"Helen!" said my mother, "I meant to have stopped here, to refresh the horses and ourselves; but after what I have seen this morning, I shall proceed immediately."
She left the footman, however, behind, to bring us word the next day how Mr. Pendarves was. Oh! how I loved her for this kind attention! But then she was a rare instance of the union of strong feelings with unbending principle.
Methinks I hear you say, "I hope you were now convinced that Seymour's attachment as well as Ferdinand's, was founded on too good a basis to be shaken by your altered looks."
No, indeed, I was not; for so conscious was I that my looks were altered, I _never once_ lifted up my veil before Pendarves. I dare say, both he and my mother imputed this to the wish of hiding my emotion, whereas it was in fact only to hide my inflamed eyes, and my _ugliness_. But what a degrading confession for a heroine to make! to plead guilty of having bad eyes and a plain face! It is as bad as Amelia's broken nose. But _n'importe_: my eyes, like her nose, will get well again; and, like her, I shall come out a complete beauty, when no one could expect it.
We awaited with great impatience the return of the servant, from whom we learnt that Mr. Pendarves had been seized with an alarming fit on leaving the chapel, and was pronounced to be in an inflammatory fever.
"O my dear mother!" cried I, wildly, "he has no one to nurse him now that loves him!"
"But he _shall_ have," she replied; and in another hour we were on our road to Oxford. My mother insisted on being admitted to the bedside of the unconscious sufferer, who in his delirium was ever blaming the cruelty of _her_ who was now watching and weeping beside his pillow. Long was his illness, and severe his suffering: but he struggled through; and the first object whom he beheld on recovering his recollection, was my mother leaning over him with the anxiety of a real parent. Never could poor Seymour recall this moment of his life without tears of grateful tenderness.
He was too much disappointed, however, to find that her resolution not to allow him to address me remained in full force; for the circumstances on which it was founded were added to, rather than diminished. Nor could his assertion, that his dissipation was owing to the despair into which she had plunged him, at all excuse him in her eyes, for she could not admit that any sorrow could be an excuse for error.