The Young Duchess; or, Memoirs of a Lady of Quality — page 384: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

370 THE YOUNG DUCHESS; CR, MEMOIRS OF A LADY OF QUALITY. ture!” said Ponsford. ‘Tell me—is the poor internal feelings, as he thought of the fearful girl beyond all hope? has the hand of Death | retribution which had overtaken him through the been s( remorselessly laid upon her ?” | medium of the foul wrong offered to his own “There is hope while there is life, Mr. Pons- daughter. When he had looked at Pamela, con- ford; and heaven can resuscitate those whose templated her loveliness, and thought of all the feet may appear to be touching upon the very brink of the tomb! At the same time, I would not inspire you with a delusive confidence, nor conceal from you the seriousness of poor Hester's condition. She has endured sufferings and trials —she has known poverty and sorrow . ‘Oh, that she may live,” continued the Squire, with impassioned vehemence, “ to afford me time to atone for the past and to shower upon her head all the bounties which wealth can bestow! One word more, Mr. Walpole! Is Hester all that a parent could wish to find in a daughter ?—is she calculated to prove a comfort to her mother if it should please heaven to spare her?” “Yes, yes!” exclaimed Walpole, not daring to give any other answer, nor to tamper for another moment with a subject which might lead to the necessity of revelations but little agreeable to the ears of a father. ‘‘ And now farewell for the pre- sent, Mr. Ponsford. Ere this day shall have closed, you will have knelt for pardon at the feet of one whom in years past you so frightfully wronged, and you will have embraced the daughter whom you believed to be dead!” Having thus spoken, Edward Walpole hastily quitted the library, in order to avoid any further discourse on the topic which he felt to be so deli- cate, so difficult, and so perilous. “Tt is not from my lips,” he said to himself, as he was again seated on his steed, and riding away from Ponsford’s mansion,—‘“‘it is not from my lips that the father must hear of his daughter’s disgrace and dishonour! Heaven forbid! There | will be time enough for such sad revealings— innocence of her mind, he had been smitten with a horrible stupor of wonderment at the idea that any one could have been such a villain as to vio- late the sanctity of so much beauty and virtue. But then conscience raised its voice within his breast, and asked him whether Adelaide Clarke was not also lovely and virtuous ere she became his victim? Looking back for a quarter of a cen- tury, Ponsford beheld that fair one as completely invested with innocence and purity as was his own daughter previous to the outrage which dishonoured her! And then, as Ponsford, while looking back over the past, beheld the image of Adelaide Clarke prominent amongst those who had become the victims of his evil passions, the regards of his mental vision next settled upon another sweetly beautiful countenance —the countenance of her whom he had so perfidiously seduced—the mother of the unfortunate Hester ! ‘“‘ Adelaide Clarke has been avenged—bitterly, bitterly avenged!” said Ponsford to himself, as he paced to and fro in the library after Edward Wal- pole had taken his leave: ‘‘has heaven decreed that the wrongs of the other”—and he now alluded to Lady Amesbury—‘‘are likewise to be avenged? No, no! she will forgive me! It is for this that I have received permission to visit her and to throw myself at her feet! Yet what means this feeling which now oppresses me? whiy is it that I seem as if a presentiment of evil were haunting me? Oh, what farther atonement can I make for my past deeds? Ah, a thought strikes me!” Ponsford mused for some few minutes upon the even if it be necessary that they should ever be} idea which had occurred to him ere he proceeded made at all! And, Oh! if poor Hester’s life be! to carry it into execution ; but at length having already doomed, and if it be destined that she l arrived at a decision upon the point, he issued shall occupy an early grave—better, better far to | forth from the library. Ascending to his dangh- draw the veil over the sad, sad part of her life, | ter’s chamber, he knocked atthe door. There was and that never even unto her own sire it shall be! no answer. He knocked again —and then the known to what a depth she was plunged down by | door was opened; and Pamela, deadly pale, made the merciless hand of necessity, and from what a | her appearance upon the threshold. Yes—deadly vortex of infamies and abominations she was redeemed ere finding herself restored to the arms of a mother!” CHAPTER LX*X, RETRIBUTION. WELL and truly had Squire Ponsford said that sooner or later there must be retribution for all wrong-doing! The fact was already bitterly ex- emplified within the range of his own experiences. When casting a retrospective glance over the in- cidents of his life, he shuddered as he thought of the many heartless deeds he had committed —the many treacheries of which he had been guilty towards confiding women. And specially, when he looked back to the period of his criminal passion for Adelaide Clarke—and when he remem- bered how terribly he had outraged her—he writhed, he groaned inwardly, his whole frame in- deed became convulsed with the violence of his pale! just as she was two or three hours back when she retired slowly from the drawing-room where the marriage had been solemnised. Her features were rigid—and, Oh, so sadly beautiful in - that despairing fixedness of their expression! It was without the display of the slightest emotion of any kind that she beheld her father; and as it was evident by his manner he wished to speak to her, she led the way in silence into the species of boudoir which served as an ante-room to her own chamber. She sat down: her father placed himself by her side—and taking her hand, he said, ‘“‘ Pamela, I thought to find you at least more resigned—I can scarcely say more cheerful—after the ceremony which has made you a wife.” “Would to heaven that for your sake, I could be cheerful and gay, dear father !” exclaimed the unhappy young lady. “Oh, you must have suf- fered terribly on my account !” ‘‘And yet perhaps not more than I have de- served, my poor child,’ responded the Squire, gazing with keenest anguish and affliction upon his beauteous but grief-stricken daughter. COMO YN Wn) Colin