Agnes Vol. 2 — page 186: 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 disappesred, so little were their senses now susceptible ot anything that was occur- ring beyond the sphere in which all theie own tucughits, feelings, and emotions wero agitating. “You will ask me, my dear child,” said Lord Ormsby, “ wherefure I have neglected vou for so many long yeara—wherefore I had abandoned you —aud 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 so affected, that if 1 have nut 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 a cynic and a misauthrope. ,By brooding over my sorrows and 179 father: “why did I flee from my home, to ba heard of nv more? In the first place, dearest Agnes, I was resolved not to be the supporter of & tremendous cheat from the moment that 1 had discovered it: bué 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 the villain in order to clear and exonerate himeelf; and Ou! I shud. dered at the idea of dungeons and chains, of my wrongs, I was led on to the settled conviction | prisons 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 whvule 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 fuirest 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 presept—and you must entertain cvery hope for the future!” “Yes, my beloved child,’ answered Ormsby, kissing away thoso teara from his beauteous daughter’s cheeks, “ there is indeed happiness for the present, and there 1s every hope for the felicity of the future! But it is absulutely necessary, Agnes, that we should converse upon certain topica, and that there suould be explanatiuns between us. Yo"' must now know alldhat concerns the past of my lite:—fur this once, Agnes, will we speak of all these things—-and 1n sv 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. Besides, my dear Agoes, | am well assured that you can only havo a dim kuowledge of thuse in- eidents which cast a sudden blight upun my exist- pnce—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 Agnes, “it it be absolutely necessary that you should tell mo all these things, rest assured that you will receive the tenderest sympathy of your loving daughter for all the sorrows that you may have experienced !’ Lord Ormsby proceeded to explain to Arnos the details of those transactions in connexion with the deveased Mr. Waldron which have been so fully recorded in the ppeuing chapters of uur tale. As his lurdsbip supposed, Agnes had indeed but a dim and vague knuwledge of those events; and it was now therefore with a fearful interest that she latened to the recital. was punished with dealh J” “On, dearest father!” cried the young maiden, floging 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 1. was so proud, was an accomplice in her father’s iniquity, I might perhaps bavo remained ! —yes, 1 miggt have remained !” eried Ormsby, “But when’lI thought that she 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! lt was as a desperate man that I fled. For, Oi' not even thine image, sweet infant as thou thew wast! cuuld constitute another bouad to hold me to my home! No, no! All the worat that I thought of your unhappy mothor, was suddenly reflected as it were upon thee! And so I went away ; and for nine- teen years, Acnes, | 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 pvor wife—your mother Honurila—was not so culpable after all. No—it was onl» in a moment of mental aberration, so to speak, that she besame the actomplico of ber father’s iniquitous inten- tions! If If had koown it before —if there bad only been tho slightest whisper to waft the word to me acroas the Atlantic, and to breathe in my ear that Honoria loved me, that she was penitent, and while pressing thee to her bosom, she wae calling in agony upon Goud to send back a husband and a father to the home which he had deserted, —~ Ob! I should bave returned. [ should have re- turned !—and lung, long ere this, dearest Aynes— yes, even in thy smiling intfaucy, wouldst thou have experienced a father’s love—a sire’s tender- ness |” Aynes was now weeping softly but plenteously. tho tears were likewise trickling down the cheeks of her father. There was a long silence ; and then Lord Ormesby, suddenly straiving the beauteous girl to his heart, murmured, ‘“‘ Weep not, dearess Agnes: for, Oh! if tho spirita of the departed are allowed to look down upvn thuse whom they loved and left upon earth, your poor mother may smile with placid joy at the certainty that ber “A'od why did 1 fly from England ?” said her | memory ie no longer thuught of uulovingly by me!” GORGE OOO OY <S (©