James Grant

“ Constance never smiled again; yet in the presence of Sybil she never gave way to the paroxysms of passionate grief that came over her when she was alone or in the seclusion of her own chamber. Wealth and title, so long looked forward to in the years that were gone, seemed alike most worthless now, save that with the loss of these her children lost their position in life, and herself her name and honour! Ever present was the idea, Oh that her husband could look up from his grave, and see the impending ruin and desolation of their once-happy home! ”

“ My next sketch is a Hindoo water-girl. I gave her a rupee to stand for me at Arcot; but, as her clothing is somewhat scanty, we shall skip to the next. Ah—that is a mango tree, and here are the palace of Mysore and the town and fort of Agra."
"How much you have seen of the world!" said Sybil, her dark eyes dilating as she glanced for a moment at the stranger's young and handsome face; "I wonder if Denzil will ever look upon those places. Heavens, how poor and mean do my Cornish sketches of ruins, rocks, and engines look, after yours!" ”

“ What then would have been her fate, and more than all, by sequence, the fate and position of the children she idolised—her proud boy Denzil, and the beautiful Sybil, now budding on the verge of womanhood?
A stigma—a stain—she could never remove, might have been on them, to the end of their lives; and her soul seemed to die within her as she thought of the peril—the narrow escape, they had all made!
She thanked Heaven with fervour in her heart, and again and again, it swelled with gratitude to her husband, and with love for him and confidence in him ”

“ From the high gilded poop of his caravel, Launcelot Trevelyan, with a fierce malediction, cast into the sea, before it swallowed him up, the silver whistle and chain, his badge of naval authority, the gift of Sir Francis Drake, lest it should become some wrecker's prey; and as the timbers parted, and the ship went down into the angry sea, the clangour of the bells resounded in her hold; and there to this day they are heard by people loitering on the shore, when storms are nigh—or when aught is about to happen to the family of Lamorna, add the superstitious folks of Cornwall. ”

“ The rising wind as a sudden gust swept through the grove of willows, roused her from these thoughts, and she found old Winny Braddon, hard-featured and keen-eyed, lingering near, with anxiety depicted in her face.
"The winter is setting in early, surely," said Constance; "we are not out of autumn yet, Winny, and see how dark the evening has become!"
"En hâv perkou gwâv, my mother used to say, old Cornish for 'in summer, remember winter,'" replied Winny. "A sad night it will be for the poor fellows on board ship, ma'am, I fear." ”

“ Constance would have gone forth in person to search, bleak and rainy though the night; but she was too feeble and delicate to face the storm, nor would Nurse Braddon permit her. She sent all her servants, male and female, in search of the tidings she was terrified to hear; and ever and anon she rushed to the front portico and looked out upon the gloomy night, to where away beyond the willow groves that grew around the villa, the bleak high road wound seaward over a bare Cornish moor, towards those clumps of old trees that crowned the rocks which overlooked the fatal Pixies' Hole. ”

“ Seated on a fragment of rock, lulled by the regular and monotonous rolling of the surge, Sybil was immersed in thoughts of her absent father and brother, each now traversing the same sea, and yet so far apart upon its waters; she thought of Audley Trevelyan. Should she ever meet him in society as she wished to do? A little time and it might be too late, for Rose Trecarrel was so lovely, and already seemed to consider him as her own property; for it was by her side he sat in church, where they used the same books, and it was she that he usually shawled or cloaked first for the carriage ”

“ Mr. Jasper Funnel, the portly, florid, and white-haired butler, had placed the glittering crystal decanters before his master, who, with two nephews, Richard and Downie Trevelyan, were lingering over their wine; while in the western light of a September evening, through the tall plate-glass windows that reached from the richly-carpeted floor to the painted and gilded ceiling, the Isles of Scilly—the Casserites of the Greeks, the rocks consecrated by the pagan Cornavi to the Sun—could be seen at the far horizon, literally cradled in the golden blaze of his setting in the sea ”

“ I shall sail for England a fortnight hence, in the steamer Admiral, and till then, shall renew in sweet fancy the days of our loverhood, by many a ramble about Montreal; by Hochlega, the picturesque site of the old Indian village, now its eastern suburb; the nine aisles of the great Cathedral; the gardens of the Convent of Notre Dame, and among the mountains close by—in many a shady walk and lane; and Heaven and myself alone can know how I miss you and our dearest Sybil, and how I am longing to return." It was signed "Lamorna."
"My dear, dear Richard!" ”

“ The equivocation and anxiety of years—years the happiness of which had in it so much of alloy—were about to be removed now! She was at last Constance Lady Lamorna of Rhoscadzhel—the wife of him who represented one of the oldest, and perhaps, most noble families in the duchy; but one passage in her husband's letter troubled and perplexed her, though it caused neither fear nor doubt—of one kind at least—in her loving and trusting heart.
"Our marriage must still be kept a secret for a little time; when we meet, I shall tell you why." ”

“ A bad style of thing it is to meddle with the long-nosed fellows in the discounting line; just as bad as—and often the sequence to—running after actresses or opera-singers. You may love them if you like; but, great Heavens! never stoop to the madness of committing matrimony with any of them, or for a moment forget the family to which you belong, and the ancient title that is your inheritance."
All this was said with undisguised point and pomposity; the cold grey eyes of Downie Trevelyan had a strange, sour smile in them; and Richard's face grew more flushed than ever now. ”

“ Days were passing in sorrow now; no letters from Audley came to either. Sybil looked delicate and grew pale and thin, for a double grief was consuming her, and Constance began to marvel in her heart, was she meant to live in suffering and penury, perhaps to die early, this child—her dead father's idol, so loved and petted by him.
Sybil felt secretly pleased with the idea that there existed between her and Audley a tie—the tie of blood—which even the antagonism of his crafty father could not break. "The idea of cousinly intimacy to girls is undoubtedly pleasant," says Anthony Trollope ”

“ Trevelyan? Why, a moment ago you called me plain Audley, and it did sound so delightful! Pray do not let us go back in our relations. And you have quite recovered, I hope, from the effects of that frightful affair?" he added, while smiling with fondness into the clear bright eyes that drooped beneath his gaze.
"It seems as nothing, now—save when I dream; you make too much of it—indeed you do," blundered Sybil.
"Can I do so of aught in which you have a part?"
"Poor mamma is still in a weak and nervous state; so, I am sorry to say, she will be unable to see you." ”

“ Poindester though fearless, for he was a native of those dangerous Isles where for one who dies a natural death nine are drowned, rebuked this irreverence, on which the wild Trevelyan stormed and blasphemed, and forgetting to heed his compass or steerage, permitted his caravel to be dashed ashore, just as a sudden storm came on, and the waves of the Bristol Channel hurled her on the cliffs of the Black Pit, where every soul on board perished, save old Paul Poindester. ”

“ Across the sea the sun, now setting, poured a steady stream of golden radiance, like a broad and glittering pathway from the far horizon to the very shore, by the margin of which Sybil was now lingering; and it tinted with warm light the flinty brow of many a storm-beaten headland, and those fantastic piles of grey granite which cap the hills in Cornwall, and are there called carns. ”

“ Jasper Funnel and two tall footmen had just illuminated, at the same time drawing the heavy curtains of crimson damask over the last flash of the setting sun, and the ruddy sea whose waves were rolling in blue and gold, between the bluffs of Land's End and the rocky Isles of Scilly.
"You cannot be a woman-hater, Dick?"
"No—far from it," replied Richard, as a soft expression stole over his manly face; "there can be no such thing in nature." ”

“ Beyond the quaint façade of the ancient house, from the mullioned windows of which, half hidden by ivy and wild roses, there streamed out many a light into the darkness, his eyes wandered to the fertile fields, all bare stubble now, to the wide open moor overlooked by many a wooded tor, and to the beautiful lawn, in the centre of which stands one of those wonderful logan-stones, so peculiar to Cornwall and Brittany, a ponderous, spheroidal mass of granite, so exquisitely balanced that it may be oscillated by the touch even of a woman's hand ”

“ And old Winny Braddon came in for her share of caresses, while the General and Trevelyan, though they now began to feel themselves rather de trop, looked on with smiles of pleasure. So full of joy was Constance at the restoration of Sybil, that she never noticed the quaint and coarse (though comfortably dry) costume which the careful wife of Treherne had substituted for her wet and sodden habiliments.
Audley's quick and practised eye saw that Constance was a woman possessing more than an ordinary share of beauty and refinement. ”

“ He saw the red rays light up the mighty headland known as Willapark Point; all the barren ridge of Resparvell Down, and all the rocks and foam, and broken shore about Tintagel and Trevana tinted with marvellous beauty, and varied light and shadow, by the morning sun; and inland, Little Minster church, secluded in its nook among the hills; and from an eminence which he ascended, he could see amid the dun-coloured moorland, the lonely tarn and huge rock pillar where he had first met Sybil Devereaux ”

“ Richard shrugged his shoulders, and glanced round him with impatience.
"Let us look forward, my dear uncle," said he; "in this age of progress all men do; and of what account or avail can a dead ancestry be?"
Downie smiled faintly, and Lord Lamorna frowned in the act of decapitating an egg, for to his ears this sounded as rank heresy or treason against the state.
"By heavens! nephew Richard, you talk like a Red Republican. With these socialistic views of equality, and so forth, I fear you will never shine in the Upper House." ”

“ Weary of the monotony of life at the villa, great was the delight of old weather-beaten Dick Braddon, to "be off" as he said, "to see the world once more with the master," whom he loved only second perhaps to Denzil, whose free frank bearing charmed the veteran, who averred that he was exactly like what his father was, when he joined the Cornish Light Infantry, a cherry-cheeked ensign, long ago in America. ”

“ So she thought and flattered herself while, clad in the deepest mourning, she and Sybil traversed, by the Cornwall Railway, the forty odd miles that lay between Porthellick and Rhoscadzhel, followed by the prayers and blessings of old Winny Braddon.
"That which we fancy must break our hearts, we can bear patiently, and what is more, so learn to conform to, that after a few years of life, we can wonder that we thought them hardships," says a writer with much truth. ”

“ On the afternoon of the visit which closes the preceding chapter, his mother who was seated languidly in a deep easy chair near the library fire, playing with a feather fan, while her daintily slippered little feet rested on a velvet tabourette, said in her soft and monotonous voice,—
"I do wish, Audley, that odious dog of yours was dead—shot or lost."
"Why, mother, it was poor Jack Delamere's dying legacy."
"It is such a shaggy, self-willed, huge and savage animal—always about one's skirts or in one's way." ”

“ To please his uncle was one of the unwearying tasks of his life; and even now, with this view, he was in the most accurate evening dress, thus affording a complete contrast to the rough and unceremonious tweed-suit worn by his brother—his coat broadly lapelled with black silk moiré, his vest with three buttons, en suite with his shirt studs, which were encrusted with brilliants. His cold formality of manner rendered his periodical visits to Rhoscadzhel somewhat dull to Lord Lamorna, for somehow few people cared much for Mr. Downie Trevelyan. ”