“ It was impossible that man could stand it; and necessity, the mother of invention, stung the obtuse brain of Gustavus to something like the ingenium perfervidum of genius itself. He knew very well that he had terrified men; and, indeed, as love is said to be inspired by a look, so one glance of him was, of a surety, sufficient to have produced fear in any one but Julia, who valued his fierce looks no more than if they had been smiles. ”

“ As she hung upon his bosom and fed his eyes with the soft beams of a first love, shining through tears of kindness and devotion, who could have observed, in that light, more danger than belongs to so innocent a thing as a woman’s smile? Robert Ashley had known by experience, that a woman’s eye that does not shine on her seducer, generally shines not at all, unless it be in the phosphorescent brightness of the corruption of the grave. Mary Lee was, like other women, an object to be possessed, not feared ”

“ On this very spot did your forefathers meet, to hear the good, the pious, the persecuted Mr Samuel Austin—him whom the lawless hands of wicked men banished, with all he held dear, to the cave, and the moss, and the mountain. O Creehope! that now re-echoest to thy peaceful waters, what a tale thou couldst unfold of Austin’s nightly watchings, and prayer, and praises. O Queensberry, that rearest thy proud and double front to the very breast of heaven, have not thy long heath and deep morasses hid the servants of God when the pursuer was near at hand! ”

“ Mary Lee continued to live on, for many years, exhibiting the same peculiarities of character—the same silence—the same scorn of social relations. Her desire of revenge was satisfied—but that satisfaction was no more effectual, in its assuaging consequences, than revenge is generally found to be. It even added to her moroseness; for the evil which she had removed, had been the only good she ever enjoyed, and the thirst for revenge which she had indulged, when slaked by the blood of all her enemies, left her nothing to wish for in the world. ”

“ Jessie Martin had been sadly and listlessly employed, all the morning, in making preparations for landing, arranging, and directing her trunks; but her work proceeded slowly; for, in spite of her better reason, her thoughts dwelt mournfully on her approaching separation from Morton, when a knock was heard at the cabin door, and, as if to reproach her with her inconstancy, the lover of her youth stood before her. Jessie had, for months, been anticipating with dread, her meeting with Edward Malcolmson, and had, as she thought, nerved herself to go through the trial with firmness ”

“ And, as Mr Stafford persisted in disobeying, another twitch was given to his ear, and another and another, while he screamed and wept through passion and pain, danced and twisted to be free, to the amusement of the spectators, who enjoyed his punishment and humiliation.
“Sir,” said Isabella, addressing his tormentor, the frantic cries of Mr Stafford having brought her from the cabin, where she retired at the beginning of their altercation; “if a fly sting us, we may drive it away, without taking pleasure in its tortures; and it is but a cowardly revenge to torment an insect.” ”

“ Every sail of the vessel was reefed, and both anchors dropped; but the chain cable snapped like the web of a gossamer, and she lunged and tugged from her remaining anchor, dragging it after her, like a fiery horse tearing from the rein of a schoolboy. The mast bent as a proud man bends in the day of adversity; the topmast went overboard, striking heavily upon the deck as it fell. It struck immediately over the bed of the Honourable Edward Stafford. ”

“ Isabella herself marked, and she did so with fear and trembling, the ominous gaze of the unprincipled Lord of Hermitage; and she clung closer and closer to her father and her lover, both of whom were also aware of the circumstance at which she was so much alarmed. Her father saw it with a feeling of dread and horror; for he knew well the infamous character of the man, and he knew, too, that he would perpetrate any villany, and have recourse, without the smallest hesitation or compunction, to any measures, however violent or atrocious, to accomplish the gratification of his passions ”

“ He who takes the honey sometimes gets the sting; the little insect which supplies the figure of speech fulfils a purpose in nature, when, after its support, during the period when no flowers exist, from which to get a supply, has been taken from it, and it is consigned to want and death, it throws away in its vengeance on the spoiler, the life which is only of use to dart the sting, and leave its spark of vitality along with the poison in the wound.
As time waned, the ruined Mary felt her passion increase and saw her lover’s decay. ”

“ Previous to his marriage, he had been in the habit of spending the evening after business hours, with a club of young tradesmen and other acquaintances. Now, habit is the pettiest and the most imperious of all tyrants. Even with a pinch of snuff it can make you its slave. It renders you miserable, until you once more bend the knee before it. But, as I have said, habit, though an imperious, is a petty tyrant; and three weeks’ resolution, though you will have struggles to encounter, will enable you to snap asunder the strongest chain that ever habit forged. ”

“ Every pulse of life acknowledged the power which had come like a spirit and thrown a charm over her existence; the world was now centred in one object; her father and her home lost their magic influences of early associations; even the shade of her mother, which was enshrined in her imagination as a part of the mind itself, faded into a thinner existence than even that of a vision, as she revelled in the first enthusiastic enjoyment of maiden affection. ”

“ Meanwhile, his heavy eye was fixed on the ground; he heard a noise, and, looking up, what on earth should he see but the head of Julia herself above the ground, and all the rest of her body below it? She leered at him and the women knowingly, and laughed till the woods rang; and, rising up out of the very hole where she had been interred, she ran, or rather staggered to him—for she was fresh from the still—flung herself around his neck, and hugged him with a grasp of embrace that many a husband would give a hundred pounds for any day. Nor was Gustavus insensible to its efficacy ”

“ Their first-born was a boy, and his name was Francis; and their daughter they had called Jacobini, after an only brother of Hannah’s and of whom nothing had been heard for many years. No poet in his waking dreams of domestic bliss hath pictured a happier pair than were Walter Kerr and his gentle Hannah. She was unto him as a guardian spirit, an affectionate counsellor, and a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. And as their children grew up in beauty before them, like fair [47] flowers in spring, stealing day by day into loveliness, so grew their joy. ”

“ The easily lighted, fickle, heartless, and seducing passion, was the bane of the young man—springing up, with sudden violence, on the first contemplation of beauty—rendering him uneasy till it was communicated and miserable till it was gratified—too often by the ruin of his victim. A fine form and expressive countenance, a command of the language of the heart, and riches, rendered him one of the most dangerous companions of the fair sex of his time ”

“ Where is all your wisdom new? Alas! how foolish I have been to put any faith in the professions of one who is incapable of avoiding a danger pointed out to his open eyes! To marry Benjamin Rice is misery, if not death—to marry you is wretchedness and shame, besides rebellion against the commands of my parents.”
“Calm yersel, Dione,” said Nashon. ”

“ It is but a very small matter to say, that Gustavus could not sleep under the hug or embrace of the new customer that had taken such a violent hold of his heart, though we do not deem it an equally insignificant announcement, that a man who could swallow a couple of pounds of flesh at a down-sitting, should lose his gustative and digestive powers to such an extent that the knocking of his heart sounded audibly through his empty stomach, as if it had been a whispering gallery. But love is a leveller in more senses than the vulgar one ”

“ On the day appointed, Nashon, dressed and scented in great style, dined at Eyrymount. There were present several fox-hunters, Benjamin Rice, and others of the neighbours—none of whom came up to Nashon in brilliancy or scent. They seemed all delighted and amused with the grotesque figure, excepting Dione, who stared at him in sorrow and disappointment; for she could not conceive how so sudden a transformation from simplicity to gaudy glitter and bad taste, could have taken place on one who appeared to be gifted with prudence and good sense. ”

“ One thing, amidst all this doubt, remained certain, and that was that, whatever favour Hans Gerstendorf had in the eyes of the relentless fair one, no other person ever saw her smile, and few heard her speak. The same gloomy melancholy haunted her, the same bitterness of scorn of all social relations, was observable in her eye, and trembled on her lip.
On a day, a horseman, well-mounted, arrived in Fairhaven, in a state of breathless anxiety and haste. ”

“ Mars, was no other than a mere toy of a thing—a little milliner called Julia Briggs—scarcely so big, when divested of the padding and stuffing with which her art enabled her to supply her deficiency of natural size, as one of his huge limbs. But this may be no manner of marvel to those who are versant in the mysteries of love, who, being himself a small creature, seems to delight in throwing into the smallest of his victims the greatest portion of his power. It is difficult to see philosophically any final cause in the curious fact in nature ”

“ But injured virtue—and poor Mary Lee’s feelings had still a virtue in them—has a power which proud man has been often brought to acknowledge and to feel. The cowardly braggart, only brave in pseudo love, was so tamed by the blow, and so humiliated by the noble attitude of the asserter of her dearest rights, that he slunk away as if he had been caught in an act of larceny, or stung by a serpent. ”

“ The breaking heart of love has no consolation, unless when its sorrowful indications imitate the vulgar hues of bodily disease, and then it can command a prescription; yet sometimes it finds for itself, and in its own recesses, a poison, which has more virtue in it than all the simples of the leech.
Now a considerable time had passed without any intelligence of Ashley, when, one day, as Mary sat under the tree, she saw a gentleman approach, whom she recognised as Ashley’s friend, George Henley. ”

“ From the ladies’ cabin issued prayers, shrieks, and groans of suffering, and every one devoutly wished to be once more blest with the tediousness of a calm; and, as the vessel yawed, rocked, and staggered with the heavy swell, and the ponderous boom, with its mainsail flapping like thunder, grating, crashing, clanking, and tearing with sudden jerk, or with fearful lunge reversing the laws of gravity, and tearing both mast and vessel into the sea, scream rose upon scream; sickness and terror met in conflict. ”

“ Companion, Jessie! friend!—these are cold words to me, whose whole heart is yours; who live but in the light of your smile; who love you as I have never before loved human being, and never shall love again. ”

“ There was a rush to the cabin stairs. Calm as Isabella had hitherto been, she was now changed. It is difficult to look the grim angel in the face with indifference; but she rushed not to the stairs with the others. Mr Stafford was driven from the table by the uncourteous visit of the bowsprit, and now wallowed upon the floor, buffeting with the brine, imagining himself at the bottom of the vasty deep. The concussion of the vessels had brought his head in violent conjunction with the cabin floor, which, with his excited fears, deprived him of the consciousness of time and place ”

“ But it was the force of habit—it had grown in upon him, as he said; and what could the poor man do? He beheld his wife broken-hearted, going almost in rags, and their affection had changed into bickerings and reproaches. His children, too, were half-starved, ill-clad, and unschooled; and for what education they got, he thought not of paying the schoolmaster—he felt nothing in hand for his money, and therefore could not see the force of the debt. But the poor man could not help it. It was true he earned about two pounds a-week, but which way the money went he could not tell. ”

“ Poor Mary Lee acted from her impulses; nor did she see danger. There is the “mid-deep,” which the sailors of the Solway point out to the passenger who looks on the fallacious calm, as it hovers o’er the graves of many a drowned mariner. There is a moral mid-deep in the paths of most of us, but which we never see till we are engulphed.
As Mary Lee grew up, she came necessarily under the view of young Ashley, who, as he called for the boat, noticed the young maiden sitting on the beach, throwing the glances of her blue eye on the mirror of the silvery Solway ”

“ Time had been busy also with Jessie. Long separation had gradually weakened her affection for Edward; and a freer intercourse with the world and with society, had produced its natural effect—a love of change and variety. She had been much and generally admired, and, although very guarded in her behaviour, and cool and distant in her manners to the young men who flocked around her, had received several very advantageous offers, which she had instantly and decidedly rejected, as she considered herself in honour bound to adhere to her early engagement. ”