Theresa Marchmont | Page 3

threatened the happiness of their daughter. They also discovered that Helen, whose playful humour and gaiety of heart had been their solace and amusement, even from her infancy, was now pensive and dispirited. By degrees the bright expression of her countenance had lost all that becoming joyousness of youth, which had been its great attraction, and though still
"Sphered in the stillness of those heaven-blue eyes, The soul sate beautiful,"
it was the soul of melancholy beauty.
Alarmed and unhappy, Lady Percy wearied her daughter with inquiries as to the cause of this inauspicious change; but in vain. Helen denied that any alteration had taken place in her feelings; and declared that the new and serious tone of her character arose naturally from her advance in life, and from the duties devolving upon her as a wife and mother.
"Be satisfied, dear madam," said she, "that I am still a happy and adoring wife. You well know that my affections were not won by an outward show of splendour and gay accomplishments, nor by the common attraction of an idle gallantry. It was on Greville's high reputation for just and honourable principles, and on his manly and noble nature, that my love was founded, and these will never change; --and if, at times, unpleasant circumstances should arise, into which my sex and age unfit me to inquire to throw a cloud over his features, or a transient peevishness into his humour, it would ill become me--in short," continued she in a trembling voice, and throwing her arms around Lady Percy's neck, to conceal her tears, "in short, dear Madam, you must remember that dearly, tenderly, dutifully, as Helen loves her mother, the wife of Greville can have no complaints to make to the Countess of Percy*." *[See "The family Legend"]
But however well the suffering wife might succeed in disguising the bitterness of wounded affection from her inquiring family, she could not conceal it from herself. She had devoted herself, in the pride of youthful beauty, to the most secluded retirement, through romantic attachment for one who had appeared to return her love with at least an equal fervour. Her father's house--her own opening and brilliant prospects--her numerous family connexions and "troops of friends,"-- she had deserted all for him, in her generous confidence in his future kindness. "His people had become her people, and his God, her God!" She had fondly expected that his society would atone for every loss, and compensate every sacrifice; that in the retirements she shared with him, he would devote some part of his time to the improvement of her mind, and the development of her character, and that in return for her self devotion, he would cheerfully grant her his confidence and affection. But there--"there where she had garnered up her heart,"--she was doomed to bear the bitterest disappointment. She found herself, on awaking from her early dream of unqualified mutual affection, treated with negligence, and at times with unkindness, and though gleams of his former tenderness would sometimes break through the sullen darkness of his present disposition, he continually manifested towards both her child and herself, a discontented and peevish sternness, which wounded her deeply, and filled her with inquietude. She retained, however, too deep a veneration for her husband, too strong a sense of his superiority, to permit her to resent, by the most trifling show of displeasure, the alteration in his conduct. She forbore to indulge even in the
"Silence that chides, and woundings of the eye."
Helen's was no common character. Young, gentle, timid as she was, the texture of her mind was framed of "sterner stuff;" and she nourished an intensity of wife-like devotion and endurance, which no unkindness could tire, and a fixedness of resolve, and high sense of moral rectitude, which no meaner feeling had yet obtained the power to blemish.
"Let him be as cold and stern as he will," said she to herself in her patient affliction, "he is my husband--the husband of my free choice--and by that I must abide. He may have crosses and sorrows of which I know not; and is it fitting that I should pry into the secrets of a mind devoted to pursuits and studies in which I am incapable of sharing? There was a time when I fondly trusted he would seek to qualify me for his companion and friend; but the enchantment which sealed my eyes is over, and I must meet the common fate of woman, distrust and neglect, as best I may."
Anxious to escape the observation of her family, she earnestly requested Lord Greville's permission to accompany him with her son, when he suddenly announced his intention of visiting Greville Cross. Her petition was at first met with a cold negative; but when she ventured to plead the advice she had received