he
form, how definite the countenance! No common personage was Marmion
Herbert, even had he not won his wife, and celebrated his daughter in
such witching strains. Genius was stamped on his lofty brow, and spoke
in his brilliant eye; nobility was in all his form. This chivalric
poet was her father. She had read, she had dreamed of such beings, she
had never seen them. If she quitted the solitude in which she lived,
would she see men like her father? No other could ever satisfy her
imagination; all beneath that standard would rank but as imperfect
creations in her fancy. And this father, he was dead. No doubt.
Ah! was there indeed no doubt? Eager as was her curiosity on this
all-absorbing subject, Venetia could never summon courage to speak
upon it to her mother. Her first disobedience, or rather her first
deception of her mother, in reference to this very subject, had
brought, and brought so swiftly on its retributive wings, such
disastrous consequences, that any allusion to Lady Annabel was
restrained by a species of superstitious fear, against which Venetia
could not contend. Then her father was either dead or living. That was
certain. If dead, it was clear that his memory, however cherished by
his relict, was associated with feelings too keen to admit of any
other but solitary indulgence. If living, there was a mystery
connected with her parents, a mystery evidently of a painful
character, and one which it was a prime object with her mother to
conceal and to suppress. Could Venetia, then, in defiance of that
mother, that fond devoted mother, that mother who had watched through
long days and long nights over her sick bed, and who now, without a
murmur, was a prisoner to this very room, only to comfort and console
her child: could Venetia take any step which might occasion this
matchless parent even a transient pang? No; it was impossible. To her
mother she could never speak. And yet, to remain enveloped in the
present mystery, she was sensible, was equally insufferable. All she
asked, all she wanted to know, was he alive? If he were alive, then,
although she could not see him, though she might never see him, she
could exist upon his idea; she could conjure up romances of future
existence with him; she could live upon the fond hope of some day
calling him father, and receiving from his hands the fervid blessing
he had already breathed to her in song.

In the meantime her remaining parent commanded all her affections.