Rosa Lambert — page 105: what you’re looking at

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

| Me MA cae 94 ‘ week he told me somewhat abruptly that he must take his departure again. When I remonstrated, entreated, wept, and prayed, he gave me to under- stand that he was making a thousand sacrifices on my behalf, and that I must nerve myself to make commensurate ones for him; so that by insidious argument and guileful language, all conveyed in the melting accents of his melodious voice, he made my obedience to his will assume the sem- blance of the only proof of love which it was in my power to give him. I yielded—-I promised to do all he desired, and to keep our amour pro- foundly secret. He departed. When he was gone, I flew to my desk to console myself by de- ROSA LAMBERT. forth a voluvtary exile, and when accident’ shinee me in the way of Mr. Alvanly. “Oh, my dear Miss Lambert!” exclaimed Caro. line Seymour, in one of those sudden and wild gushes of feeling to which it was her impulsive nature to give way; “had my father received me —had the door of my paternal home been opened to me—I should not have become the lost ereature [I since have been. God k*ows that though I had fallen, I was not depraved! Love alone had made me weak. No—it was not even love alone: it was the terror of being forced into marriage with one whom I detested and abhorred. This was it, to- gether with my young heart’s idolizing worship, vouring the letters he had written me from | that had led my steps astray from the path of vir Hawthorn Hall during the severai periods of our | tue. IT felt as | if smitten by a sudden blow: my eyes were opened | separation: but they were not there! Oh, I was to be piticd—not blamed! Hea- vens, that my own father should have driven me away from his door! Had he reeeived me in hig all in a moment to the perfidy of Rockingham: I | arms—had he weleomed the penitent home—had saw that I was betrayed!” Again Caroline Seymour paused: the tears| ways, I should have been saved. | he given me the chance of returning into virtue’s I had erred trickled down her cheeks, and she sobbed convul- | through love and under the influence of terror: I sively. But with one of those rapid transitions | subsequently erred in the desperation of my feel- from one state of feeling to another, which so pe- culiarly characterized her, she wiped away her tears ——her sobs ceased abruptly—and as her eyes flashed fire, while her naturally beautiful countenance be- came distorted with an almost fiendish expression of dark, deep, concentrated rage, she went on as follows :— | “ Yes,—I was betrayed—cruelly betrayed! He had come to London merely for the purpose of ob- taining—nay, more, plundering from me the only evidences which existed of the marriage-promises which he had made. My love did not turn to hate: no—it was then too strong, too deep, too closely in- tertwined with all the chords of my heart to experi- ence such a change. But still I had my pride; and { could not bring myself to write at once in a spirit of either remonstrance or entreaty. Judging by my own love, I still buoyed myself up with the hope that his affection would revive—that remorse would touch him—and that he would return or write; but he did not. Then I wrote. The only answer I received, was an envelope containing a sum of money. I flung the bank-notes into the fire; and saying to myself, ‘ Everything is indeed now at an end between us!’ I proceeded to my father’s house. I cannot describe the state of my feelings: it was a sort of numbness of all the senses, as if a fearful consternation were upon me. What I was doing appeared to be done mechanically: no tears trickled down my cheeks—but I felt that my ings, and to procure myself bread. I will not—TI cannot dwell at length upon that portion of my narrative. Suffice it to say that it was not merely despair which took possession of me when IL thus became an outcast: it was likewise a reckless in- difference for whatsoever might be my fate, toge- ther with a haughty disregard of the world :—in short, it was an unnatural state of feeling, terri ble for any human being to experience, but doubly horrible when it became the lot of a young crea- ture of but a few months past eighteen. T fell under the protection of a young nobleman, with whom I lived but a few weeks; for he was sud- denly ordered abroad on some diplomatie mission —and he left me with an abruptness which only tended to sour my temper all the more bitterly against the world. For several months following I led a wayward dissipated life, on which I shudder to look back. It must have been very nearly four months ago that one day, as I was walking through some street at the West End, I suddenly encoun. tered Horace Rockingham. He accosted me with as much effrontery as if his conduct had never been tainted with perfidiousness. All in a moment did he regain his empire over me. He accompanied me to my lodgings: I was almost penniless at the time—he sent out to order a luxurious repast,— champagne and all delicacies; and we spent the remainder of the day together. When excited witb. wine, I found myself listening to some tale of breath was half-hushed, as if I were walking along | contemplated vengeance which he was breathing in atealthily in the dead of night to do some deed of | my ears. At first I scarcely understood him: but guilt or mystery. I knocked at the door of the | by degrees I grew interested. For, with an un- house in Broad Street—that house which I had | blushing indelicacy, he told me how—sinee he had abandoned a year before! My father himself ‘last seen me—he had loved another, and how this opened the door; he had doubtless seen me from a other had a few months back prevented him from window. I was about to throw myself at his feet | forming a brilliant alliance. That other, Miss in a sudden paroxysm of all the acutest feelings of | Lambert, was yourself!” anguish, remorse, and despair,—when he sternly! And did he tell you,” I asked, in a deep bade me depart, flinging me off for ever! The next | hollow tone, “how he compelled me to surrender instant the door was closed in my face; and I! up my virtue—and that it was through revenge f dragged myself away a homeless outcast, in a state | prevented him from marrying Lord Eveleigh’s of mind which I shall not attempt to deseribe.” daughter P” “ Alas, alas, poor girl!” said I, almost suffocated} T scarcely remember now all that he told me,” by my own painful emotions ; for I remembered | replied Caroline: “for my brain was in a whirl. with what bitter, bitter feclings f lad left my own’ Suffice it to say, he told me enough to make me bome, on that memorable night when I wandered hate you. I regarded you as the rival who had eT SF A mw —— ie . -~ om eR ee ee ep ee = ee ee ee ay oe ees + — pee oe ee ee . _ _ é ’