But what hope was there of solace or information
from such a quarter? Lady Annabel's was not a mind to be diverted from
her purpose. Whatever might have been the conduct of her husband, it
was evident that Lady Annabel had traced out a course from which she
had resolved not to depart. She remembered the earnest and repeated
advice of Dr. Masham, that virtuous and intelligent man who never
advised anything but for their benefit. How solemnly had he enjoined
upon her never to speak to her mother upon the subject, unless she
wished to produce misery and distress! And what could her mother tell
her? Her father lived, he had abandoned her, he was looked upon as a
criminal, and shunned by the society whose laws and prejudices he had
alike outraged. Why should she revive, amid the comparative happiness
and serenity in which her mother now lived, the bitter recollection of
the almost intolerable misfortune of her existence? No! Venetia was
resolved to be a solitary victim. In spite of her passionate and
romantic devotion to her father she loved her mother with perfect
affection, the mother who had dedicated her life to her child, and at
least hoped she had spared her any share in their common unhappiness.
And this father, whoso image haunted her dreams, whose unknown voice
seemed sometimes to float to her quick ear upon the wind, could he be
that abandoned being that Cadurcis had described, and that all around
her, and all the circumstances of her life, would seem to indicate?
Alas! it might be truth; alas! it seemed like truth: and for one so
lost, so utterly irredeemable, was she to murmur against that pure
and benevolent parent who had cherished her with such devotion, and
snatched her perhaps from disgrace, dishonour, and despair!
And Cadurcis, would he return? With all his violence, the kind
Cadurcis! Never did she need a brother more than now; and now he was
absent, and she had parted with him in anger, deep, almost deadly:
she, too, who had never before uttered a harsh word to a human being,
who had been involved in only one quarrel in her life, and that almost
unconsciously, and which had nearly broken her heart.
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