t was a bright Christmas morn. The sound of the sweet church bells ringing for service reached the dull, darkened chamber in which Clemence sat beside her slumbering charge. She had seen Mr. Effingham and Lady Selina, accompanied by Vincent and his sister, set out in the joyous sunlight on their way to the nearest church. It was sadly that Clemence had watched their departure; she had once looked forward to so happy a Christmas, and now trials seemed to shut her out from enjoyment, even as the half-closed shutter and heavy curtain excluded from the room in which she sat the sparkling rays which shone so brightly on all beside! The tongue that had been wont to give cordial greeting on a day like this lay cold and silent in the coffin below—no other season could remind Clemence so forcibly of her blyth, kindly, warm-hearted guardian, as the joyous season of Christmas. The lively Louisa, once gay as the butterfly sporting its silken wings in the sunshine, was stretched beside her on a bed of sickness; and though the apprehensions entertained on the sufferer’s account were now of a less alarming nature, her recovery was still precarious. Beneath these sources of sorrow lay one deeper—so deep that even to herself Clemence would not acknowledge its existence. Not for a moment would she entertain the thought that it was possible to find disappointment where hope had been sweetest; any doubt of her husband being indeed the noblest, best of men, she would have repudiated as treason. But it was possible that he might be disappointed in her; her weakness, her extravagance, her inferiority in everything to himself—thus pensively mused the young wife—might by this time have become apparent to one whose judgment was quick and discerning. He was amongst those who would cast no veil over her failings—those who would make no allowance for her inexperience—those who might even misrepresent her motives, and place her actions before him in a light not only unfavourable but false. Was not his manner changing towards her—had he not become silent, reserved, even stern? Such reflections were exquisitely painful to Clemence, whose mind was perhaps rendered morbid by fatigue and want of natural rest. It is when the frame is weary, and the nervous system unhinged, that fancy conjures up phantoms of dangers perhaps altogether unreal, and seems bent on accumulating causes of pain and regret to brood over in silent gloom. It is an unhealthy state of mind—one of the many forms of sickness to which that most delicate and mysterious part of our constitution is subject. Religion alone can offer for such mental malady a cure—religion, which whispers to the burdened spirit, that though heaviness may endure for a night, yet joy cometh in the morning.
Clemence was trying to raise her thoughts from earthly fears to contemplation of that great event which was upon that day celebrated—to open her soul to the sunshine from heaven, and in its genial warmth forget the shadows that lay on her path, when a gentle sigh breathed beside her told that Louisa had awakened from her sleep, and turning, Clemence saw the invalid, pale indeed, and with traces of suffering on her features, but with a calm expression of countenance, which showed that the fever had departed.
“You are better, my love?” said the step-mother tenderly.
“Much better, only—so weak!” was the feeble reply. “Why are the church bells ringing?”
“It is Christmas-day; and such a bright clear morning! Your father and the rest of our party have gone to church.”
“And you—you have stayed to take care of me here! How good you are! I have not deserved it!”
Few words, and faintly uttered; but how sweetly they fell on the heart of Clemence! They resembled one sunny ray which, straight and bright, had forced its way through the opening of the shutters, and striking on a crystal drop which hung from a mantel-piece ornament, not only gave to the opposing glass the brilliancy of the diamond, but itself breaking in the encounter, painted the wall beyond with all the tints of the rainbow.
“Is Captain Thistlewood in church too?” inquired Louisa.
It was well for Clemence that the darkness of the room enabled her to conceal the unbidden tears which rose to her eyes at the question, but to reply to it was at that moment impossible. Louisa, however, scarcely waited for an answer, following the current of her own wandering thoughts.
“I have behaved very ill to him,............