Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“ Lady Lodore returned her daughter's caresses—and her tears flowed fast for very joy, and then she turned to Mrs. Fitzhenry, who followed Ethel, but who had been outspeeded by her in her eagerness. The old lady's face was beaming with happiness. "Ah, Bessy, you have betrayed me—traitress! I did not expect this—I do not deserve such excessive happiness."
"You deserve all, and much more than we can any of us bestow," cried Ethel, "except that your dear generous heart will repay you beyond any reward we can give, and you will be blest in the happiness we owe to you alone. ”

“ I have been debarred from all intercourse with those whose ideas rise above the soil on which they tread, except in my dear books, and I thought I should never be attached to any thing but them. Yet do not think me selfish, Mr. Villiers is quite right—it is much better that you should not be apart—I am delighted with his plan."
"Away or near, dear Fanny," said Ethel, in a caressing tone, "I never can forget your kindness—never cease to feel the warmest friendship for you. Remember, our fathers were friends, and their children ought to inherit the same faithful attachment." ”

“ But when pain comes to awaken us to a true sense of how much we love—when we suffer for one another's dear sake—the consciousness of attachment swells our hearts: we are recalled from the forgetfulness engendered by custom; and the awakening and renewal of the sense of affection brings with it a joy, that sweetens to its dregs the bitterest cup."
"Encourage this philosophy, dear Ethel," replied Villiers; "you will need it: but it shames me to think that I am your teacher in this mournful truth." As he spoke, his whole frame was agitated by tenderness and grief. ”

“ I do not waste my life," replied Fanny, with her sunny smile;—"nor am I unhappy—far otherwise. An ardent thirst for knowledge, is as the air I breathe; and the acquisition of it, is pure and unalloyed happiness. I aspire to be useful to my fellow-creatures: but that is a consideration for the future, when fortune shall smile on me; now I have but one passion; it swallows up every other; it dwells with my darling books, and is fed by the treasures of beauty and wisdom which they contain."
Ethel could not understand. ”

“ By degrees her groans ceased, and she faded into death: the slender manifestations of lingering vitality gradually decreasing till all was still and cold. After an hour or two her face resumed its loveliness, pale and wasted as it was: she seemed to sleep, and none could regret that repose possessed that heart, which had been alive only to the deadliest throes of unhappy passion. Yet Saville did more than regret—he mourned her sincerely and deeply,—he accused himself of hard-heartedness,—he remembered what she was when he had first seen her;—how full of animation, beauty, and love. ”

“ Such talk, a little prolonged, at length dwindled to silence. Edward drew her nearer to him; and as his arm encircled her waist, she placed her sweet head on his bosom, and they remained in silent reverie. He, as with his other hand he played with her shining ringlets, and parted them on her fair brow, was disturbed in thought, and saddened by a sense of degradation. Not to be able to defend the angelic creature, who depended on him, from the world's insults, galled his soul, and embittered even the heart's union that existed between them. ”

“ Now, surrounded by dear friends, and the object of her husband's constant tenderness, she pursues a tranquil course: which for any one to consider the most blissful allotted to mortals, they must have a heart like her own—faithful, affectionate, and generous.
Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry, kind and gentle aunt Bessy, always felt her heaven clouded while she indulged in her aversion to her sister-in-law. She is happy now that she is reconciled to Cornelia; strange to say, she loves her even more than she loves Ethel—she is more intimately connected in her mind with the memory of Lodore. ”

“ The only luxury of Villiers was to steal some few hours of solitude, when he could indulge in his miserable reflections without restraint. The loveliness and love of Ethel were then before his imagination to drive him to despair. To suffer alone would have been nothing; but to see this child of beauty and tenderness, this fairest nursling of nature and liberty, droop and fade in their narrow, poverty-striken home, bred thoughts akin to madness. During each live-long night he was kept awake by the anguish of such reflections. Darker thoughts sometimes intruded themselves. ”

“ All that she had a little while ago scorned as false and empty, she now looked upon as the pleasant reality of life, which she was to exchange for she scarcely knew what—a living grave, a friendless desart—for silence and despair.
It is a hard trial at all times to begin the world anew, even when we exchange a mediocre station for one which our imagination paints as full of enjoyment and distinction. How much more difficult it was for Lady to despoil herself of every good, and voluntarily to encounter poverty in its most unadorned guise. ”

“ They now approached London. Fanny called the post-boy to the window of the chaise, and gave him directions, at which he a little stared, but said nothing. She gave things their own names, and never dreamt of saving appearances, as it is called. What ought to be done, that she dared do in the face of the whole world, and therefore to make a mystery of their destination never once occurred to her. They drove through the long interminable suburbs—through Piccadilly and the Strand. Ethel's cheeks flushed with the excitement, and something like apprehension made her heart flutter. ”

“ Fanny, philosophic as she was, regarded Lady Lodore with a kind of idolatry. The same charm that had fascinated the unworldly and abstracted Saville, she exercised over the thoughtful and ingenuous mind of the fair young student. It was the attraction of engaging manners, added now to the sense of right, joined to the timid softness of a woman, who trembled on acting unsupported, even though her conscience approved her deeds. It was her loveliness which had gained in expression what it had lost in youth, and kindness of heart was the soul of the enchantment. ”

“ Lady Lodore never felt so kindly inclined towards hers, as now that she was about to withdraw from them. Their admiration, for its own sake, she might contemn, but she valued it as the testimony that those charms were still hers, which once had subdued the soul of him she loved—and this was no disagreeable assurance to one who was on the eve of becoming a grandmother.
Her sensibility, awakened by the considerations forced on her by her new circumstances, caused her to make more progress in the knowledge of life, and in the philosophy of its laws, than love or ambition had ever done before. ”

“ She only knew that since she had seen Ethel in her adversity, the stoniness of her heart had dissolved within her, that her whole being was subdued to tenderness, and that the world was changed from what it had been in her eyes. She felt that she could not endure life, unless for the sake of benefiting her child; and that this sentiment mastered her in spite of herself, so that every struggle with it was utterly vain. ”

“ Her husband was not her friend, for he was not her countryman: and full as Saville was of generous sympathy and kindliness for all, the idea of returning to England, to his home and friends, to the stirring scenes of life, and the society of those who loved literature, and were endowed with the spirit of liberal inquiry and manly habits of thinking, so absorbed and delighted him, that he could only thank Clorinda again and again—caress her, and entreat her to get well, that she might share his pleasures. His words chilled her, and she shrunk from his caresses. ”

“ One who feels so deeply for others, and yet is so stern a censor over herself—at once so sensitive and so rigidly conscientious—so single-minded and upright, and yet open as day to charity and affection, cannot hope to pass from youth to age unharmed. Deceit, and selfishness, and the whole web of human passion must envelope her, and occasion her many sorrows; and the unworthiness of her fellow-creatures inflict infinite pain on her noble heart: still she cannot be contaminated—she will turn neither to the right nor left, but pursue her way unflinching ”

“ From circumstances which it is immaterial to explain, I have resolved on retiring into absolute solitude. I shall never live in London again—never again see any of my old friends and acquaintances. The course of my life is entirely changed; and whether I live here or elsewhere, I shall live in obscurity and poverty. I do not wish Ethel to know this. She would wish to assist me, and she has scarcely enough for herself. I do not like being a burthen—I do not like being pitied—I do not like being argued with, or to have my actions commented upon. ”

“ It was not that she was narrow-hearted: so much affection demands a spacious mansion for its abode; but in their present position of struggle and difficulty, there was no possibility of extending her sphere of benevolence, and she gladly concentrated her endeavours in the one object whose happiness was in her hands.
All night, even in sleep, a peculiar sense of calm enjoyment soothed the mind of Ethel, and she awoke in the morning with buoyant spirits, and a soul all alive to its own pleasurable existence. ”

“ Edward Villiers learnt to prize worldly prosperity at its true value, and each day blesses the train of circumstances that led him to wed Ethel, even though poverty and suffering had followed close behind. Ethel herself might be said to have been always happy. She was incapable of being impressed by any sorrow, that did not touch her for another's sake: and while she exerted herself to alleviate the pain endured by those she loved, she passed on unhurt. Heaven spared her life's most cruel evils. Death had done its worst when she lost her father. ”

“ At this time also Horatio Saville returned from Italy with his little girl. She was scarcely more than a year old, but displayed an intelligence to be equalled only by her extraordinary beauty. Her golden silken ringlets were even then profuse, her eyes were as dark and brilliant as her mother's, but her complexion was fair, and the same sweet smile flitted round her infant mouth, as gave the charm to her father's face. He idolized her, and tried by his tenderness and attention to appease, as it were, the manes of the unfortunate Clorinda. ”

“ She pictured to herself the satisfaction of Villiers and Ethel at finding themselves suddenly, as by magic, restored to freedom and the pleasures of life. She figured their gladness in exchanging their miserable lodging for the luxury of her elegant dwelling; their pleasure in forgetting the long train of previous misfortunes, or remembering them only to enhance their prosperity, when pain and fear, disgrace and shame, should be exchanged for security and comfort. ”

“ She looks on the track of years she has passed over as wasted, and she wishes to retrieve their loss. She respects, admires, in some sense it may be said, that she adores her husband; but even while consenting to be his, and thus securing her own happiness, she told him that her first duties were towards Ethel—and that he took a divided heart, over the better part of which reigned maternal love. Saville, the least egoistic of human beings, smiled to hear her name that a defect, which was in his eyes her crowning virtue. ”

“ Villiers could read in her open countenance, as plainly as through the clearest crystal, the sentiments that were passing in her mind—it was something more satisfied than resignation, more contented than fortitude. It was a knowledge that whatever evil might attend her lot, the good so far outweighed it, that, for his sake only, could she advert to any feeling of distress. It was a consciousness of being in her place, and of fulfilling her duty, accompanied by a sort of rapture in remembering how thrice dear and hallowed that duty was. ”

“ Once, overcome by these thoughts, he resolved to return suddenly to England, to make one effort more to exchange unendurable wretchedness for the most transporting happiness;—absence from Cornelia, to the joy of pouring out the overflowing sentiments of his heart at her feet. While indulging in this idea, a letter from his sister Lucy caused a painful revulsion; she painted the woman of the world given up to ambition and fashion, rejoicing in his departure, and waiting only the moment when she might with decency become the wife of another. ”