The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 143: what you’re looking at

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

~——_ 128 —— — me!—what means this outburst of emotion? Is it something so very serious—or so very terrible P” “Ah! it would be alike serious and terrible if truce!” responded the young lady, now suddenly raising her eyes and gazing with a mixture of in- quiring earnestness and reviving confidence in her lover’s countenance. “ But no—it is impossible— it cannot be true! You would not deceive me thus !” : “Constance, what mean you? what mean you ?” exclaimed the Marquis, painfully excited. “ Do not hesitate.to speak! There must be no reserve be- tween us i “No, there must not be—TI fee) that there must not be!” interrupted the young lady. “Some months have elapsed since first from my mother’s lips dropped the statement which now weighs upon my mind; and for the reasons I have already ex- plained, I would not mention it to you. But this day I have had a serious conversation with my sister—and I have been led more than ever to feel the importance of removing every doubt and dissi- pating every suspicion,—the more so, since you yourself, Etienne, began the conversation ere now by the assurance that a favourable turn in your circumstances would soon enable you to conduct me to the altar. Therefore, now—on this present oc- casion—must we converse frankly ——” ~ “It is what I wish, Constance! I have already told you so!” said the Marquis with some degree of vehemence; “and I can assure you, my sweet girl, that you are torturing me most acutely by this delay in telling me everything. Say what it is that hangs like a doubt upon your mind, and to which you are so reluctant to give utterance.” Etienne,” responded Constance, raising her beautiful blue eyes and fixing them earnestly upon her lover, “I am tcld that you have already been married; and that although separated from your wife, she is still alive!” If a thunderbolt had fallen at the feet of the Marquis of Villebelle. be could not have been more dismayed. It was a perfect consternation that seized upon him: he turned pale as death—the arm that was engirdling Constance, fell as if palsied from her waist—and he gazed upon her in vacant bewilderment. “OQ God!” cried the unhappy young lady, “it is true—it is too true!”’ and covering her face with her hands, she burst into a passionate flood of weeping. “ Yes, it is true, it is true!” echoed the Marquis, in a tone of rending agony. “ But good God! how could this secret have been known?” “Ah! little matter how it was known,” mur- mured Constance, stricken with despair, “ since you vonfessit is the truth. O Etienne, wherefore have you deceived me thus?”—and starting from her scat, she was about to break away from him with frantic excitement, when he took her hand—he fell upon his knees—he besought her to remain—he im- plored her to tarry for a few minutes to hear him. There was a desperation in his. looks and a wild- ness in his tone which frightencd Constance Fare- field; and though she felt hurt, mortified, and wounded in all her keenest sensibilities, —though it appeared as if all the happiness of her life were suddenly annihilated by a single blow,—yet she could not leave him thus, for she felt that she loved him still! 3) — ee THE MYSTERIES OF T1ik COURT, —— “Speak, Etienne,” she said, ia a low deep tone clouded with ineffable emotions. ‘I will not refuse you a hearing.” She resumed her seat: he placed himself by her side, and would have still retained her hand in his own—but she gently withdrewit; and then her grief burst forth anew in convulsing sobs. “Oh! calm yourself, calm yourself, I implore you!” he said in accents of passionate entreaty. “Would you see me kill myself at your feet? But I can endure anything rather than this anguish of your’s! The spectacle drives me mad—because it is I who have caused it. Yet if you knew all|——”’ “Then tell me everything—be frank and candid with me!” said Constance. “ And, Oh!” she added, in a voice full of gushing emotion, “if there be ex- tenuation on your behalf, God knows that I shall only be too willing to admit it!” ‘Tf you will grant me your patience, Constance,” cesumed the Marquis, “I will tell you everything; and you will hear one of the most extraordinary histories that ever fell from the lips of human being. Talk of the incidents of novels and romances being extravagant! their interest palls and wanes into mawkish insipidity—their excitement subsides into monotony and dullness—when compared with the story I am about to relate! And that there is ex- tenuation, if not a complete vindication for the course I have pursued in respect to yourself, Con- stance, I may venture to promise. Nay—lI do not even know but that I should.have been fully justi- fied in averring that I am not qa married man at this moment!’ “Oh! if all this be true!” exclaimed Constance, - her countenance brightening up with the animation of hope: for her’s had a few moments back been a despair so profound that even the slightest glim- mering which bade her hope again, was a relief ineffable. “Shall I commence at once?” asked the French nobleman, in a low soft voice: and again he took her hand, which was not now withdrawn. “Yes—proceed. Etienne—proceed—and may God grant But I am tortured with suspense! Pro- ceed !” The Marquis of Villebelle accordingly commenced in the following manner :— “You are aware that my father, being devoted to the cause of the Bourbons, lost all his immense estates in France by confiscation when the first Re- volution broke out: you are likewise aware that when the Bourbons were restored, they behaved with the deepest ingratitude to my father, refusing him any indemnification for the losses he had sus- tained on their behalf. It was through disgust at their conduct, as much as through love for this country, that he preferred a residence in England rather than in his own native land. It is exactly eight years ago—consequently, mm 1836—that my father returned for the last time to France, in the lope of receiving from the hand of Louis Philippe (who had then been six years on the throne) that jus- tice which had been denied by Louis XVIII and Charles X. But scarcely had he set foot on his native soil, when he was seized with a dangerous illness, which in a few days proved fatai. I had been left behind him in England; but upon re- ceiving the sad intelligence of my father’s death, a ES ee + = Ss (€©) CORMICLO©