CHAPTER XII.

This object, which

Takes prisoner the wild motion of mine eye,

Fixing it only here.

SHAKSPEARE.

On the eighth day of his illness, Eustace was permitted to leave his chamber. It was a beautiful April morning, and Mrs. Franklin had chosen a room for him, where he might enjoy it to the full. His couch was placed near a door which opened into a conservatory, and opposite to him was a ground window, looking into the garden. They were both open, and the fresh spring airs that breathed through flowerless leaves of the jessamine and clematis, catching the scent of the myrtles and geraniums, seemed to increase the present sweetness by a foretaste of the odours with which a month after they would be laden.

The weight of news, the most oppressive of all weights to a sick man, had oppressed Eustace. He had sunk beneath it, and was now in a state of lassitude which enabled him to experience the sensations proper to the situation in which he was placed. Neither reflecting or looking before, and with that comfortable sense of bodily incapacity which prevents the conscience from urging us to either disagreeable duty, he lay watching a train of gay phantoms which appeared without any effort of creation, and yet which, as they moved along before his passive eye, did homage to him as the author and the end of their existence. In such a state of mind and of body, who can ascertain the boundary line between waking and slumber? It is for our interest not to mark it too closely; for it is more soothing to believe that we forego our discourse of reason in obedience to a necessary law, than by a voluntary dereliction.

J

Eustace might be asleep or awake—he had some of the feelings belonging to both states; but to a spectator he would have seemed asleep, for his eyes were so far closed that he could only see under the lashes, when a vision somewhat different from any which he had yet beheld, rose up before him. It was of a lady in a white satin hat and silk pelisse, sitting not more than a yard from his couch. He had seen many beautiful creatures

floating around him, but the shape and the features were far more definite than the drapery. Now it was reversed. The dress was brought before him with an impression of the strongest reality; but the face was not so intelligible. By degrees it became clearer. He thought he saw a small white hand hanging over the back of the chair, and playing with a glove; then a glossy black ringlet seemed to fall on one side of a beautiful forehead; then a brilliantly dark complexion was strongly contrasted with the colour of the hat: then he had a sense, dazzling even to painfulness, of two full glorious eyes, and those eyesthe conviction was more certain than all that had preceded it—those eyes were resting on him with an expression of deep, steadfast interest. It was a very different picture to all the others which his fancy had created; a moment might dissolve the charm-he closed his eyes faster. The impression was more vivid than ever-he half opened them-the eyes were still fixed upon him, and there was a tear upon the lids; the agony became too intense, he could endure it no longer; and before she was able to withdraw her gaze, he had fixed a full look of recognition upon Lady Edward Mortimer.

She turned away her head; but enough of confusion was still visible in her manner, and of colour in her cheeks, when she addressed him.

"I did not expect," she said, "Mr. Green, on my return home to have found you an invalid.”

The moments of suspense we have described had wrought Eustace into a state of excitement and fever, such as he probably never had experienced before. Lady Edward's words caused his feelings to undergo a furious recoil. "Oh!" he said to himself, "if such looks lead to such speeches, I can be as cool as she is."

No," he said, in a weak voice, "your ladyship expected to see me your son's tutor. It is, perhaps, well for you and him that the folly of my character has been made so evident, though you must do me the justice to believe that I had previously determined to relinquish a charge of which I felt that I was unworthy."

"Unfit for it I fear you were, Mr. Green. A keen susceptibility to affronts is a disadvantage to the member of any profession."

to

"And still more so," interrupted Eustace, one who is not the member of any profession, but who is engaged in a calling of which affronts are the perquisites. Your ladyship is right; and I cannot express how much it aggravates the selfreproach which my crime would cause me under any circumstances, to think in what an absurd light it must strike the world and you, that I, of

all men, should have dared to resent a supposed insult!"

"There may be a warrant, sir, for your language," said Lady Edward, in an offended though a very soft voice," there may be a warrant for your language in my conduct towards you. I should be sorry to think there was; for if I have from day to day been unconsciously inflicting pain upon one person, others, of whose feelings I was at any rate not more considerate, may have suffered equally from my cruelty. But I would simply leave it to your own consideration, Mr. Green, whether it is not possible that my words or actions may have received a wrong interpretation, and whether it might not be well for your happiness to eradicate a disposition which has led you into an acknowledged error respecting the intentions of one whom you now know to be your friend, and which may have induced you to deal as harshly with one who wished you to consider her so."

She rose, and seemed about to withdraw: Eustace sprung from his couch. "Do not leave the room," he exclaimed, "till you have forgiven the rude ungrateful language of a man who speaks unreasonably to every one else, only because he has the best reasons to hate and scorn himself.