"Silence that chides, and woundings of the eye."
Helen's was no common character. Young, gentle, timid as she was, the texture of her mind was framed of "sterner stuff;" and she nourished an intensity of wife-like devotion and endurance, which no unkindness could tire, and a fixedness of resolve, and high sense of moral rectitude, which no meaner feeling had yet obtained the power to blemish.
"Let him be as cold and stern as he will," said she to herself in her patient affliction, "he is my husband--the husband of my free choice--and by that I must abide. He may have crosses and sorrows of which I know not; and is it fitting that I should pry into the secrets of a mind devoted to pursuits and studies in which I am incapable of sharing? There was a time when I fondly trusted he would seek to qualify me for his companion and friend; but the enchantment which sealed my eyes is over, and I must meet the common fate of woman, distrust and neglect, as best I may."
Anxious to escape the observation of her family, she earnestly requested Lord Greville's permission to accompany him with her son, when he suddenly announced his intention of visiting Greville Cross. Her petition was at first met with a cold negative; but when she ventured to plead the advice she had received recently from several physicians, to remove to the sea coast, and reminded him of her frequent indispositions, and present feebleness of constitution, he looked at her for a time with astonishment at the circumstance of her thus exhibiting so unusual an opposition to his will, and afterwards with sincere and evident distress at the confirmation borne by her faded countenance to the truth of her representation.
"Thou art so patient a sufferer," he replied "that I am somewhat too prone to forget the weakness of thy frame--but be content--I must be alone in this long and tedious journey."
The tears which rose in her eyes were her only remonstrance, and her husband stood regarding her for some minutes in silence, but with the most apparent signs of mental agitation on his countenance.
"Helen," said he at length, in a low, earnest tone, "Helen, thou wert worthy of a better fate than to be linked to the endurance of my waywardness; but God who sees thine unmurmuring patience, will give thee strength to meet thy destiny. Thou hast scarcely enough of womanly weakness in thee to shrink from idle terrors, or I might strive to appall thee," he added faintly smiling, "with a description of the gloom and discomfort of thine unknown northern mansion; but if thou art willing to bear with its scanty means of accommodation, as well as with thy husband's variable temper, come with him to the Cross."