“Nay, Lawrence, give not way to despair; this agrees neither with reason nor religion. Depend upon it everything will turn out far better than you could expect. The balloon will come down quietly to earth as other balloons have done, and we shall have the whole party sitting here—perhaps to-morrow, talking over their adventures, and smiling at our alarm. Don’t tell me that your brother knows nothing about guiding a balloon—he is so wonderfully clever that he knows everything by intuition. He will find some method of getting safely out of the difficulty; my mind always grows easier when I think what a genius he is!” Aumerle was walking up and down in his study, as if motion could relieve his mental distress, at each turn pausing at the window to look anxiously out upon the sky. He stopped short as his wife concluded her last sentence, and murmured, “My poor, poor brother! the bitterest trial of all is the fear that he is unprepared for the awful change!” “This very trial may be sent to prepare him for it, to make him think more than he has ever yet done of the one thing that is needful. And our poor wilful Mabel—” “Oh! blame not her—blame not her!” exclaimed Ida, who had entered as Mrs. Aumerle was speaking, and who now bent at her stepmother’s feet in a posture of humiliation as well as of grief; “you and my dear father must learn how much of her fault rests with me. It is a bitter confession, but I can find no peace till it is made. Dear Mabel came to me yesterday evening, and told me that Papa had given a kind of permission to her to ascend in the _Eaglet_, bidding her at the same time consult you—” “I positively forbade her,” interrupted the lady. “I know it—she told me all—and had I done my duty,” continued Ida, her voice hardly articulate through sobs, “I would have told her that your refusal was sufficient—that she should submit and obey. But somehow—I can scarcely recall in what way—a chord of pride was touched in my own sinful heart; I felt it difficult to urge on her a duty which I had so often neglected myself, and I can now scarcely hope for my father’s forgiveness, or yours, or my own—” The last words were sobbed forth on the bosom of Mrs. Aumerle, for Ida’s lowly confession had made her step-mother forget everything but the sister’s grief and repentance, and no parent could more kindly have strained to her heart a beloved and penitent child, than the hard, severe, practical Barbara Aumerle embraced the daughter of her husband. Her tones were those of maternal tenderness and sympathy for the sorrower as she said, “Don’t reproach yourself, darling,—don’t reproach yourself, I believe there were faults on both sides!” The vicar, with moist eyes and a thankful heart, saw for the first time cordial sympathy between two beings whom he dearly loved; and Pride fled in gloomy disappointment from the scene, for he knew that the chain of his captive was broken! CHAPTER XXVI. THE AWFUL CRISIS.