Agnes: A Tale of the Streets — page 230: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AGNES; OR, BEAUTY AND PLEASURE. however before Lord Ormsby and Agnes noticed , that Corinna had disappeared, so little were their secuses now susceptible ot anything that was occur- ring beyond the sphere in which all their own tavughts, feelings, and emotions wero agitating. “You will ask me, my dear child,” said Lord Ormsby, “ wherefure I bave neglected vou for so many long yeara—wherefore I had abandoned you —and why I remained afar off in another hemi- ! sphere, as if totally regardless of your existence in the world? But you must know, dearest Agnes, that my mind has been in so morbid a state—my brain has been go affected, that if 1 have not been absulutely mad the whole time — outrageously insane—I have at least been the victim of a mono- mania so complete that it rendered me @ cynic aud & misanthrope. ,By brooding over my sorrows and 179 father: “why did I flee from my home, to be heard of nov more? Jn the first place, dearest Agnes, I was resolved not to be the supporter of @ tremendous cheat from the moment that IL had discovered it: but on the other hand my pride would not suffer me to remain to luok the world in the face end bear all the ridicule which would have been inevitably thrown upon me! Nay, more—I dreaded lest it should not even be fancied that I was a dupe, but that I was either the sole concocter of a villanous fraud, or the willing ao- complice of designing persons! And then too, there were my father-in-law’s terrific threats that he would throw all the blame upon me—that he would make me appear to bo tho villain in order to clear and exonerate himself; and Ou! I shud. dered at the idea of dungeons and chains, of my wrongs, I was led on to the settled conviction | prisuns and of gibbets; for at that time, Agnes,” that all the world had turned its face against me—! added Lord Ormsby in a sombre tone, “ torgery that there was a sort of league on the part of the whole human race to persecute me; and especially did I hold in abhorrence the sex to which you belong, Agnes! Oh! it is a frightful thing when the mind becomes so warped and attenuated that every imaye which is*reflected upon the disc of its iuward vision becomes distorted so that the fairest shape takea an aspect the most monstrous, and the loveliest beings seem the most hideous and revolting !” . ‘“* For heaven’s sake, dear father, speak not in this strain!’ murmured Agnes, the tears flowing down her damask cheeks. ‘ You must no longer look upon the past '—you must think only of the happiness of the present—cand you must entertain cvery hope for the future !” ““Yes, my beloved child,” anawered Ormsby, kissing away thoso teara from his beauteous daughter’s cheeks, ‘‘ there is indeed happiness for the present, and there is every hope for the felicity of the future! But it is absulutely necessary, Apoes, that we should converse upon certain topics, and that there should be explanations between us. Yo must now know alldhat concerns the past of my lito:—for this once, Agnes, will we speak of all these things—-and in av duing we must look upon it as a disagreeable task which circumstances ne- cessitate, and which will leave our minds hghtened ns it were from a burden when it is performed. Bosides, my dear Agnes, { aw well assured that you can only havo a dim knowledge of thuse in- eidents which cast a sudden blight upon my exist. ence —drove me from my home—exiled me from my native land—and made me a wanderer, under w feigned name, amidst the strangers of another hemisphere | “Aud Oh, my dear father!” gently whispered ; Ob! I should have returned. was punished with death J” “Qh, dearest father!” cried the young maiden, flinging ber arms about her sire’s neck; “it was no wonder that you fled from your home and the land of your birth,—abandoning wife, child —every- thing !” “Oh! if I had not believed that the wife of whom I. was so proud, was an accomplice io her father’s iniquity, I might perhaps have remained! —yes, 1 might have remained !” cried Ormsby, * But when’I thought that sho was no longer worthy of either my respect or my love, I felt as if my last bope on earth was gone !—as if the only tie which had continued to bind me to my country and my home had been suddenly severed! It was as @ desperate man that I fled. For, Ob! not even thine image, sweet infant as thou chew wast! could constitute anotber boud to hold me to my home! No, no! All the worat that I thought of your unhappy mother, was suddenly reflected as it were upon thee! And so I went away ; and for uine- teen years, Agnes, 1 have suffered intervals of aa- guish or else of an entire numbing of the soul's sensibilities, such as no language can describe ! My God! and this day I have discovered that my poor wife—your mother Honuria—was not 60 culpable after all. No—it was onl» in a moment of mental aberration, so to speak, that she berame the accomplice of ber father’s iniquitous inten- tions! If I had koown it before —if there bad only been tho slightest whisper to waft the word to me acroas tho Atlantic, and to breathe ia my ear that Honoria loved me, that she was penitent, and while pressing thee to her bosom, she wae calling in agony upon Gud to send back a husband and a father to the home which he had deserted, —— { should have re- Agnes, “it it be absulutely necessary that you | turned!—and lung, long ere this, dearest Agnes —~ should tell mo all these things, rest assured that yes, even in thy swiling infaucy, wouldst thou you will receive the tenderest sympathy of your have experienced a father’s love—a sire’s tender- loving daughter for all the sorrows that you may have experienced !” Lord Ormsby proceeded to explain to Agnes the details of those transactions in connexion with the deveased Mr. Waldron which have been so fully recorded in the ppeuing chapters of our tale. As his Jurdsbip supposed, Agnes had indeed but a dim and vague knuwledge of those events; and it was now therefore with a fearful interest that she listened to the recital. ness |” Agnes was now weeping softly but plenteously. tho tears wero likewise trickling dowa the cheeks of her father. There was a long silence; and then Lord Ormsby, suddenly straining the beauteous girl to his heart, murmured, ‘*‘ Weep not, dearest Agnes: for, Oh! if the spirits of the departed are allowed to look down upon thuse whoin they loved and left upon earth, your poor mother may suile with placid joy at the certainty that ber “A’od why did 1 fly frum England 2” eaid her | memory ie no longer thought of uvlovingly by me!” comicbnoo SS