Night and Morning, Volume 5Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
Night and Morning, Volume 5
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
English fiction
invested her, pleased him even more than her beauty; the recollections
connected with that first time in which he had ever beheld her, were also
grateful and endearing; the harshness with which her parents spoke to her
moved his compassion, and addressed itself to a temper peculiarly alive
to the generosity that leans towards the weak and the wronged; the
engaging mixture of mildness and gaiety with which she tended her peevish
and sneering uncle, convinced him of her better and more enduring
qualities of disposition and womanly heart. And even--so strange and
contradictory are our feelings--the very remembrance that she was
connected with a family so hateful to him made her own image the more
bright from the darkness that surrounded it. For was it not with the
daughter of his foe that the lover of Verona fell in love at first sight?
And is not that a common type of us all--as if Passion delighted in
contradictions? As the Diver, in Schiller's exquisite ballad, fastened
upon the rock of coral in the midst of the gloomy sea, so we cling the
more gratefully to whatever of fair thought and gentle shelter smiles out
to us in the depths of Hate and Strife.
But, perhaps, Vaudemont would not so suddenly and so utterly have
rendered himself to a passion that began, already, completely to master
his strong spirit, if he had not, from Camilla's embarrassment, her
timidity, her blushes, intoxicated himself with the belief that his
feelings were not unshared. And who knows not that such a belief, once
cherished, ripens our own love to a development in which hours are as
years?
It was, then, with such emotions as made him almost insensible to every
thought but the luxury of breathing the same air as his cousin, which
swept from his mind the Past, the Future--leaving nothing but a joyous,
a breathless PRESENT on the Face of Time, that he repaired to Beaufort
Court. He did not return to H---- before he went, but he wrote to Fanny
a short and hurried line to explain that he might be absent for some days
at least, and promised to write again, if he should be detained longer
than he anticipated.
In the meanwhile, one of those successive revolutions which had marked
the eras in Fanny's moral existence took its date from that last time
they had walked and conversed together.
The very evening of that day, some hours after Philip was gone, and after
Simon had retired to rest, Fanny was sitting before the dying fire in the
little parlour in an attitude of deep and pensive reverie. The old
woman-servant, Sarah, who, very different from Mrs. Boxer, loved Fanny
with her whole heart, came into the room as was her wont before going to
bed, to see that the fire was duly out, and all safe: and as she
approached the hearth, she started to see Fanny still up.
"Dear heart alive!" she said; "why, Miss Fanny, you will catch your
death of cold,-what are you thinking about?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account