The Seamstress; or, The White Slave of England — page 108: what you’re looking at

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

THE SEAMSTRZSS. 101 —_— -——- -—- —- ——-+ - -— --- you in your illness. But tell me, my dear Vir- | dered about from morning to night in the hope of ginia—tell me what you feel.” | encountering the object of an affection which grew “I feel, my excellent friend,”’ was the response, | all thé stronger and all the more devoted in pro- half choked with the sobs and sighs that indicated | portion as it seemed to become more and more emotions profoundly stirred,—‘I feel that the | hopeless every day. whole frame-work of my being is giving way— And how the young man tortured his soul with that all my efforts to exert myself are baflled by a | conjectures and speculations as to what had become weakness and a sense of exhaustion against which | of the seamstress! Sometimes he fancied that she it is impossible to combat—and that an invisible | was dead; and, in the bitter, harrowing, excruci- hand lies heavily upon me, the weight of its | ating agony of his mind, ke would exclaim, “Oh! pressure becoming greater and greater every day. | if I could even obtain a clue to the spot where she And, then, my good friend, look at me atten- | is buried, I would hasten thither—I would throw tively! The colour which you ere now observed | myself upon her grave—I would moisten the cold upon my cheeks, is not the glow of health. Alas! | sod with my tears—I would invoke her spirit to no—it is the sure, certain, and unmistakable | mark the sincerity of my grief and judge thereby sign how deeply, deeply I have loved her—and I would “Ah! I comprehend you, poor girl!” mur-|strew flowers upon the turf that covers her mured her friend, now evidently struck by the real | ,remains!’’ At another time he would picture to truth relative to Virginia. “Oh! but we will | himself the poor maiden struggling against all the save you yet—you are young, and your constitu- | horrors of penury,—enduring all the maddening tion is good! We will have the best medical | afflictions of friendlessness and orphanage—exposed advice for you—and my sister and I will scrape | to temptations, insults, tyrannies, and treacheries together all the money we can, to get you down | of every kind—and perhaps calling upon God in to the sea-side when the Spring comes. This is | her despair to take her away from a scene of so the last day of December—in three or four; much sorrow! And then, as his fevered imagina- months more the weather will be getting warmer | tion was wont, despite of itself, to work up this —and then “ picture to the most frightful vividness of detail, “And then I shall go down into the quiet ! the young nobleman would shrink aghast from the grave,” said the young maiden, in a tone so full | creation of his fancy; and, tearing his hair in the of pathos that the good woman felt asif it were bitterness of his anguished spirit, he would ex- an angel’s voice which stole murmuringly upon | claim, “O God! save her—save her from the her ears—and sinking on her knees by Virginia's | realities of such miseries as these !—protect and side, she sobbed aloud. shield the poor orphan girl from those maddening : afflictions—those goading, excruciating, racking — agonies of mind and body! O God! save her— save her—defend her, my God! I beseech thee to 2? CHAPTER XXXII. spare that helpless, innocent, unoffending girl those galling trials and that career of horrors!” And thus did the young man, who for a long time past had prayed not for himself—thus did he implore Our history opened in the middle of January, | and supplicate heaven, with all the fervour of his 1844: the events we have since chronicled have impassioned spirit, to have mercy upon poor Vir- ranged over a space of two years ;—and it is now | ginia Mordaunt. therefore the middle of January, 1846. But the Marquis of Arden was not the only in- We have seen that in the interval the Marquis mate of Belmont House who was supremely un- of Arden has been unremitting and unwearied in happy. The beautiful Lady Mary Melcombe, his his exertions to find out the beauteous seamstress younger sister, was pining away with disappointed —the only joy of his heart and idol of his soul, the ; hopes and blighted affection. For+the Earl of charming and well-beloved Virginia. We have) Mostyndale had never once re-visited the mansion likewise seen that through disappointment, sick- ' since that day on which he had left it in indigna- ness at heart, and declining hope, he has become | tion at the terms proposed by the Duke in answer grievously altered in personal appearance: and we , to his demand for the hand of the young patrician can add that his character and disposition have | lady. But, faithful to his promise, he still re- undergone a change not less remarkable. When mained unmarried; and, like the Marquis of Arden, we first introduced him to our readers, he was on | he shunned society, and had become thin, pale, and the high road to become a rake, a debauchee, and | care-worn. The Duchess of Belmont kept entirely a gamester: he was already plunging into the | to her own suite of apartments, withdrawing her- vortex of dissipation—he kept a mistress—and he | self altogether from the world, and courting soli- was launching out into all those fashionable extra- | tude as the state of existence that was most con- vagances which doubtless pass as the refined foibles | genial to her wounded soul. Lady Clarissa had and delightful peccadilloes of the upper classes. not precisely caught the infection of the melan- But a pure and virtuous love soon wrought a | choly, sorrow, and gloom which reigned around change in the mind and behaviour of that young , her: but finding this sombre mode of life, with its ‘man who naturally possessed so good a disposition | mournful associations, almost intolerable, she be- and so generous a heart. His amour with Miss | came more irritable, haughty, and overbearing Barnet was broken off the moment he discovered | than ever; so that she lost all the few friends who that she either could not or would not afford | had continued to visit at the mansion, while she him any clue to Virginia’s residence; and, aban- | likewise found herself omitted from the list of in- doning all his dissipated associates, he had devoted | vitations to the xe-wnions of wealth, rank, and himself to the search after his lost loved one. | fashion, in which she had been wont to shine as a Shunning all society as much as possible, he wan- ! star. Devoured with en»i—findine the days so SCENE AT THE THEATRE. ae — re eee oO ~~ ~ * #7. = - - rr re re ee — ee (COUN () NOOKS co