The Seamstress; or, The White Slave of England — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

THE SEAMSTRESS. 87 again obscured by a torrent of blinding tears.! well aware that my abode was at no great Oh! how bitterly—how bitterly she wept !—how | distance from the park—and if he should re- profoundly her bosom was conyulsed with sobs! | solve upon pursuing me still, his perseverance Poor girl—poor girl! will lead him to this house. Ah! I dare not— No more should she rise in the morning, happy | oh! no—I must not meet him again, my friends : as the bird whose carols met her ear, and in an- | and you yourselves cannot counsel me to do so! ticipation of meeting her lover in that park | But I have left behind me all that I have derived whence the song of the feathered chorister came | from his bounty—everything that has been pur-_ so melodiously!—no more must she hope to feel chased with his money;—and should he come the warm pressure of the hand whose touch was | hither——a tall young gentleman yes, and wont to send an ecstatic thrill to her very heart— , very handsome, too giving the name of Os- no more to experience the bliss attendant upon the mond Charles Osmond —— you will tell soft transfusion of adoring looks—no more to hear | him—— her own name breathed with the accents of love} But here Virginia’s voice, which for some mo- and coupled with all endearing epithets! O God!) ments had been broken and convulsed, was now had all this charming vision fled for ever P—was it | lost in sobs; and the worthy couple were deeply to retugn no more? Alas! alas! blank andcheer- | affected by the young girl’s acute and rending iess indeed had now become the maiden’s destiny: | anguish. darkly spread now the pathway of the world before : “You will tell him,” she said, after a long her eyes. And she—so young, so innocent, so | pause, and still speaking with difficulty, —“ you lovely—to suffer thus!—Oh! it was cruel—too | will tell him that I have left behind me everything cruel! Beauteous but unhappy girl—as ill-fated | which does not properly belong tome. You may as thou wast virtuous, as unfortunate as thou wast | | tell him also that I wish him no harm——that I pure and chaste what benefit will our sympathy | even forgive him——but that he must never hope achieve for thee now? Behold her—that sweet, | to see me again ! Es interesting being,—with her sylph-like form so full | Then wringing her friends’ hands with all the of modest elegance and winning grace—her lovely | cordiality and fervour of that grateful feeling countenance so pale and so full of care—her fine which she experienced towards them, Virginia blue eyes so dimmed with tears—her steps so light Mordaunt hastened away from the house, the and yet so painfully slow,—behold her as she now tears streaming down her cheeks and her heart exerts a powerful effort to abandon the only place ‘beating as if it must burst. that she can call a home! Let us suppose three months to have elapsed With her bundle in her hand, Virginia Mor- | since that fatal day; and we shall then find the daunt prepares to take her departure. She flings young maiden seated in a wretched attic in the one last look around: she staggers against the _purlieus of the Minories. The house, which door-post for support—and she compresses her lips | swarms with lodgers, is situate in a court where violently to keep down the feelings that threaten | the atmosphere is tainted, the drainage is deficient, to unnerve her again. The thought that she is | and the water is scanty in supply and unwhole- performing a duty which she owes to herself, sud- | some in quality. A miserable flock mattrass denly inspires her with courage and strength ;— | stretched upon the bare boards—an old trunk for and turning hastily away, she crosses the threshold | a table—a stool to sit upon—and a few articles of and descends the stairs with a rapid step. The | crockeryware,—these constitute all the furniture good people of the house meet her in the passage of Virginia’s attic. And the young maiden her-, below; and they are overwhelmed with grief and | seli——holy God! how changed is she! Gone are surprise when they hear that she is about to | the roses which the fresh air of the Regent’s-park had leave them. They are already acquainted with | brought back to her cheeks during the day-dream of the fact that her marriage cannot now take | her love;—and the lilies have taken their place. place: but they are at a loss to understand where- | Pale—yes, pale as alabaster is she—as if all vital fore she should flee away thus precipitately on | colouring had fledfrom the presence of a withering that account. illness: and yet ill, in the strict sense of the term, “My good friends,’ said Virginia, in a voice | she has not been. Only the illness of the mind— that was tremulous and low, and with looks so | the cankering disease of the heart—has she expe- mournful—oh ! so profoundly mournful, that they | rienced. ,—accompanied by that gradual waste of the already seemed to be telling the tale of a breaking | frame which is produced by sorrow, by poverty, by heart,—“my dear friends, I thank you—most famine, and by crushing toil! cordially thank you for your kind sympathy: but Pale—oh ! yes—pale as a statue is Virginia | I must not—dare not remain in this neighbour. | -Mordaunt !—not with the dull, dead, insipid white- hood—nor in this house! In the first place, it is | | ness of the corpse—but with that pallor which necessary to my mental tranquillity,—for I dare | derives a life-like appearance from the presence of not speak of happiness any more in this world,— | vital heat and from the delicate tracery of blue but it is essential to the recovery of my soul’s | veins beneath her transparent skin. Her naturally composure, I say, that I should remove at once | slender shape had become thin and wasted—with- from a scene every feature of which would only | out however losing the sylphid outline and graceful keep alive the most painful reminiscences. Be- | symmetry which not even the well-worn frock could sides—I owe it to myself—I owe it to the shade mar, but which the very scantiness of the poor of my dear departed mother,” continued Vir- girl’s clothing defined all the more perceptibly. And ginia, her blue eyes filling with tears, and her as she sate upon that stool which had no support voice becoming scarcely audible—“<to fly from for her aching back, and plied her needle witha a neighbourhood where I may chance to meet celerity that must have resulted more from a sort with him again! It is true that he knows not of mechanical skill than from physical energy, her precisely where I have been living: but he is hand as she raised it was so thin that it seemed TEN bP] (SO) CoOnniclbooKks