‘I will trouble you. I think there once was a Henrietta Armine, my father?’
‘The beautiful creature!’ said Glastonbury, laying down his knife and fork; ‘she died young. She was a daughter of Lord Armine; and the Queen, Henrietta Maria, was her godmother. It grieves me much that we have no portrait of her. She was very fair, her eyes of a sweet light blue.’
‘Oh! no; dark, my father; dark and deep as the violet.’
‘My child, the letter-writer, who mentions her death, describes them as light blue. I know of no other record of her beauty.’
‘I wish they had been dark,’ said Ferdinand recovering himself; ‘however, I am glad there was a Henrietta Armine; ‘tis a beautiful name.’
‘I think that Armine makes any name sound well,’ said Glastonbury. ‘No more wine indeed, my child. Nay! if I must,’ continued he, with a most benevolent smile, ‘I will drink to the health of Miss Grandison!’
‘My child, what is the matter?’ inquired Glastonbury.
‘A gnat, a fly, a wasp! something stung me,’ said Ferdinand.
‘Let me fetch my oil of lilies,’ said Glastonbury; ‘’Tis a specific’
‘Oh, no! ‘tis nothing, only a fly: sharp at the moment; nothing more.’
The dinner was over; they retired to the library. Ferdinand walked about the room restless and moody; at length he bethought himself of the piano, and, affecting an anxiety to hear some old favourite compositions of Glastonbury, he contrived to occupy his companion. In time, however, his old tutor invited him to take his violoncello and join him in a concerto. Ferdinand of course complied with his invitation, but the result was not satisfactory. After a series of blunders, which were the natural result of his thoughts being occupied on other subjects, he was obliged to plead a headache, and was glad when he could escape to his chamber.
Rest, however, no longer awaited him on his old pillow. It was at first delightful to escape from the restraint upon his reverie which he had lately experienced. He leant for an hour over his empty fireplace in mute abstraction. The cold, however, in time drove him to bed, but he could not sleep; his eyes indeed were closed, but the vision of Henrietta Temple was not less apparent to him. He recalled every feature of her countenance, every trait of her conduct, every word that she had expressed. The whole series of her observations, from the moment he had first seen her until the moment they had parted, were accurately repeated, her very tones considered, and her very attitudes pondered over. Many were the hours that he heard strike; he grew restless and feverish. Sleep would not be commanded; he jumped out of bed, he opened the casement, he beheld in the moonlight the Barbary rose-tree of which he had presented her a flower. This consoling spectacle assured him that he had not been, as he had almost imagined, the victim of a dream. He knelt down and invoked all heavenly and earthly blessings on Henrietta Temple and his love. The night air and the earnest invocation together cooled his brain, and Nature soon delivered him, exhausted, to repose.