The
pages had recently been bedewed with tears. Lady Annabel then looked
at the bridal bed, and marked the missing rose in the garland: it was
as she expected. She seated herself then in the chair opposite the
portrait, on which she gazed with a glance rather stern than fond.
'Marmion,' she exclaimed, 'for fifteen years, a solitary votary,
I have mourned over, in this temple of baffled affections, the
inevitable past. The daughter of our love has found her way, perhaps
by an irresistible destiny, to a spot sacred to my long-concealed
sorrows. At length she knows her father. May she never know more! May
she never learn that the being, whose pictured form has commanded her
adoration, is unworthy of those glorious gifts that a gracious Creator
has bestowed upon him! Marmion, you seem to smile upon me; you seem
to exult in your triumph over the heart of your child. But there is a
power in a mother's love that yet shall baffle you. Hitherto I have
come here to deplore the past; hitherto I have come here to dwell
upon the form that, in spite of all that has happened, I still was,
perhaps, weak enough, to love. Those feelings are past for ever. Yes!
you would rob me of my child, you would tear from my heart the only
consolation you have left me.
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