“Oh, I was sure that you would come,—quite sure! And Ida—my own precious Ida!” The poor young girl clung to her sister as if they had been parted for years.

“My husband!” exclaimed Annabella, trembling lest terrible news should await her.

“He is much the same, but—”

“Where is he—I will fly to him; I—”

“My dear madam,” said the low voice of a stranger, as a tall, bald gentleman in black came forth from the interior of the cottage, with his finger raised to his lip, “may I request that no sound be uttered—my patient is in a state of high fever.”

“I will quietly glide up to his room—”

“If, as I suppose, I have the honour of addressing the Countess of Dashleigh, I trust that she will pardon my strictly forbidding any one but Mr. Aumerle and the nurse from entering the chamber of the earl.”

“I am his wife!” murmured Annabella hoarsely.

“It is impossible,” said Dr. G——, “that you should meet without a degree of excitement which might endanger the life or the reason of my patient. The earl is in excellent hands; his friend, and the skilful attendant whom I have provided, will watch him night and day. If any new face were to be seen, I would not be answerable for the consequences.”

Dr. G—— had, of course, read “The Precipice and the Peer,” and naturally concluded that its authoress was the last person who could with impunity be admitted into the sick-room of the excited and fevered patient. From the physician’s decision there was no appeal, though to Annabella it appeared an intolerable sentence of banishment from the place to which both duty and affection called her. Always ready to rush to a conclusion, the unhappy wife was convinced that it was the just resentment of Dashleigh against her, that rendered her of all beings in the world the one whose presence he could not endure. Utterly prostrate and helpless in her sorrow, the countess left to Ida all care for the arrangements of the night. To herself it was nothing where she slept, or whether she ever should sleep again; she was like a flower so crushed and bruised that it will never more unfold its petals to the sun.

The rude cottage of the fisherman offered wretched accommodation for so large a party. The earl occupied one of the two little bed-rooms which were reached by a ladder-like staircase; in the other—an apartment not ten feet square, with bare rafters, sloping roof, and single-paned window engrained with dust and sea salt, and incapable of being opened—the countess and her cousins passed the night. The gentlemen had to content themselves with the bare floor of the kitchen below, redolent of the scent of fish, and garlanded with nets and tackle,—an accommodation which they shared with their rough, weather-beaten, but hospitable host.

Annabella and Ida were so much exhausted by previous excitement, fatigue, and want of rest, that even in the miserable hovel they might have slept deeply and long, had it not been for the sounds from the next room, almost as distinctly heard through the slight partition as if the apartments had been one. It was agony to the countess to hear the moans of the fevered sufferer, or the wild words uttered in delirium. Ida passed the night in vain endeavours to soothe and calm a wounded spirit, while the weary Mabel peacefully slumbered beside them, unconscious of what was passing around. It was almost as great a relief to Ida as to her afflicted cousin when the morning broke at length, and welcome silence on the other side of the partition told that the sufferer had sunk to rest.

Augustine Aumerle, after watching for hours at the bedside of the earl, whom he alone had any power to soothe in the paroxysms of his terrible malady, now resigned his post to the nurse, and descending the steep, narrow staircase, went forth to calm and refresh his spirit by a brief walk on the shore of the sea,—that sea in which he had so lately expected to find a grave. As he stood gazing on the bright expanse of waters, and enjoying the fresh morning breeze that, as it rippled the surface of the sea, also brought back the hue of health to his pale and careworn cheek, he was joined by Lawrence Aumerle.

Kindly greeting was exchanged between the brothers; questions were asked and replies were given, and then a silence succeeded. Something seemed pressing on the heart of each, to which the lip would not give ready utterance. Augustine was the first to speak, but he did so without looking at his brother; he rather seemed to be watching the sea-bird that lightly floated on the wave.

“Lawrence, you remember the evening when we conversed together in your study?”

“I have often thought of it since.”

“And so have I,” said Augustine; “I thought of it when I believed that there was but one step between me and death,—when I expected in a brief space to be in that world where we shall know even as we are known,—where ours will not be the wild guess, but the absolute certainty,—not the wild grasping at the shadow, but the laying hold on the substance of truth.”

Lawrence fixed his eyes anxiously upon his brother, but did not interrupt him by a word.

“You said that experience is the growth of time. Lawrence, I have, then, lived an age in the last forty hours. A wide view of both heaven and earth is gained from the terrible height that I reached!”

“Common experience is the growth of time,” said the vicar; “but spiritual experience—”

“Give it in the words of inspiration,” interrupted Augustine; “I shall no longer ask you to put aside that solemn evidence, even for a moment. Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience.”

“And experience, hope;” cried the vicar. “Oh, my brother!—that blessed hope shed abroad in the heart by the knowledge that Christ died for the ungodly, that hope that alone maketh not ashamed, is it—oh! is it your own?”

Augustine silently pressed the hand that had been unconsciously extended towards him; it was his only reply to the question. Without another sentence being uttered the brothers turned their steps in the direction of the cottage. But while pacing the shingley beach, Augustine was mentally subscribing to the confession of one of the brightest geniuses of earth,—that he had hitherto been but as a child gathering pebbles on the shore of the great ocean of truth; while the vicar was raising to God, from the depths of a grateful heart, a thanksgiving for prayer answered at the very time when, and through the very trial by which his earthly happiness had appeared crushed and destroyed! He was proving, as so many saints have proved, that—

As no object could be answered by the prolonged stay of Mr. Aumerle and Mabel in the over-crowded cottage, they departed on that day for their home. The countess could not endure to quit the spot, and Ida remained to bear her company, while Augustine resumed his watch by his suffering friend.

Day after day the once proud Earl of Dashleigh lay on a pallet-bed in the fisherman’s rude hovel, mind and body alike prostrated by the fever induced by the fearful trials which he had endured. He was passing indeed through a burning fiery furnace, but its flame was consuming the dross which had largely mixed with a nobler metal. When the powers of good and evil contend together for the dominion over a human soul, it is as in the battles of earth; dark and painful traces are often left behind of the conflict, conquest is not attained without suffering. Never, perhaps, is the strife more painful than when the enemy to be subdued is pride! Then how often a merciful Providence sends humiliation, anguish, disgrace, first to rouse the soul to a sense of its danger, and then to aid it in the perilous war! From how much of suffering is exempted the meek and quiet spirit that has calmly laid down the shackles of pride, not left them till some loving yet terrible dispensation should wrench them away from the bleeding soul!

Annabella was deeply humbled; there was some danger that depression might with her sink into hopeless despondency. Her ardent and volatile disposition was ever prone to extremes, and she could not believe it possible that her proud lord could ever forgive one who had wounded his dignity so deeply,—one whose indiscretion had so nearly cost him his life! The forced inaction to which she had to submit greatly increased the trial to Annabella. If it had been possible for her to have done or suffered anything in order to repair the evil that she had wrought, she would have contemplated its effects with less overwhelming remorse. Had the countess belonged to the Church of Rome, she would have wasted her strength with fasting, lacerated her flesh by the scourge, or gone on some painful pilgrimage in the hope of redeeming her fault. As it was, she had to sit still—useless, helpless, receiving from time to time tidings of her husband’s varying state from the lips of ministering strangers! Annabella’s spirit might have altogether sunk under the lengthened trial, but for the support of Ida’s calmer and more chastened spirit, which had itself found its stay on the Rock of Ages.

On the sixth day of Dashleigh’s illness, his wife received from her home a small packet, containing the little pocket-book which had been her own earliest gift to her betrothed. The beautiful remembrance had been accidentally discovered at no great distance from the letter which Mabel had dropped; but its comparative weight had made it fall with an impetus that had half imbedded it in the sod. Easily identified by the coronet and name upon the shield, which marked it as the property of the unfortunate nobleman, with whose fate the county was ringing, it had been forwarded to Dashleigh Hall, and thence—still stained and clotted with dust and mud—it had been sent on by her servants to the countess.

Annabella gazed on the book for some moments without daring to unfasten the clasp. The sight of that little gift brought with it a crowd of recollections of the time when wedded life had lain before fancy’s eye as a bright, golden-clasped book, on whose yet blank pages hope, pleasure, and love, would trace nothing but sentences of joy! Why was it that the leaves of that life had been blistered and blotted with tears,—that the gold had been tarnished, the beauty marred, and that the once joyous bride now dreaded even to look upon what that book might contain!

“Open it for me, Ida, dearest,” murmured Annabella faintly; “I tremble to behold what his fingers may have traced in that terrible hour!”

Ida silently obeyed, kneeling at the side of her unhappy cousin, whose cold hand rested upon her shoulder. Ida turned slowly leaf after leaf. There were various memoranda in the book, evidently written at an earlier period—addresses of friends, names of books, engagements for days long passed. Little of interest or importance could attach to entries such as these. But almost at the end of the book, on a page otherwise blank, appeared two words in pencil, traced evidently by a hand that had shaken from weakness, excitement, or emotion. The words were barely legible, but such as they were Ida with tremulous eagerness pointed them out to her friend. Annabella caught the book from her hand, pressed it convulsively to her lips, and while her eyes overflowed with tears and her heart with thanksgiving, repeated again and again the two blessed words which spoke forgiveness and peace!

Even while the young wife’s tears were still flowing, a gentle tap was heard at the door. Ida went and unclosed it; there was a low whispering sound, and then the maiden returned to her cousin with a gentle smile on her face as she said, laying her hand on that of the countess, “It is my uncle, dearest; he comes to bring you good tidings. The earl is greatly better,—has been speaking to him,—has been questioning him of you; he knows—”

“Knows that I am here!” exclaimed Annabella, starting eagerly from her seat.

“Yes, and wishes to see you,—nay, dearest, nay, you must be calm,—for his sake you must still this wild excitement! Remember that he is still very weak,—remember the danger of a relapse!”

“I am quite calm,” replied the young countess, collecting herself by a strong effort, though her quivering voice still betrayed her emotion; “I will do nothing to agitate my lord,—he shall not even hear a word from my lips,—but oh! the bliss if I may once—but once hear from his those precious words, forgiveness and peace!”

With soft, noiseless step she glided to the low rough-hewn door which opened into the room of her husband. Gently Annabella pushed it ajar, and entered with a throbbing heart, and a mien as reverential and timid as if she were approaching some solemn fane. That low dark room, with uncarpeted floor, unpapered walls, furniture coarse and scanty contained what she now felt was all the world to her.

No human friend intruded his presence on the sacredness of that scene which ever after, to the memory of Annabella, hallowed that fisherman’s hut. When the penitent wife knelt in lowly contrition by the pallet of a husband so narrowly rescued from the jaws of the grave, and listened breathlessly to the feeble accents which told her that the past was cancelled,—that she was dear as ever to him still, angels may have looked on rejoicing as upon a prodigal’s return, for no looming shadow darkened the holy radiance of returning peace and love, no discord jarred on the harmony of wedded souls,—the demon of pride was not there!