  In the evening, when every breeze was calm, and "the bright-haired sun was making a golden set;" the Marquis Santa Cruz sat alone with his daughter, in her dressing room. Their conference had been long and salutary to both their hearts, and even as it closed with a communication to convince Marcella she entirely occupied that of Louis de Montemar; Lorenzo entered to summon the Marquis below. Mr. Athelstone feared to agitate her, by an abrupt enunciation of the arrival of his nephew, but the appearance of Lorenzo, who had been the companion of his perilous voyage, was enough; and in speechless gratitude, she pressed her fa The Marchioness and Mrs. Coningsby, and all of the family, excepting Cornelia and Marcella, were in the drawing-room with the Marquis. The Duke still lay on the litter on which he had been brought on shore; and he was looking around, with a melancholy smile, on the rapturous greetings with which every body met his friend. They were the sacred transports of dear, domestic kindred, where all was pure, and full of innoxious pleasure. "I never had a family!" said he to himself, "and yet I have seen, and felt transports! and may their memory perish!" cried he, in the same inward voice, "for nothing but selfish passions were there." Mrs. Coningsby approached the Duke, and welcomed him with her accustomed hospitable grace. Every one had now something of the same import to say to him; all but Alice, and she still continued The Marquis was at that time observing on the happy circumstance of the yacht standing for the mainland instead of the island. "In the latter case, old Peter tells me, you must have been lost upon the southern reef!" "And it might have been our fate," rejoined Louis, "if Wharton's resolution had not mastered mine. On an obvious argument, I wanted to avoid the mainland, dreading the exposed condition in which he must have gone on shore." "Yes," returned the Duke, "that boy was always wiser in his own conceit, than "How wicked is that gaiety!" whispered Alice to Ferdinand, "when we have all been so miserable!" Wharton heard the whisper, and turning his head, met a smile from Ferdinand. The Duke bowed to Alice, who blushed angrily, while he requested Mrs. Coningsby to present him to her youngest daughter. Mrs. Coningsby took her hand and drew her reluctant steps towards him. "Sweet Lady," said he, with a gentle seriousness passing over his face; "you are the sister of my best benefactress! and all of my heart I can spare from her virtues, I lay at the feet of yours." There was a melody and a charm in these tenderer tones of his voice, the effect of which astonished her; for feeling as if she had heard the voice of truth itself, she lingered to hear him speak "I shall be jealous, if you breathe that vox amantis again—or, you must teach me your note!" "Apply to her sister!" replied Wharton, turning his brightening countenance towards approaching steps in the adjoining room. The careless hilarity of his features vanished at once, and gave place to an agitated sensibility, that sufficiently shewed, if his voice were the organ of tenderness, the power itself dwelt in his heart. He half rose from the sofa, to which he had been removed from the litter; and Louis with an emotion not less apparent, started towards the opening door. Marcella was led in by her mother, and she approached with a faultering and conscious step. Cornelia, who had taken her resolution, (whatever Wharton might be, and however he might profess himself) to make that just sacrifice to public opinion and to her own consistency, which should demand of him to make a probation at least;—drew on her own strength, and entered the room alone, and in an opposite direction. She was advancing with a modest dignity, towards the happy group; but her step was hasty, as her eye instantly fell on her beloved cousin, and all the dangers he had just escaped, rushed at once upon her heart. Marcella entered at that moment, and looked confusedly round. She also saw the object dearest to her, but she durst not allow her eye to rest there. The same glance shewed her Cornelia, and being near her, unknowing what she did, she threw herself into her arms. But the soul's unutterable language was not confined to the bosoms of those two The Marquis raised his daughter from the neck of her friend; and, having embraced her himself, as she leaned on his bosom put her hand again into that of Louis, and pressing them together: "There, my children!" said he, "receive a father's blessing, as you continue to love each other; and are worthy of this providence of God!" Marcella fell on the breast of her lover, and Louis bore her in his enraptured arms into the next room, to the extended ones of her mother. Mr. Athelstone had not stood mutely by, during this blameless eloquence of nature; but in the moment of the Marquis's separating his daughter from Cornelia, he clasped the hands of Wharton Cornelia trembled every where, but in her stedfast heart. She could not withdraw her hand, or speak; and Wharton softly whispered:—"Oh, my Cornelia, what that sacred hand has joined together, let not thy voice put asunder!" With the words, he gently glided a ring from his own finger, upon hers; and firmly added—"We have met to part no more!" She sighed convulsively, and her head fell upon the shoulder of her Pastor-uncle. He had seen the ring; and pressing her to his breast, tenderly rejoined: "Be to him, my Cornelia, as a lamp to his paths! and, at the resurrection of the just, he will be to you as the sun at noon-day; encreasing your glory, by the brightness of his light!" She put the hand of her uncle, which Those tears relieved her oppressed bosom, oppressed by the love she bore him; oppressed by the boundless and precious disclosure of his; and with her determination to inflict a penalty on each. She raised her head from Mr. Athelstone's breast, and turning upon Wharton, with a look which betrayed all the tenderness of her soul while she declared her final sentiments, she gently, but steadily said: "I do not return you, your ring:—It shall go with me to my grave. But, I was weak; and you know it. I must redeem myself to you, and to the world, by not giving you this hand, until a year's trial at least. When you are far from me, and the precepts of my uncle, your conduct must prove to all, that his niece gives This scene passed without any other auditor than themselves; for when Mr. Athelstone first perceived the great agitation of his niece, he had made a sign to her mother, to draw the rest of the party into another apartment. The next day saw the Marquis and Marchioness Santa Cruz, with the elders of the Athelstone family, meet in the Pastor's library, to arrange every plan for their children's future happiness. Meanwhile Louis sat at the feet of the lady Marcella, in a little summer-house in the garden, exchanging with her the long concealed tendernesses of their united hearts. Theirs was already a Cornelia would not listen to the earnest supplications of him, whose voice, she tremblingly believed, might charm an angel from its orb; till Mr. Athelstone himself prevailed on her, to beguile his yet lengthened hours of confinement to his couch, by her society. There, she heard him tell of all his plans for rendering her union with an outlawed man, less like a banishment to herself. He spoke with reverence of the Electress of Bavaria; with enthusiasm of James Stuart.—"But there, Othello's occupation's gone!" exclaimed he; "the character of the present George of Brunswick has made my commission a sinecure." "Your commission, my dear Wharton," rejoined the Pastor, "is a general one.—From Heaven, and not from man.—And it consists in properly applying your vast endowments of mind and fortune." "To do that, can never be a sinecure. Whether you are to remain a statesman, or to commence a private career; to cultivate in yourself a disposition to befriend your fellow-creatures by every means in your power; whether by your purse, your influence, or your talents; is my acceptation of that difficult text in the Gospel, which says "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations!" We know that the mammon of unrighteousness is riches; or, in other words, worldly-power. We make these our enemies, when we use them to selfish and unworthy purposes. But we turn their dross into real gold;—we make them our friends, when, by their benevolent application, we lay them up as treasures in Heaven;—and, they will receive us there, into everlasting habitations!" Wharton bowed his head, with the ingenuous docility that was in his heart; With less profundity of feeling, but not less vivacity of happiness, Alice walked by the side of Ferdinand in the garden, and artlessly expressed to him her wonder, how any body could help admiring, and even loving Duke Wharton, who had ever passed an evening in his company. "He is so very handsome;" said she, "and so very gay! and so very commanding in all he does, and says, and looks, that, at first sight one is quite frightened at the power all this threatens. But when we know him, he is so exhilarating, so amiable, that—that I do not wonder Cornelia should love as she does!" "But you must not!" rejoined Ferdinand, putting her hand to his lips, "else I shall wish the storm had sunk him fifty fathoms below this island." "Then, I am to suppose you love me, because I am the reverse of these two worthies?" returned Ferdinand, archly glancing in her face. "There is so much of the coxcomb in the question," answered she, sportively shaking her head, "that I will gratify your vanity by the expected compliment." A fortnight's tranquil residence at the pastorage drew the whole circle into that "sober certainty of waking bliss," which no language can describe, but happy are they who understand it by the knowledge of experience. Cornelia was, however, The Duke's wounds were healed, and a pause stood in every happy heart at the near prospect of his departure. He was trying his last entreaties, for a shorter term of separation, when a stranger was unguardedly introduced by one of the under-servants, and it proved to be a messenger from the Secretary of State. He was a younger brother of General Stanhope's, and brought communications of the utmost importance. Wharton was The Duke was under the same impression with herself; and, relinquishing her in some agitation to her mother, walked calmly towards the group in the room, while the other ladies assisted Mrs. Coningsby to bear her insensible daughter from the expected trying scene. But such was not the import of Mr. Stanhope's dispatches. Some were dictated by the King himself, and others by his ministers. Part informed the Marquis de Montemar, that His Majesty had received from the Empress of Germany, an exoneration of all that had been alleged against him at her court. A favourite mistress of Count Routemberg, in her dying moments, had declared the whole Her royal kinsman noticed also the accounts he had received from Gibraltar, of Louis's disinterested conduct as a son, and a Protestant, and a free born descendant of one of the most ancient families in England. These virtues, the gracious Monarch added, should have an adequate reward. Extraordinary disinterestedness could only be repaid by something of the same character! By such a disinterestedness did this noble representative of the long line of British Kings, uniting the royal blood of Scotland and of England in the bosom of George of Brunswick, rivet the loyalty of Louis de Montemar to the country of his maternal ancestors! Certain well "'Tis well!" answered the Duke, with a kindling cheek, when this part of the dispatch was read to him; "I accept the amnesty, that I may now witness the nuptials of my friend in the face of day; and, that hereafter, my Cornelia need not shrink from giving her hand to a man under sentence of the scaffold! But, for my rights There was no voice in that room to expostulate against principle; and the messenger himself, who was a soldier and a man of honour, venerating the same, though it pointed differently from his own, merely answered: "Permit me, Duke, to explain the mistake of those who suppose that the throne of Great Britain came to the House of Brunswick, not by the right of blood, but by virtue of an act of Parliament. George the First was descended from a daughter of James the First; and the The Duke smiled and bowed. "This is an intricate question; but I am the last man to dispute its consequence. However, happy is the prince whose throne is so well founded, that it may be disputed whether it rests most on his birth-right, or his people's will!" With this remark he quitted the room; and, leaving all other thoughts but those of love and gratitude behind him, hastened to the suite of chambers, where he hoped to find her whose arms had never closed on him, till she thought he could receive no other comforter. Louis had left the room in the midst of Mr. Stanhope's conversation with his "You will find her," said he, "all your own!" But in this, even her cousin, who best knew the movements of her soul, was mistaken. Cornelia suffered the grateful, the happy Wharton, to fold her to his heart, in the sacred emotion of a meeting, redeemed as from the grave; for, when they parted a few minutes before, the scaffold appeared to each, the scene of their next separation; and the world to come, where they could only meet again! But Cornelia remained firm to her first resolution. Mr. Stanhope did not pass that day only, with the Pastor and his interesting household; he remained to witness the most heart-felt ceremony that ever took place in the little humble church that succeeded the once magnificent abbey of Lindisfarne. The double marriages of their beloved Louis and Alice were to be solemnized there; and every fisherman's hut sent forth its inmates to honour the holy ceremony. The stars of many orders might have glared on the noble breast of Wharton, Louis, looked so like his former self, in the brightness of unclouded happiness, that every lip moved in rapturous blessings as he passed; and so great was the acclaim of the honest fishermen, around this their often venturous companion, and ever darling master; that no sense was left unoccupied, to bestow a glance on the waving plumes of Ferdinand, though many a benizon followed the down-cast looks of his blushing Alice. Mr. Athelstone stood on the steps of the altar. He began—and he finished Cornelia wept in sisterly congratulation on Alice's bosom; and when she relinquished her to the enraptured Ferdinand, her sweetest tears dropped on the shoulder of the no less happy Louis. Wharton's arm supported the agitated frame of his future bride, while he clasped his friend's hand in his with a felicitation that knew no utterance. Mr. Athelstone looked on the kindred group with the feelings of a parent; and piously exclaimed, "O! how amiable are thy dwellings, thou Lord of Hosts! For here, mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other!" FINIS. Printed by A. Strahan, Transcriber’s Notes
List of Archaic and Variable Spelling (not an exhaustive list)
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