CHAPTER XIX.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 185, 13 October 1876, Page 6

CHAPTER XIX.

HARD TO TOEGIVE. " What troubles you, my dear ?" he inquired, anxiously. " Aren't you well ?" " Perfectly well," she replied, then hesitated. " Out with it, my child," he said, affectionately. " I have been to see poor Laura, and I was thinking of her," she answered, quite simply. " Pshaw! Rosa/ he replied hastily, " don't give her a thought j she'll take care of herself, she's used to it." "O, please don't say so ; she is dreadfully. persecuted, tormented, and so troubled and sorry every way." She then related, unfortunately perhaps, the fright Laura had experienced in the morning, from the near approach of her tormentor. " This is all moonshine, my child," he replied, with all the assurance of cautious age ; " she imposes upon you. 1 can't let you go where she is, if she entertains you with such stuff as this." " But, father," she said, entreatiugly, " I saw her fright; it could not be feigned ; and she is so penitent. Ido wish —," she hesitated, then paused. " Wish what, my darling ?" he inquired, caressingly. " I don't like to say it, for fear you will be angry with me ; but I do wish you would be her protector." "My dear little innocent girl, has she deluded you with the idea that she wants a protector ?" •' O, I do wish Aleck would come home !" she exclaimed, finding she was making no progress in convincing the Colonel. " I know he would forgive her, if nobody else will." " Indeed, Rosa," he replied, gravely, " he has the most to forgive. If Laura had behaved respectably, she would not be as she now is ; ehe must suffer; such conduct brings its own punishment, even if she were ever so penitent. I could have received her here into my family, though I abhor her course, but 1 find her conduct has been more scandalous than I thought; no woman is talked about as she has been, ■without reason." " Yes," replied Rosine, slowly, a little abashed $ " but then Laura hates her past conduct, and wants to do right now, and ought we not to forgive her if she is really truly sorry, and resolved to do so no more." " Well, my dear, wo may forgive her if we will, but it does not follow that we must give her the same confidence we did before. But you are very young to know any thing about these matters, it was an •unlucky day when Laura Marten chose you for her intimate friend. One thing at least she is old enough to know, that when a man's honor has been wounded in the person of his wife, you touch him, and through him all his family, in the tenderest point. You must trust me to do right in this matter, little one," he added, stroking her bright curls, and speaking very tenderly, " and not worry your over sensitive conscience about one who is not worthy of your anxiety. I shall be guided entirely by Aleck's reply to several letters written him from home on this subject j till then matters must go on as they are." Rosine was not all relieved by this conversation; she feared she had not taken the best way of speaking about Laura, and yet she had the assurance that her motives were right in the effort she had made. She could not reconcile the opinions of good Sister Agnes and her dear Colonel, so she went about her daily life as usual, sorrowful for her friend, but never'speaking her name ; hoping each clay that something would come from Lieutenant Hartland that would bring about

a change in Laura's position. Sister Agnes had impressed upon Laura the duty of returning Mrs. Hartland's call, which she did after soma delay, but finding the family out and a strange servant at the door, she was reluctant to leave her card as " Mrs. Hartland," and the family were left in ignorance of the call. Since her last meeting with Le Compte, she had not ventured into the street alone ; but when accompanied by one of the Sisters, she drew down her thick veil, scarcely daring to look either to the right or to the left. Thus she who had once been remarked for her bold, venturesome, daring spirit and manner, was completely cowed. It is not always that by coquetry and deceit, even a married woman brings such immediate suffering upon herself as Laura had done, but it comes in time, and they invariably leave a sting that pierces the heart sooner or later —it may come in the life of a beloved daughter or son, for the sins of the mothers are visited upon their children. \ Le Compte met Dr. Hartland occasionally in the vrayjbi their profession, and he would sometimes amuse himself with hints of his intimacy with his brother's wife, hoping thereby to widen the family breach, or lead the other to the same retort which would bring on a quarrel; but he did not understand the spirit with which he had to deal. High tempered and easily excited, Dr. Hartland looked down now so thoroughly upon both Laura and Le Compfce, that all he said passed by him as beneath his notice. After much anxious waiting, a letter, only one, came from Lieutenant Hartland, and that written to his father. " On board the X , off Cadiz, Jan. 18—. " My Deae Father : " I am in the receipt of various epistles from home, filled with sundry inquiries and criticisms on my private affairs. I will answer them all through you. " Laura Marten was made my lawful wife on the 20th of April last; she has the certificate of our marriage. I am sorry this step does not please you and my mother; of Ned's caustic severity upon the same, I shall take no notice ; written by any other man, I would call him out. With regard to the scandal abroad, if it were not dishonorable in me to throw up my commission on the eve of war, I would do it, for the satisfaction of chastising those who have made themselves busy with what is none of their business. I have been on the sick list for the last month, or you would have heard from me before ; I am now just able to crawl about, and bound for the G-ulf of Mexico ; God knows when, if ever, I shall see home again. You will do as you please about noticing Laura, but it strikes me all this scandal might have been nipped in the bud, if when the marriage was made public, you had made her like one of the family. I have received a long letter from my wife, written since her fearful illness, explaining every thing ; and I have also Rosine's last last letter, which I keep by me as a comfort in much weakness, and a sedative in those dreadful nervous attacks to which of late I have been subjected. " Believe me, my honored father, this step you deem so unpardonable, though taken hastily perhaps, under the excitement of the moment, was not with any intended disrespect to either yourself or my mother. In haste, Your affectionate son, AjuEX. HARrLAND." The manly tone of this epistle had great effect upon the family j it brought home to their hearthstone the truth, that the pet of the household, the youngest born, was on his way to the seat of war, perhaps to waste away with disease in an unhealthy climate, perhaps to sacrifice his life on the field of battle. The letter served to quiet the Doctor, and prevent his oft-recurring reference to the <r new member of the family." Mrs Hartland was visibly softened by it, and called upon Laura with the Colonel, leaving behind a cool ceremonious invitation for Laura to tea the next day. She begged Sister Agnes to say it waß not her duty to accept this overture, but the good Sister could see only a positive duty in acceding to this first way that had been opened toward peace and harmony with her husbaad's relations. When she came, Rosine exerted herself to make the time pass pleasantly, the Colonel and his lady were politely cool, while Ned spent the evening at his office. There was no nearer approach to intimacy than this chilling civilicy, during the winter, though Laura, in obedience to a request from her husband, removed her quarters to a fashionable boarding-house. Here the terrible dread of Le Compte, which still continued, so affected her nervous system, that every card brought to her room gave her a paroxysm of fear; and there was also a sharp misgiving in her mind whenever a letter came to her from her husband, for although their tone was affectionate and conning, they wholly ignored Le Compte and the past, and with somenßbg of the Doctor's peremptory tone, requested that Le Compie's name might never be mentioned between them. Laura would have felt more secure, had he sometimes reproached her a little for her unfaithfulness. For [some l'eason her tormentor seemed for awhile to have ceased to follow his victim with persecution, perhaps the publishment of the marriage may have led him to defer his plans —perhaps to renounce them, perhaps to change them —we shall see.