ABSTRACT

While Montgomery was thus occupied in the service of the younger Chesterville, his sister, who yet knew not half the merit of that noble-minded young man, was overwhelmed by inquietude for her father and by her love for him, which she was more and more convinced she ought not to indulge at the risk of involving him in the ruin of her family. A strange stupor seemed at times to take from the unhappy father the acute sense of his sufferings. He no longer complained of his son, no longer reproached himself; but for the most part took in silence the medicines or nourishments offered to him by Ethelinde; and with a melancholy smile sometimes kissed her hand as she administered them, and sometimes a tear stole slowly down his cheek as his eyes followed her when she left his bed-side. Feeling himself altogether unable to visit his son that evening, and little dreaming how distressing his presence would have been if he could have gone, he said to Ethelinde that he was unhappy that neither of them could see him, and in perpetual anxiety lest he should relapse into the state of wild despair in which they had before beheld him. Ethelinde comforted him with assurances that Montgomery had represented her brother as much calmer and more reasonable; and for that night he became tolerably easy.