by such frivolous folly; she fancied
that she had been guilty of a sort of half

infidelity to Edward Hale, in suffering herself
to listen to the flatteries, and to be
pleased with the attentions of the young
cavaliers of the court of James.

“And this is his birth-day, too—this is
the very day on which, one little year ago,
he plighted me his faith, and we exchanged
rings in the linden avenue at Asterly.
Dear little ring—” and she raised her fingers
to her lips, and kissed the senseless
gift of her lover's affection—“dear little
ring, how I love you—how I wish that he
were with me here who gave you to me a
year since; and he, I doubt it not, he hath
been thinking of me all this night; while I,
false girl, have been listening and smiling,
as if I had forgotten—but no! no! Edward,
Edward—” she went on, becoming more
excited as she gave vent to her feelings—
“it is not so—it is not. I am true—true
to you in my heart of hearts, Edward!
There is not, in my most secret soul, dear
Edward, one thought which I would hide
from thee—one thought which I would
hesitate to tell—one thought on which thou
wouldst not smile thine approbation, even
as, I doubt not, in thy spirit there is not one
passing fancy which should raise a blush or
call up a frown on my cheek or brow—did
I know it.”

Alas! for the pure confidence of innocent
and guileless womanhood. Unsullied
herself as the virgin snow, her heart and
mind an unsoiled sheet, as it were, of parchment,
until love had inscribed there one
fondly cherished name, she never doubted
that he on whom she had set the priceless
jewel of her inestimable love was spotless
as herself from any taint of voluptuous and
sensual sin—nothing that she could have
heard, scarce any thing that she could have
seen, were it not in his own handwriting,
or from his own tongue, would have induced
her to believe that at this very moment
he was coveting if not loving the
charms of another woman.

Alas! alas! how does the boasted virtue
of the most virtuous and moral of
us men shrink into measureless vice,
when compared with the purity, the trust,
the truth of an innocent and loving woman.

Edward Hale was no worse, nay, he was
far less evil than the generality of young
men of his age, at that, or perhaps at any
day. Yet, troth-plighted as he was to that
sweet girl, he dreamed not that he did her
any wrong in dallying with other women,
in winning their affections, in defrauding
them of their virtue, so long as he preserved
his own heart and his own affections in allegiance
to her empire; and by a sophistry
not uncommon, though most absurd and inconsistent,
he justified himself in this breach
both of purity and truth by saying to himself
that by her father's decision a year was
yet to pass before she could yet be his wife.
And she, while his heart was afire with unholy
passions for the betrothed wife of another,
and his brain busy with intrigues
whereby to work her ruin, she, in her exquisite
purity of soul, was accusing herself
of faithlessness, and almost weeping over
her own imaginary delinquencies, because
she had danced a few harmless dances, and
listened to a few unmeaning compliments,
and perhaps, at the most, endured a casual
pressure of the hand from some gay coxcomb,
whose attentions had no meaning beyond
the present moment.

But she was sad at heart—the excitement
of the last hours had ceased, and the
cold reaction had ensued, as is so frequently
the case, more painfully than the bygone
sensations had been pleasurable. She was
sad, almost sick at heart.

The moon was shining broadly into the
tall French windows of her chamber, for
she was near her full, and the skies were
almost as light as at noonday, except when
some great cloud came sweeping over the
bright disc, and veiling every thing for a
few moments in clear and almost luminous
obscurity, when compared to the darkness
of a moonless midnight. And still she sat
there watching the vast shadows creeping
over the river's breast, and over the silent
streets, and drawing fancied auguries from
their strange forms and ghost-like movements.

After a while she pressed her hand on
her heart and said, in low, mournful tones,
“I know not what it is—I know not what
ails me! I do wish that I had seen Serena
this morning, or that I could see Arthur
now—I have no reason, it is true, for any
fear or apprehension—yet I do fear everything!
Oh! how unhappy I am—oh! how
unhappy! There seemed to fall a shadow
on my heart, a chill upon all my spirit, as
I saw that Sir Henry Davenant pass by the
window, with his bitter and sarcastic smile
—and he has seemed to haunt me ever
since! I met him twice when I was walking
out this morning in the park, and both
times he sneered at me with his horrid supercilious
courtliness—and then, this evening
at the ball, his cold snake-like eye was
never withdrawn from my face for a moment;
whenever I stopped in the dance, or
turned my head from hearing some gay
speech, I was sure to catch sight of him.—
He put me in mind of the skeleton the old
Egyptians used to place at their banquets
as a ghastly admonition. Whenever I
beheld him, my heart stood still within me;
and my blood seemed to run cold. Why
can it be that I so loathe that man? Can it
be, that the soul is prescient of its secret
foes, and is inexplicably warned against
those that shall work it wo?—No! no!—It
cannot be—and yet—I do believe—I do—
that he will one day injure me.” And she
paused for a long time, and sat still, thinking
deeply; but almost unconscious that she
was thinking at all, so wildly and fantastically
did her thoughts come and go; at last
she gave a sort of start; and exclaimed,—
“Yes! there is something going on—there
is something wrong and evil plotting against
us, I am sure. My mother—I observed my
mother's eye many times to-day, fixed on
me and not lovingly.—She does not love
me!—and yet, my God, my God, what have
I ever done, or failed to do, that she should
not? She never loved me; never liked Edward!
alas! alas! and my father, though
kind is not energetical.—Oh! Arthur, Arthur,
my dear brother, why are you not
here, why are you not at hand to help and
comfort your unhappy sister?—She wrote
to-day to St. Maur, and to Spencer, at his
house at Arrington, and not one word to
him! To Spencer—for what can she write
to him; but for evil—evil, it must be evil!
And oh! why will he associate himself with
comrades such as Lord Henry, and this Captain
Spencer, of whom no man or woman
had ever yet one good word to say—whose
very glance is poison!—Oh! Edward—Edward—did
you but know—could you but
know what agony it gives me.—But no! he
knows it not—he cannot know it!—Nor
can I send him word at all, nor even summon
him to town, unless my brother should
come back!” For a few minutes she was
again silent, but then rising from her chair
suddenly, she fell down upon her knees, and
prayed fervently and long; and her meek
supplication finished, stood up refreshed
and strengthened, and feeling something
like a ray of heavenly consolation shining
upon her heart.

“Well, it is very late,” she said; “I
will to-bed, to-bed! but, I fear, not to
sleep!” and drawing the curtain over the
window, through which the moonlight fell
too brilliantly and full upon her couch, she
walked across the room to reach something
from a table, covered with books and drawings,
and a few stands of flowers, before
she lay down to rest.

She had taken up the article, whatever
it was, of which she was in search, and
was in the act of turning away from the
table, when her eye fell quite suddenly, and
as if by accident, upon a neatly folded
note, which she did not remember to have
seen when she came into the room, on her
return from the minister's ball. She took
it up; it was unopened, and secured with
a seal of red wax, bearing a deep impression,
an antique head of Minerva. Thinking
to herself that something must have
been lying over it when she looked upon
the table as she re-entered her room, she
walked with the note to the window, in
order to read it by the aid of the clear
moonlight.

Though she was very anxious, she knew

not why, to arrive at the contents; and
though she half prognosticated something
of evil tidings, she yet, as we often do,
even when we are the most impatient,
turned it again and again, to examine the
seal and superscription, and conjecture
from whom it could possibly have come,
when in all probability by opening it she
would have learned the whole in a moment.

The hand-writing was strange to her—
certainly strange—and this very fact,
which should naturally have hurried her
proceedings, since it was clear that she
could conjecture nothing, probably yet delayed
her longer. It was a clear, correct,
Italian hand, rather erect than otherwise,
and larger than is common, but by no
means bold, or free, or dashing. On the
contrary it was rather over-nice, every
hair-line being traced with almost mathematical
precision, and every dot and period
inserted with clerk-like regularity.
It was directed “To the Lady Frances
Asterly, Asterly House, Spring Gardens.”
The seal was formed as accurately as
the band-writing was minutely finished,
and was equally unknown to the excited
and half trembling girl, who by this time
had convinced herself that the small square
note contained some horrible and painful
mystery.

Her hand literally shook as she broke
the seal, and her eyes swam, as if dazzled
by excess of light, so that some moments
passed before she could fix the letters. At
last, by a great effort, she composed herself,
and read as follows:

“One, who has seen and known the
Lady Frances Asterly, almost from her
cradle to the present day, although she
knows him not, nor has ever seen him—
who has watched her growth, daily, nay
almost hourly, from the wild buoyant days
of thoughtless infancy, through the sweet
spring of girlhood, up to her present plenitude
of glorious beauty—who has marked
every growing charm both of mind and
body—who has noted her features, full of
rare inborn music, her form ripe in most
perfect loveliness—who has read her soul,
and knows it to be pure and bright and
spotless as the spirit of the new-born babe,
fresh from the hands of the Creator—who
loves her with an affection surpassing that
of a father, because, unlike a father's, it is
divested of all prejudice, and arises only
from his sense of her exquisite and peerless
beauty, beauty both of the mind and body.
One who, had he the means of altering his
mission and changing his existence, would
be her guardian spirit—one who has many
times already stood, though she knew it
not, between her and many an earthly
peril—writes now once more to warn, and
if possible to save her. Mark his words,
innocent and lovely one, mark his words;
and, although the task be a hard and bitter
one, believe them and be warned. And
oh! above all, fancy not that he who writes
these lines, has any secret or unworthy object—that
he is a resentful rival, a discarded
suitor, an avenger of wrong done—”

“For I am none of these. Before thou wert
born I was old, wronged and wretched. It
was a fate, a wondrous fate, that interested
me in thy birth, and it has been my fate
ever to cross thy path, till I am, as it were,
wound up in thy well being. I had a
daughter once, innocent as thou art, and
almost as beautiful—she heard, but would
not heed my warnings—she wedded, was
deceived, lived wretched, and died young,
young and heart-broken, as thou wilt live,
and die also, Fanny, if thou attend not this
my warning.

“He unto whom thy troth is plighted is
not what thou deemest him, not what could
make thee happy. Even now his house is
full of revelry and riot, debauchery and—
what it befits thee not to hear of. His
friends and chosen comrades, the worst,
the most notorious of the world's wicked
devotees. Beware! beware! ere it shall
be too late!

“Be warned by my words, Fanny; but,
even warned, I ask you not to act upon
them, until convinced that they are true—
true to the letter, or if lacking truth, lacking
it only in that they come not up to the

full measure of his wildness, his unworthiness,
his falsehood.

“Reject this warning, and you are lost
forever!”

Eagerly she devoured every word of
this strange wild epistle. She read it and
re-read it, and in her own despite she felt
that it had left a sting in her soul. It was
in vain that she said to herself, “Tush! it
is but an ordinary slander! a vile thing
composed by a wretch who dares not sign
his name to the emanations of his own
guilty mind.” It was in vain; she could
not so banish it, for there was something in
the whole style and wording of the letter,
in the antique and flowery phraseology, in
the obscurity and mystery in which the
writer was shrouded, in the dark sounding
prophecies, and the strange emphasis of the
warning, that made it obviously different
from a commonplace anonymous letter.

The character of Lady Fanny was naturally
somewhat poetical and romantically inclined;
and on this doubtless the writer had
calculated in framing his artful and insidious
missive. It happened, moreover, that the
very tone of thoughts, in which she was
indulging herself at the time, harmonized
singularly with the spirit of the letter, and
of the warning it contained. She had been
secretly deploring the connection of her betrothed
husband with the men whom she
knew to be his companions at this moment;
and lo! the letter spoke, not in dark hints,
but in open language, and spoke, as she
believed truly, their characters in the
world's estimation; and when the world
does indeed condemn unanimously, it is
rare that it condemns unjustly.

Besides, did it not challenge investigation?
Did it not recommend inquiry?
It could not, therefore, be a mere baseless
slander. Oh! of a truth it was
very plausible! A very cunning spirit had
devised that shaft, had steeped it in the
very poisons which with a devilish foresight
it knew would be the most likely to
corrode and canker that pure heart; and a
strong hand, and practised in the works of
evil, when the unguarded moment had
been duly chosen, sped it with sure aim to
the mark, to rankle there, and blight the
very soul of confidence.