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but to be interested in all she undertook. Matilda's remark therefore appeared peculiarly uncalled for and unkind. She quitted the room hastily; and Matilda, seeing that she had given pain, thought it better not immediately to follow her. When she did so, she found her extended senseless on the floor of her apartment: her nerves had begun to be affected by the state of her mind; and Matilda's words, with the help of her own imagination, had reduced her to the state we have described.

When she recovered, she threw her arms around Matilda, and called her her dear, dear sister; but of all that was consuming her heart she said not a word.

In her journal of this period of her life were found some memoranda of her feelings, and to that it may not be uninteresting again to have recourse.

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CHAPTER XXXIII.

-Thou art the manuscript

Where Antoninus writes down all his secrets.

MASSINGER.

EXTRACTS FROM JEANNETTE'S JOURNAL RESUMED.

"CHELTENHAM.-Lindsay Bathurst arrived, and almost before I thought it possible he could know we were here! How certain I felt that he would come! The tableaux parlants went off well; but I found it terribly difficult to keep my eyes quite fixed and immoveable. Lady Everard found much fault with me for blushing deeper and deeper still, she said, till the representation was quite over. She did not know that I could hear Lindsay Bathurst's 'beautiful !— beautiful!' or the deep sigh that followed his exclamation. What could make him sigh? I never saw the picture we acted; Miss Sherrard had, and played her part beautifully. Lindsay Bathurst said he considered my part the more perfect for the emotion I betrayed; and Lady Everard's reply was remarkable enough: Yes, for real life, perhaps :

Modesty alive can scarcely, I suppose, blush too much; but in a picture there should be no variation. Miss Sherrard's Vanity was perfect.' In his low and peculiar whisper Lindsay Bathurst said, her ladyship never before said any thing half so true. Oh! my dear Jeannette, leave exhibitions of this kind to Miss Sherrard. I was miserable to-night, while every body else was in raptures. You will never, I think, attempt the same again.' I answered solemnly 'never.' Yet, before he spoke, I had made no such resolution. And now I feel that nothing could induce me to break that promise. What, indeed, could compensate for the condemnation of one right-judging person? Not the applause of millions: the one would be to me as another conscience; the multitude as passing shadows.

"How well, how sweetly Lindsay Bathurst sang this night! When two people thoroughly understand each other, what trivial circumstances can give intensity, I had almost said an eternity, to happiness! a continuity of bliss; at least it must be as long as memory lasts. Yes, through whatever medium I may hereafter look back on these happy hours, they always will, they always must look bright and glowing. Stars do not cease to shine when clouds conceal them; and bliss, in remembrance, must still be bliss, however dense the intervening atmosphere. There could be no misunderstanding the request not to go to Charlton! Oh! what may not

that interview bring forth of joy and happiness! My heart is light and bounding; all its doubts and fears already gone, and nothing in it but one sweet and soft emotion of trusting happy love!

Did I but dream when I thought and wrote of happiness? Oh! never-never more will I presume on a coming hour! None ought to do it; but I did, and that so trustingly, that, when he came not, I felt as if a miracle had been achieved. In that hour of deep astonishment, there is nothing I could not have believed.

"And then my dear father returned home ill-and yet he came not. What may it mean ?-Lindsay Bathurst gone from Cheltenham! Oh! he ought to have seen me, though but for an instant; he ought to have written to me, though but to say farewell! Yet I remember at Langham Court we made a compact, half playfully, half seriously, never to condemn each other, never to suffer appearances to estrange us,

until we had had verbal communication together. I proposed, Or a written explanation ;' but Lindsay Bathurst said, 'No, nothing but an interview.'

"What is to become of my heavy heart? There is that in it which weeping does not remove-which prayer does not relieve. And, oh! may a merciful God forgive me for it! there is that also in it which keeps alike tears from my eyes, and prayer from my lips. I think but of one image; I hold, I have but one wish :--to see him once again ;--to hear him but once more say, that I was not all deceived! for, oh as surely as there's a heaven above us, he seemed to love me, and strove to make me love him! Oh! if indeed it were only seeming! Then is there not so sunk, so pitiful a wretch on earth as I am! World, world, I could stand your brave, and seek to know the truth! He is the soul of honour, and would not deceive me; but I could neither sink my woman's pride, nor risk his condemnation. A long, long life is perhaps before me; and yet I dare not act : miserable as I now am, I weep for woes to come, as well as for those that are.

"I dreaded my return home; for I said, where I first saw, first listened to, first loved him,-there shall I find food dear to memory, but poison alike to the brain and to the heart. Yet it is nothing. I have visited every room in which we ever were together,--have lingered long in every path through which we ever wandered,--I have paused on many a spot sacred now to remembrance, because associated with some precious and undying thought of him. Here, I have said, such a doubt assailed me; there, I first mentioned to him my beloved mother! Here, here the first hope of his regard came over me; and there, we parted. Yet do I pronounce it all as nothing. He is no more with me in the midst of this scene than he would be in pathless wilds, where his foot had never trod! His image never leaves me; and the same thoughts, the same recollections, visit my heart equally, whether I behold or not those objects with which he was familiar. I do more than half believe he might be ever with me; yet not so wholly the companion of my heart. What if he never in truth loved me? And if he did, why should that dreadful thought so frequently come across me, so sicken my whole soul? And when I seek to turn from it, the words "that way madness lies," accompany the effort;

as if they were my own thought, born of the circumstance, and at the moment. And it does seem to me that such a racking doubt might lead to madness rather than to death. Too much time has elapsed for me now to hope to see him at his own seeking, or to hear of him at his own desire. Yet, I have often a presentiment that I shall see him again before I die, and only see him! Oh! I must learn to bear the idea of this; but how?

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"I have this night dreamt of him. He looked ill and miserable; but he said, Jeannette, I do love you!' And I then awoke. I prayed for sleep, that the vision might come again. I slept again, but the dream was not renewed. How little real power has the human mind. No order of intellect, however high, could command a dream, yet none but the very wretched either feel this as an affliction, or reflect upon it. I did dream again, but not of him.

"If I could more thoroughly deceive myself, I should possibly be less miserable. But I cannot. One hour, I believe as firmly that he loved me as I used to do when his eye conveyed to me the real meaning of his words of double import. The next, my reason cries out against me. I stand convicted on my own evidence, that it was my own foolish imagination that so cruelly misled me; and every remembrance becomes a mockery and a wreck. And then I doubt of all I see and hear,-of all I ever understood, or felt the most convinced of; and I say, perhaps even my blessed mother did not love me as I thought she loved! And my father's affection,-and Matilda's, and Hamond's,-how has it all, all seemed to dwindle!

"Yes, I will go to Miss Sherrard; she wishes me to be her bride's-maid. My father urges me to go, and Matilda looks on me with her melancholy eyes filled with tears that almost say, 'Whether you go or stay, Jeannette, my heart must still upbraid you!' And so it must, and ought. She who has done so much for me, and I not to confide wholly in her! But I could not. She would either condemn him or me, or both, so much more than I could bear. I shall go from my home to-morrow, and I have joy in that thought. An insane, not a healthful joy, and one that brings its penance with it, for I know I ought to grieve-and I weep that I cannot! Shame, shame on my weak and altered heart!

"Have I not somewhere read, that when we give ourselves up, every thing fails us? Oh! every thing! I have felt this, and I know it to be true. Every thing belonging to this world,-affection, health, temper, the duties and charities of life, occupation, memory,-all glide away, as easily I have as water from the hand that would idly detain it. often now a miserable consciousness of my inability to feel interest in any thing, and at the same moment the equally miserable conviction that till I do feel this, I never can be better."

CHAPTER XXXIV.

-Too powerful love

The best strength of thy unconfined empire

Lies in weak women's hearts. Thou art feign'd blind,
And yet we borrow our best sight from thee.-MASSINGER.

JEANNETTE went from home; and Matilda, while she felt that reserve in her sister towards herself was a trial for which she was little prepared, had the generosity to hope that Miss Sherrard would prove a kind confidante and judicious adviser. But Jeannette made no call upon her friend in either character. To Miss Sherrard she never mentioned the name of Captain Bathurst-never betrayed, by remark or sigh in her presence, that there was aught of perilous stuff weighing on her heart. In society she sang, danced, and talked with the animation that was natural to her, but all the hours she could steal from it (and they were many), were given up to the heavy stupor of a stubborn sorrow, or to the less baneful indulgence of unavailing tears. At home she could never consider herself secure from interruption; but a plausible excuse to her friend of a book she wished to read, or letters that must be wetten, rendered her the uncontrolled mistress of any portion of time she wished to pass in solitude. She knew that this privilege could only be hers for a brief period:-she therefore seized with greater avidity every opportunity of discoursing with her own feelings, with a far greater inclination to indulge than overcome them.

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