And what is this prize that the trembling Venetia holds almost
convulsively in her grasp, apparently without daring even to examine
it? Is this the serene and light-hearted girl, whose face was like
the cloudless splendour of a sunny day? Why is she so pallid and
perturbed? What strong impulse fills her frame? She clutches in her
hand a key!
On that tempestuous night of passionate sorrow which succeeded the
first misunderstanding between Venetia and her mother, when the voice
of Lady Annabel had suddenly blended with that of her kneeling
child, and had ratified with her devotional concurrence her wailing
supplications; even at the moment when Venetia, in a rapture of love
and duty, felt herself pressed to her mother's reconciled heart, it
had not escaped her that Lady Annabel held in her hand a key; and
though the feelings which that night had so forcibly developed, and
which the subsequent conduct of Lady Annabel had so carefully and
skilfully cherished, had impelled Venetia to banish and erase from her
thought and memory all the associations which that spectacle, however
slight, was calculated to awaken, still, in her present mood, the
unexpected vision of the same instrument, identical she could not
doubt, had triumphed in an instant over all the long discipline of
her mind and conduct, in an instant had baffled and dispersed her
self-control, and been hailed as the providential means by which she
might at length penetrate that mystery which she now felt no longer
supportable.
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