The voice of Ida trembled with emotion, the large tears coursed down her cheeks, and her hands were tight-clasped as if in earnest supplication. It was a sister imploring a sister in danger to seek safety while safety might be found, to tear from her heart the coiling serpent that was lurking there only to destroy! Annabella could not be angry; she was touched by that pleading look; the ice was beginning to thaw, and yet was too strong readily to give way. What was she called upon to do? Not only to forgive, but to entreat for forgiveness, to humble herself in the dust before him to whom her proud spirit had never yet learned to bow! The countess felt that it would be hardly possible so to stoop,—that even for heaven itself she could scarcely sacrifice that which it would be hard to part with, even as a right hand or a right eye! The momentary struggle was fearful! Wringing her hands, Annabella exclaimed, “O Ida, you know not how wretched you make me!”
“And who deserves to be wretched,” said Mrs. Aumerle, who happened at this time to enter the room, “if not she who chooses no guide but her own temper and caprice, who will listen to no advice—not even that of her uncle and her pastor, and who publicly insults the husband whom she is bound in duty to honour? Rise, Ida, rise,” continued the lady, to whose plain sense of right and wrong Annabella’s conduct appeared unpardonable; “I am ashamed to see you on your knees beside a girl who, if she were fifty times a countess, has forfeited claim to our respect.”
Annabella sprang from her sofa, and with eyes wide open and lips apart, stood listening, as her hostess, to Ida’s distress and dismay, finished her rebuke to one whom she regarded as a spoiled, self-willed, obstinate child.
“There is only one excuse for you, Anna, and that is to be found in the indulgence and flattery to which you have been accustomed from the cradle. You have been unfitted to take your proper place either as a wife or the mistress of a household. You have made everything subservient to your humour. But it is time to have done with such childish follies; it is time to renounce the petulant pride which makes your family blush for you! Mr. Aumerle is so indulgent, so unwilling to treat any one harshly, that you are hardly aware, I suspect, how strongly he feels on the subject; but I can assure you that he views your late step in the same light as I do, and he has written to the earl to express to him his strong disapprobation of your conduct.”
