This letter was certainly commented upon pretty freely in all its parts by the knight and lady of Oakley; but not the less did it produce the effect intended: for not even could Sir Gilbert, after the first hot fit of rage was over, advise poor Helen to expose herself to be recalled by force. In the case of Miss Torrington, the hated authority of Mr. Cartwright, though not necessarily so lasting, was for the present equally imperative, and he therefore advised her peaceably to accompany her friend to her unhappy home, and then to set about applying to Chancery in order to emancipate herself from it.

The parting was a very sad one. Poor Helen wept bitterly. She had felt more consolation perhaps than she was aware in having been received with such very parental kindness at Oakley; and her present departure from it was, she thought, exceedingly like being driven, or rather dragged, out of paradise. But there was no help for it. The carriage was waiting at the door, and even the rebellious Sir Gilbert himself said she must go,—not without adding, however, that it should go hard with him if he did not find some means or other, before she were twenty-one, of releasing her from such hateful thraldom.

Helen had given, as she thought, her last kiss to her warm-hearted godmother, and was in the very act of stepping aside that Miss Torrington might take her place in the carriage, when that young lady blushing most celestial rosy red, said abruptly, as if prompted thereto by a sudden and desperate effort of courage, "Sir Gilbert Harrington!—may I speak to you for one single minute alone?"

"For a double century, fair Rose, if we can but make the tÊte-À-tÊte last so long.—You may give poor god-mamma another hug, Helen: and don't hurry yourself about it,—Miss Rose and I shall find a great deal to say to each other."

As soon as the old baronet had completed the flourish with which he led her into his library, Miss Torrington turned to him, and with a voice and manner that betrayed great agitation, she said, "I believe, Sir Gilbert, I may change my present guardian, by applying to the Court of Chancery. If I make myself a ward of the court, it will be necessary, I believe, for me to obtain the Lord Chancellor's consent if I should wish to marry before I am of age?"

"Certainly, my dear."

"And what is necessary for the obtaining such consent, Sir Gilbert?"

"That the person who proposes to marry you should be able to offer settlements in proportion to your own fortune."

"And if I should choose a person unable to do so?"

"To guard against such imprudence, Miss Torrington, the Chancellor has the power of preventing such a marriage."

Rosalind's colour came, and went and came again, before she could utter another word; but at length she said, "Have I not the power of choosing another guardian, Sir Gilbert?"

"I believe you have, my dear."

"If I have,—then will you let me choose you?"

These words burst so eagerly from her, and she clasped her hands, and fixed eyes upon him with a look so supplicating, that no man would have found it an easy task to refuse her. Sir Gilbert probably felt little inclination to do so, though he had, in the course of his life, repeatedly refused to take the office now offered him in so singular a manner.

"This request, my dear Miss Rose," said he, smiling, "looks very much as if you thought I should prove such an old fool of a guardian as to let you have your own way in all things. I hardly know whether I ought to thank you for the compliment or not. However, I am very willing to accept the office; for I think, somehow or other, that you will not plague me much.—What is your fortune, my dear?—and is it English or Irish property?"

"Entirely English, Sir Gilbert; and produces, I believe, between three and four thousand a year."

"A very pretty provision, my dear young lady. Would you wish to proceed in this immediately?"

"Immediately,—without a day's delay, if I could help it."

Sir Gilbert patted her cheek, and smiled again with a look of very great contentment and satisfaction. "Very well, my dear—I think you are quite right—quite right to get rid of such a guardian as the Reverend Mistress Cartwright with as little delay as possible. I imagine you would not find it very easy to negotiate the business yourself, and I will therefore recommend my lawyer to you. Shall I put the business into his hands forthwith?"

So bright a flash of pleasure darted from the eyes of Rosalind, as made the old gentleman wink his own—and, in truth, he appeared very nearly as well pleased as herself. "Now then," she said, holding her hand towards him that he might lead her out again, "I will keep Mr. Cartwright's carriage waiting no longer.—Bless you, Sir Gilbert! Do not talk to any body about this till it is done. Oh! how very kind you are!"

Sir Gilbert gallantly and gaily kissed the tips of her fingers, and led her again into the drawing-room. Helen, who was still weeping, and seemed as much determined to persevere in it as ever Beatrice did, looked with astonishment in the face of her friend, which, though still covered with blushes, was radiant with joy. It was in vain she looked at her, however—it was a mystery she could not solve: so, once more uttering a mournful farewell, Helen gave a last melancholy gaze at her old friends, and followed Rosalind into the carriage.

"May I ask you, Rosalind," she said as soon as it drove off, "what it is that you have been saying to Sir Gilbert, or Sir Gilbert to you, which can have caused you to look so particularly happy at the moment that you are about to take up your residence at Cartwright Park, under the guardianship of its master the Vicar of Wrexhill?"

"I will explain the mystery in a moment, Helen. I have asked Sir Gilbert Harrington to let me name him as my guardian, and he has consented."

"Have you such power?" replied Helen. "Oh, happy, happy Rosalind!"

"Yes, Helen, there may be happiness in that;—but I may find difficulties, perhaps:—and if I do!—"

"I trust you will not.—I trust that ere long you will be able to withdraw yourself from a house so disgraced and afflicted as ours!"

"And leave you behind, Helen? You think that is part of my scheme?"

"How can you help it, Rosalind? You have just read my my mother's letter:—you see the style and tone in which she announces her right over my person;—and this from the mother I so doated on! I do assure you, Rosalind, that I often seem to doubt the reality of the misery that surrounds me, and fancy that I must be dreaming. Throw back your thoughts to the period of your first coming to us, and then say if such a letter as this can really come to me from my mother."

"The letter is a queer letter—a very queer letter indeed. And yet I am under infinite obligations to it: for had she not used that pretty phrase,—'for such time as I shall continue to be her legal guardian,'—it might never have entered my head to inquire for how long a time that must of necessity be."

"I rejoice for you, Rosalind, that the odious necessity of remaining with us is likely to be shortened; and will mix no malice with my envy, even when I see you turn your back for ever upon Cartwright Park."

"There would be little cause to envy me, Helen, should I go without taking you with me."

A tear stood in Rosalind's bright eye as she said this, and Helen felt very heartily ashamed of the petulance with which she had spoken. As a penance for it, she would not utter the sad prognostic that rose to her lips, as to the impossibility that any thing could give her power to bestow the freedom she might herself obtain.

Their return seemed to be unnoticed by every individual of the family except Henrietta. She saw the carriage approach from her own room, and continued to waylay Rosalind as she passed to hers.

"I know the sight of me must be hateful to you Miss Torrington," she said, "and I have been looking out for you in order that the shock of first seeing me might be over at once. Poor, pretty Helen Mowbray!—notwithstanding the hardness of heart on which I pique myself, I cannot help feeling for her. How does she bear it, Miss Torrington?"

"She is very unhappy, Henrietta: and I think it is your duty, as well as mine, to make her feel her altered home as little miserable as possible."

"I should think so too, if I believed I had any power to make it better or worse,—except, indeed, that of meeting her eyes, or avoiding them. The sight of any of us must be dreadful to her."

"You have such a remarkable way of shutting yourself up—your intellectual self I mean, from every one, that it is not very easy to say how great or how little your power might be. From the slight and transient glances which you have sometimes permitted me to take through your icy casing, I am rather inclined to believe that you ought to reckon for something in the family of which you make a part."

Henrietta shook her head. "Your glances have not penetrated to the centre yet, Miss Torrington. Should you ever do so, you, and your friend Helen too, would hate me,—even if my name were not Cartwright."

"I would not hear your enemy say so," replied Rosalind. "However, we are now likely to be enough together to judge each other by the severest of all tests, daily experience."

"An excellent test for the temper,—but not for the heart," replied Henrietta.

"You seem determined to make me afraid of you, Miss Cartwright. I have no great experience of human nature as yet; but I should think a corrupt heart would rather seek to conceal than proclaim itself."

"I think you are right; but I have no idea that my heart is corrupt:—it is diseased."

"I wish I could heal it," said Rosalind kindly, "for I suspect its illness, be it what it may, causes your cheek to grow pale. You do not look well, Miss Cartwright."

"Well?—Oh no! I have long known I am dying."

"Good Heaven!—what do you mean? Why do you not take advice?"

"Because no advice could save me;—and because if it could, I would not take it."

"I hope you are not in earnest. Perhaps this strange marriage, if it do no other good, may benefit your health by placing you in a larger family. I cannot think you are happy at the Vicarage."

"Indeed!" replied Henrietta with a melancholy smile.

"And I cannot but hope that you will be more happy here."

"Well!—we shall see. But I should take it very kind of you if you would make the three young Mowbrays understand, that if I could have prevented this iniquitous marriage, I would have done it."

"Would it be safe to say so much to Fanny?"

"Yes. Mr. Cartwright will never hear her bosom secrets more."

In the midst of the tide of triumph and of joy which seemed at this time to bear the Vicar of Wrexhill far above the reach of any earthly sorrow, there was a little private annoyance that beset him,—very trifling indeed, but which required a touch of his able diplomatic adroitness to settle satisfactorily.

The widow Simpson was as thorough a coquette as ever decorated the street of a country village; and often had it happened, since her weeds were laid aside, that Mr. This, or Mr. That, had been congratulated as likely to succeed to her vacant heart and hand. But hitherto Mrs. Simpson had preferred the reputation of having many adorers, to the humdrum reality of a second husband. But when Mr. Cartwright appeared, her hopes, her wishes, her feelings underwent a sudden and violent change. At first, indeed, she only looked at him as a very handsome man, who must, by some means or other, be brought to think her a very handsome woman: but more serious thoughts quickly followed, and the idea of a home at the Vicarage, and the advantage of having all her bills made out to the Rev. Mr. Cartwright, became one of daily and hourly recurrence. Mrs. Simpson was not a person to let such a notion lie idle; nor was Mr. Cartwright a man to permit the gentle advances to intimacy of a Mrs. Simpson stop short, or lead to nothing. But from any idea of her becoming mistress of the Vicarage, or of her bills being made out to him, he was as pure as the angels in heaven.

Nevertheless, the intimacy did advance. One by one, every personal decoration that marks the worldling was laid aside, and the livery of holiness adopted in its stead. False ringlets were exchanged for false bands; gauze bonnets covered with bows gave place to straw bonnets having no bows at all; lilac faded into grey, and the colour of the rose was exchanged for that of its leaf. These important and very heavenly-minded reforms were soon followed by others, not more essential, for that is hardly possible; but they went the length of turning her little girl into a methodist monkey; her card-boxes, into branch missionary fund contribution cases; her footstools into praying cushions; and her sofa into a pulpit and a pew, whence and where she very often listened to "the word" when pretty nearly all the parish of Wrexhill were fast asleep.

In all former affairs of the heart in which Mrs. Simpson had engaged since the demise of her husband, she had uniformly come off the conqueror; for she had never failed to obtain exactly as much flirtation as she required to keep her on good terms with herself, and on bad terms with all coquettish young ladies for five miles round, and never had granted any favour in return that she did not consider as a fair price for the distinction she received.

But poor Mrs. Simpson's example should be a warning to all widow ladies to be careful how they enter into holy dalliance and sanctified trifling with the elect. Common prudence, in short, is no fair match for uncommon holiness, and the principal person in the village of Wrexhill was at the time of Mrs. Mowbray's marriage with its vicar really very much to be pitied.

It is probably no very agreeable task for a bridegroom to pay a visit to a lady under such circumstances; but Mr. Cartwright felt that it must be done, and with nerves braced to the task by the remembrance of the splendid silver urn, tea and coffee pots, the exquisite French china, and all the pretty elaborate finishing of his breakfast equipage,—in a word, at about eleven o'clock on the next morning but one after his installation (as Jacob called it), he set off on foot, like an humble and penitent pilgrim, to call on the widow Simpson.

He was, as usual, shown into the quiet parlour, overlooked by no village eye, that opened upon the garden. Here he found every thing much as it used to be—sofas, footstools, albums, missionary boxes and all—but no Mrs. Simpson.

"Let missis know, sir," said the boy-servant; and he closed the door, leaving the vicar to his meditations.

At length the door reopened, and the pale and languid Mrs. Simpson, her eyes red with weeping, and her rouge (not partially, as during the process of election, but really and altogether) laid aside, entered. The air and manner with which the vicar met her was something of a mixed breed between audacity and confusion. He was in circumstances, however, highly favourable to the growth of the former and equally so to the stifling of the latter feeling.

He took the widow's hand, kissed it, and led her to the sofa.

Her handkerchief was at her eyes, and though she made no resistance, she manifested no inclination to return the tender pressure bestowed upon her fingers.

"You weep, my dear friend!" said the vicar in an accent of surprise. "Is it thus you congratulate me on the great change that has taken place in my circumstances?"

"Congratulate you! Oh, Mr. Cartwright! is it possible that you can be so coldly cruel?—Congratulate you! Gracious Heaven! have you no thought, no pity for all the anguish that you have made me suffer?"

"I know not why you should talk of suffering, my dear friend. I had hoped that the sweet friendship which for several months past has united us, was to you, as to me, a source of the tenderest satisfaction. But our feelings for each other must indeed be widely different. There is no circumstance that could befall you, productive of even worldly convenience and advantage, but I should rejoice at it as if sent to myself: but you, my friend, appear to mourn because from a poor man I am become a rich one."

"Alas!—Cruel!—Is it for that I mourn? Think you that my heart can forget what I have been to you, or what I hoped to be? Can you forget the hours that you have devoted to me? And is this the end of it?"

"I neither can nor will forget the happy period of our tender friendship. Nor is there any reason, my excellent Mrs. Simpson, that it should not continue, even as the Lord hath permitted that it should begin. Believe me, that were a similar circumstance to happen to you:—I mean, were you accidentally to connect yourself by means of marriage with great wealth and extended influence;—instead of complaining of it, I should rejoice with an exceeding great joy. It could, as I should imagine, make no possible difference in our friendly and affectionate feelings for each other; and I should know that your piety and heavenly-minded zeal in the cause of grace and faith would be rendered greatly more profitable and efficient thereby."

"You do not, then, understand a woman's heart, Mr. Cartwright! What is there, short of the torments of the bottomless pit, that can compare to the suffering of seeing the heart one believed to be one's own given to another?"

"I dare say it must be very disagreeable indeed, my dear friend. But no such idea, I do assure you, would occur to me were you to marry. Indeed, my own view of the case is, that as an holy ordinance, it should be entered into with as little attention as possible to mere pleasure. To a man like myself, whose heart is altogether given to things above, the idea of making a marriage of love, as it is called, would be equally absurd and profane. My object in the connexion I have just formed, was to increase my sphere of influence and utility; and nothing, I assure you, can be more opportune and fortunate than my having found this very worthy and richly-endowed person. It would give me unfeigned satisfaction, my dear friend, to hear that you had been equally fortunate, and, permit me to say, equally wise."

"Oh, Mr. Cartwright! I am sure I had no idea when—when I attached myself to you, that you disapproved of marriage among those who love, as I thought you and I did; for most surely I thought, Mr. Cartwright, that I should have been your wife."

"No?—Is it possible, my dear friend, that such an idea as that, so perfectly unauthorized, could have occurred to you? I really am greatly surprised, for I thought that we understood one another perfectly."

"Indeed, indeed, Mr. Cartwright, I never was more mistaken in any one in my whole life; and I am sure that if poor Mrs. Mowbray is as much deceived in you as I was, she will be a very unhappy woman when she finds it out, poor thing."

"My dear friend, allow me to assure you that you altogether mistake the nature of the friendship I have been so happy as to form with you, as well as that of the connexion I have just ratified with her. I trust the Lord will give me grace so to conduct myself, as that I may never be suspected of confounding the two together, which, by the nature of the ordinances, ought to be kept as separate and distinct as possible. I will not now enter more fully with you into this interesting question, for much business presses upon me: but when we shall happen to find ourselves more at leisure, my dear friend, which I trust will be often the case, I will explain to you, in a manner that will, I think, be satisfactory, my opinions on the subject. Meanwhile, dear Mrs. Simpson, let me entreat you not spoil your charming eyes by weeping, nor let any thing lead you for an instant to doubt that my sentiments for you are exactly the same as they have ever been; and above all, cease not to work out your eternal salvation with fear and trembling. Mrs. Cartwright is by no means, I believe, a very active-minded person; and I think it probable that I shall often feel it borne in upon my mind, that by applying to you I shall be able to forward the great work of grace that I have in hand more effectually than by any personal assistance that she is likely to render me. Her wealth indeed is great, as I hope some little keepsakes from me may prove to you ere long; but as to energy and fervour of character, there is but one Mrs. Simpson."

The reverend gentleman here saluted the fair lady's lips, and departed, leaving her exactly in the state he wished; that is to say, puzzled, confounded, mystified, and not knowing the least in the world what she should say to him next.