persons who were assembled, he sent privately to request that a detachment of the military, who happened to be stationed in the town, should hold themselves in readiness in case his civil force should not be able to disperse the mob. Things were in this predicament when Lord Herbert, and several of his sporting crew, made their way through the crowd, and joined Lady Herbert. The evening was now far advanced, and it was nearly dark, but she could distinguish the state in which her husband was, and her heart sank within her. Of course she flew to him, and in few words explained what had occurred. He pretended to think it was what it really was, an untoward accident; and going into the middle of the mob, pacified them by his fair words and ready handsful of silver, begged them to disperse without giving farther molestation. He had a peculiar way of winning over the lower orders of people, and, drunk or sober, he could always gain their hearts. A mixture of familiarity and command at once pleased and awed them. So, calling to his wife, he bade her take his arm. Some of the other gentlemen escorted her friend; and the whole party passed along through the streets quite unmolested, and cheered all the way by the silly populace, who cried, "Long live the Herberts!" while, the moment before, they had vociferated with oaths, "Bring out the thieves! Give them up to justice." More dead than alive, poor Lady Herbert arrived at the hotel in the great place of the town, and was rushing into the house, when Lord Herbert prevented her, and whispered one of his awful whispers: Come, madam, you love notoriety, you shall have enough of it;" then he commanded her to courtesy to the mob. She obeyed. The shouts were loud; and unanimous expressions of admiration, not the less vivid for being rude in expression, burst forth from all present. But it was not till poor Lady Herbert reached a private apartment that she felt the full horror of this most unfortunate scene, and she nearly fainted with terror, not less excited by what she had gone through, than by what she knew still awaited her from her husband. Lord Herbert had returned to the table and began drinking again with his associates; so Lady Herbert was at least spared from going to the ball, and she only waited in that dreadful anxiety, of which none but a loving wife similarly situated can know the horror, listening to every drunken roar that reached her ear from the room below, where Bacchanalian revels continued till a late hour in the night, or rather an early one in the morning. She distinctly heard Lord Herbert's footstep, as it assumed a heavy tread by way of being sober, come into his dressing-room. She hoped he would suppose she was already in bed, for she knew her best chance of escaping a dreadful scene was his going fast asleep before they met. She waited, therefore, till he went up to his bedroom, before she prepared to follow him, and lingered nearly half an hour after the time during which she calculated he must have fallen asleep, before she went to bed. She crept noiselessly up a very long staircase, and through a spacious corridor which led to various sleeping-rooms; and she reached the room unperceived, and, as she hoped, without awakening her husband. He breathed very loud, and she believed him to be asleep; so she undressed and crept into bed; but scarcely had she lain down, when Lord Herbert rose up, and in a voice of fury, said, "So, madam, you are going to sleep, are you, after all your pretty pranks this evening? but I must beg to have some conversation with you first. Pray tell me what took you into the public streets with that Miss Jackson, who is no better than she should be? and what made you put on the extraordinary dress I caught you in? Answer me that." "I went to take a walk in the fields, Francis, with Miss Jackson, whom you brought to accompany me to the ball; and, unfortunately, some low persons were gathered together to see the races, whose curiosity induced them to follow us till a mob was the consequence; but, indeed, I wore no extraordinary dress. My usual dress only." "That is quite enough. You always like to dress yourself in the fashion of some wench going to dance on the tight rope; but I'll let you know more about it before I have done with you." And he actually gave her a blow which half stunned her. She felt indignant as soon as she came to her senses. she said, And "Francis, to-morrow you will be ashamed of your conduct, for it is shameful. What! strike a defenceless woman; your wife, who never deserved any thing but love from you. Yes, you will blush at your conduct." "What, you, madam! you-you will dare to arraign me and my behaviour! Turn out, madam, out of my bed for ever." VOL. II. 8 And he rudely hurled her on the floor. She wept bitterly. Nay, none of your whining there; be off out of the room, I say." And getting up, he opened the door, and tried to push her out into the passage. "Nay, Francis, I beseech you,-I implore you, leave me on the floor, but do not for ever disgrace yourself and me by putting your innocent wife, naked, into the common passage of a common hotel, at this time of night." "You be -! There's for you; it serves you right." And with his Herculean arm he hurled her outside the door, and turning the key, locked it upon her. One brief, bitter degrading moment, crushed the heart and soul of this unfortunate woman; but, with a celerity and strength, which the instant before she did not think herself mistress of, recollecting that Miss Jackson's room was one story higher, she flew like lightning, and reached it without having met any one. "For God's sake let me in!" The next moment Miss Jackson had unlocked her door, and saw Lady Herbert rush in and fall headlong on the floor; from that position her friend never could raise her that night; there she lay, bathed in tears, bruised in body and wounded in mind and heart; her senses nearly forsaking her. Miss Jackson placed pillows under her head, and covered her with garments to prevent her being chilled with cold, and endeavoured to sooth her; but what could she say to give comfort to such sorrow? At length, by the help of laudanum, Lady Herbert dropped asleep, and when she awoke next day, it was to find her repentant husband kneeling beside her, expressing the deepest contrition for his conduct, and swearing such a shameful scene should never again recur; but this time poor Lady Herbert's feelings were not so easily appeased; she knew that the fatal habit of drinking to which Lord Herbert was now become a slave, could never leave him a responsible agent; she foresaw misery, perhaps death staring her in the face. She thanked God, her poor aunt had been taken away before she lived to see the wretchedness of her child, as she had fondly called her. Ah! she thought, that might have been an additional thorn in my cruel path; but I never told her; her sorrow would have aggravated my own; I never told any one; I have borne all in silence; we are accounted the happiest of mar ried couples. Oh! how many marriages are like this one!-even as the apples of Sodom, fair to the sight but bitter to the taste; and so it was with poor Lady Herbert: but it is fair that, on the page of Lady Herbert's life, these truths should stand recorded. Her peculiar character could not be truly delineated, were they not detailed. The love which, for a length of years survived such treatment; the strange anomaly of the character with which she had to suffer, the pains and penalties, of an almost unparalleled fate, are in themselves so very unusual, that nothing but a simple narrative of facts, could convey a belief in their having actually existed. It is a common practice to say, "Oh! how unnatural! Oh! how exaggerated!" on hearing or reading of occurrences which deserve very different epithets to be conjoined to them; but that these are literal truths, and that a thousand more such could be added to the catalogue of Lady Herbert's life, without any colouring, beyond that of the strictest similitude to reality, is most certain. Persons exclaim, "No! men are bad enough; but for their own sakes are not personally brutal to their wives." Alas! there is in the book of truth and reality many such cases upon record, even amongst the highest in rank-the most polished in society, and the most talented in intellect, It would be wearisome, it would be disgusting, to enumerate the constant recurrence of similar treatment received by Lady Herbert for fifteen years of wedded life. Some will call her provoking, for having so intensely felt trifles which others would call light as air; some will call her a fool, for having borne in silence such cruel treatment; but let it be remembered that Lady Herbert's peculiar attribute was love; that in her every act, and deed, and thought, and feeling, love was the instigator, the sustainer, the ruler of her conduct. The whole essence and attributes of the word love, in its own purest meaning, is imbodied in the character of Lady Herbert; had she met with an answering love, where would have been her merit? and not to have boldly written out her sufferings, would not have been to fulfil the express meaning and purport of this work, namely, to show forth the power, the purity, the constancy, the vastness of true love in woman. CHAPTER IX. Oh, Time! the beautifier of the dead, And only healer, when the heart.hath bled, BYRON. THE chronicler of the life of Lady Herbert passes over a year and a half of her widowhood, and opens again the scene of her existence, at the expiration of that period. Lady Herbert had gone through the heavy stroke of a first astounding grief-she had gone through the bitter anguish which follows-she had gone through the languor and sickliness, and distaste to every earthly joy, or accustomed employment which succeeds to that, and she had arrived at the point, where the bruised heart compassionates its own sufferings, and endeavours to taste some cordial that may bring relief, and medicate its wounds. At first, the attempt seemed a sacrilege on the sanctity of sorrow, but the great healer, Time, worked its mighty work,-or it may be the weakness of nature, at length, like an angry child that will not be appeased by any temptation to gratify its senses, falls asleep from the very weariness of its impotent fractiousness, and so dozes on, till it is awakened by some new gleam of brightness that cheats it into smiles. Yes, that period of time, as it is computed in the register of existence, had, like all similar epochs, passed; but for Lady Herbert it had travelled slowly and heavily, and seemed to her as though it were a hundred years. Again, the scene of her life opens afresh, she is once more employed at her embroidery frame, her daughter now, in the very first bloom of ripened beauty, reading to her. She was sitting in that calm of the country, which no society whatever had broken in upon, when suddenly, and wholly unprepared for his arrival, Lord de Montmorenci was announced. Lady Herbert uttered an exclamation of mingled sur |