very soon communicated to Evelyn the tale he had
suggested to Maltravers. He reminded her of the habitual sorrow, the
evidence of which was so visible in Lady Vargrave; of her indifference
to the pleasures of the world; of her sensitive shrinking from all
recurrence to her early fate. "The secret of this," said he, "is in a
youthful and most fervent attachment; your mother loved a young stranger
above her in rank, who (his head being full of German romance) was then
roaming about the country on pedestrian and adventurous excursions,
under the assumed name of Butler. By him she was most ardently beloved
in return. Her father, perhaps, suspected the rank of her lover, and
was fearful of her honour being compromised. He was a strange man, that
father! and I know not his real character and motives; but he suddenly
withdrew his daughter from the suit and search of her lover,--they saw
each other no more; her lover mourned her as one dead. In process of
time your mother was constrained by her father to marry Mr. Cameron,
and was left a widow with an only child,--yourself: she was poor;--very
poor! and her love and anxiety for you at last induced her to listen to
the addresses of my late uncle; for your sake she married again; again
death dissolved the tie! But still, unceasingly and faithfully, she
recalled that first love, the memory of which darkened and embittered
all her life, and still she lived upon the hope to meet with the lost
again. At last, and most recently, it was my fate to discover that the
object of this unconquerable affection lived,--was still free in hand if
not in heart: you behold the lover of your mother in Ernest Maltravers!
It devolved on me (an invidious--a reluctant duty) to inform Maltravers
of the identity of Lady Vargrave with the Alice of his boyish passion;
to prove to him her suffering, patient, unsubdued affection; to convince
him that the sole hope left to her in life was that of one day or
other beholding him once again. You know Maltravers,--his high-wrought,
sensitive, noble character; he recoiled in terror from the thought of
making his love to the daughter the last and bitterest affliction to
the mother he had so loved; knowing too how completely that mother had
entwined herself round your affections, he shuddered at the pain and
self-reproach that would be yours when you should discover to whom you
had been the rival, and whose the fond hopes and dreams that your fatal
beauty had destroy