It May Be True, Vol. 3 (of 3)

Henry Wood

Mrs. Henry Wood

It May Be True, Vol. 3 (of 3)

CHAPTER I.

IS THERE A FATE IN IT?

"The grief of slighted love, suppress'd,

Scarce dull'd her eye, scarce heav'd her breast;

Or if a tear, she strove to check,

A truant tear stole down her neck,

It seem'd a drop that, from his bill,

The linnet casts, beside a rill,

Flirting his sweet and tiny shower

Upon a milk-white April flower:—

Or if a sigh, breathed soft and low,

Escaped her fragrant lips; e'en so

The zephyr will, in heat of day,

Between two rose leaves fan its way."

В В В В Colman.

Amy had been some three weeks at home, and as yet there had been no improvement in Mrs. Neville's health to justify her daughter's return to Brampton. There was the same lassitude, the same weariness. She would lie on the sofa day after day, with no bodily ailment save that of weakness, and an utter inability to get better, and apparently with no wish to do so. She never complained, but was ever grateful and content. It was as if life were waning away imperceptibly, and her spirits, which had always bravely struggled through all her trials and sorrows, had at last sunk never to rise again.

Amy seldom left her, but generally sat by her side, on a low footstool, reading or working. Sometimes Mrs. Neville would lay her hand gently on the fair masses of hair, and Amy, whose heart was very sorrowful, would hold her head lower still so that her tears might fall unseen.

There was something peculiarly tender and very pitying in the way the hand was placed on her head; at least Amy thought so, and strove more than ever to be cheerful, lest her mother, who lay so silently watching her, should guess at the secret grief in her heart which she was striving so hard, and she trusted successfully, to overcome; while, as yet, no word of it had passed between them. If Mrs. Neville thought her daughter's spirits less joyous, or her manner more quiet, while her eyes no longer flashed with their old bright expression, but at times drooped sadly under their long lashes, she said nothing; and Amy, while obliged sometimes to talk of her life at Brampton, never mentioned Charles's name; yet in the solitude of her own room she sometimes thought of him, and how as she had sat at one of the cross-stations, on her road from Standale, awaiting the arrival of the train that was to take her on to Ashleigh, she had seen Charles amongst the crowd hurrying into the one bound for Brampton; while she, soon afterwards, was speeding along over a part of the very way he had so recently travelled. Both had been waiting some twenty minutes at the same station, and yet neither had been near enough to speak, but had been as effectually separated as though miles had divided them, instead of so many yards. Strange fatality! which might have altered the future lives of both.

Yes, he had gone to Brampton the very morning she had left it: one half hour later on her part, and they would have met. She was glad she had not missed the train, and that they had not met. Glad that she was absent from the park, and not obliged to see him day after day, or hear the children talk, as they sometimes did, of their uncle.

Julia often wrote to Amy all the chit-chat of the park. How Charles Linchmore had returned, and was often at Frances' side; and how the latter's airs had become more intolerable in consequence. How Anne snubbed Mr. Hall as much as ever; but was, in Julia's opinion, more pleased with him, and more contented to put up with his grave reproofs than she used to be; and how Julia thought it would be a match in the end, and wondered what kind of a clergyman's wife she would make. And lastly, that Mr. Vavasour had left the park.

Anne also wrote, but only once, and her letter was short; yet Amy read it over and over again, until she knew the last few lines by heart, and wondered what they meant; or whether they were hastily written, and had no point or hidden meaning, but were simply penned and then forgotten, as many things often were, that were said by Ann