the unreal and the over-real, which delight
mankind--honour to the conjurors! My people conquer nothing, win none;
they are actual, yet uncommon. It is the clock-work of the brain that
they are directed to set in motion, and--poor troop of actors to vacant
benches!--the conscience residing in thoughtfulness which they would
appeal to; and if you are there impervious to them, we are lost: back I
go to my wilderness, where, as you perceive, I have contracted the habit
of listening to my own voice more than is good: The burden of a child in
her bosom had come upon Rosamund with the visage of the Angel of Death
fronting her in her path. She believed that she would die; but like much
that we call belief, there was a kernel of doubt in it, which was lively
when her frame was enlivened, and she then thought of the giving birth to
this unloved child, which was to disinherit the man she loved, in whose
interest solely (so she could presume to think, because it had been her
motive reason) she had married the earl. She had no wish to be a mother;
but that prospect, and the dread attaching to it at her time of life, she
could have submitted to for Lord Romfrey's sake. It struck her like a
scoffer's blow that she, the one woman on earth loving Nevil, should have
become the instrument for dispossessing him. The revulsion of her
feelings enlightened her so far as to suggest, without enabling her to
fathom him, that instead of having cleverly swayed Lord Romfrey, she had
been his dupe, or a blind accomplice; and though she was too humane a
woman to think of punishing him, she had so much to forgive that the
trifles daily and at any instant added to the load, flushed her
resentment, like fresh lights showing new features and gigantic outlines.
Nevil's loss of Cecilia she had anticipated; she had heard of it when she
was lying in physical and mental apathy at Steynham. Lord Romfrey had
repeated to her the nature of his replies to the searching parental
questions of Colonel Halkett, and having foreseen it all, and what was
more, foretold it, she was not aroused from her torpor. Latterly, with
the return of her natural strength, she had shown herself incapable of
hearing her husband speak of Nevil; nor was the earl tardy in taking the
hint to spare the mother of his child allusions that vexed her. Now and
then they occurred perforce. The presence of Cecilia exasperated
Rosamund's peculiar sensitiveness. It required Louise Wardour-Devereux's