CHAPTER VII. ALIENATION. He looked on her and loved her; and used all means BEAUMONT AND FLETCHEr. ABOUT this period a circumstance came to the knowledge of Leslie, which he was in hopes would enable him to ascend another step of the ladder, the top of which he was so desirous to attain. He had discovered a quondam mistress of Trevor's, from whom he had separated on account of her infidelities and profligacy. She was in great poverty. He immediately saw the advantage that he might make of this discovery, and accordingly, relieving the distresses of this woman, he tutored her in the part she was to act; and by showing to her how much she might obtain by the plan, kept her faithful to his purpose, and as anxious as himself for the success of his scheme. The story of Julia Stanton's distress was feelingly described by Flounce in her lady's dressing-room. A tale of wo was sure to excite the commiseration of Agnes; and this was never excited without a plan for the relief of the object. Incognita, and attended only by Flounce, she sought the lodgings of this woman, whom she found apparently suffering as much from the agonies of remorse, as from the pressure of disease and poverty. Sickness had only given a more delicate character to her beauty, and had thus rendered her more interesting. She appeared to receive the visit of Agnes with a modest diffidence, and a painful sense of her own unworthiness; but declined the offered relief, by stating that her necessities had been allegated by an unknown hand. She wept, as words of comfort and kindness were poured into her ear, and by degrees unbosomed herself of such a tale of unprincipled seduction and heartless desertion, as excited by turns the in dignation and pity of Agnes. But when at the conclusion of this sad story she named Trevor as the man to whose arts she had fallen a victim, Agnes started with horror; a sickness came over her heart, and she would have fainted, had she not been caught by Flounce to whom, nevertheless, she had sufficient presence of mind to give a signal not to betray her. The seduction alone, to such a rightly-judging, high-principled mind as that of Agnes, was sufficiently horrible; but for this there might be the apology of passion-of temptation; but the desertion of a victim who had been sacrificed to a moment's sensual pleasure struck her with horror. For this there was no apology to be found in all the sophistry which is so often exerted to palliate a crime, the results of which are incalculable. This part of the story was pregnant with that heartlessness, which Agnes considered as the greatest crime with which a human being could be stigmatized. "And is this the man," exclaimed she mentally, "that I have loved? Is this the being upon whom I depended for all my hopes of happiness, and to whom I have sacrificed it?" What a question for such a heart as hers! What a scene to destroy all the future prospects of a wife, who had for years anticipated the pleasures of domestic enjoyment; and who, in spite of her present pursuits, was still calculating that the quiet of the country, the revisiting of those scenes where they had first been enjoyed, might restore those hours which she still recollected as the brightest of her existence. All these thoughts pressed upon her mind with that quickness with which a thousand unpleasant feelings will sometimes crowd upon one's heart in the short space of a moment. Steps were now heard ascending the staircase to the upperfloor, occupied by Julia; and before Flounce could prevent it, which she pretended to do, the door opened, and, to the extreme surprise of Agnes, La Tour entered- starting, however, at the scene that presented itself Julia in her crocodile tears-Agnes nearly fainting on a chair-and Flounce in the apparent act of stopping his entrance, but standing still, with signs of astonishment at his appearance: he hastily retreated, and flew down the stairs much more quickly than he had ascended them, in spite of Julia's exclamation of “Oh, my benefactor! my saviour!" To the earnest inquiries of Agnes, Julia replied-that La Tour had been the medium through which the hand of some superior had relieved her. His master, she believed, was her benefactor; but the name had been so carefully concealed, that though she believed it came from some friend of her seducer, who had by accident, or perhaps through himself, heard of her wants, she had been left in uncertainty. That it was Leslie who had thus sought out the victim of her husband's heartlessness, and afforded her that relief which it was the duty of Trevor to have accorded, and which was the only reparation in his power to make for the injury she had sustained at his hands, Agnes could not doubt. What a dangerous contrast was this to be presented to her imagination! What a dangerous comparison for the mind and heart of a wife to make! The propriety of her feeling, at once pointed out to her the first source from which this relief ought to have sprung, and as it appeared to have been denied there, the second was from herself; and she at once besought Julia to refuse any farther succour from La Tour, and placing a sum of money in her hands for present exigencies, stated her intention of making her an annual allowance equal to all moderate wants. This settled, she escaped from the oppressive expressions of Julia's gratitude, and returned home with enough upon her mind to furnish food for many a reflection, subversive of all present peace, and pregnant with danger to her future happiness. Unfitted for society by the scene of the morning, she gave "Not at home" orders, and shut herself up in her boudoir for the whole day, resigned to the variety of thoughts and feelings which that scene had engendered in her mind ;thoughts and feelings, alas! which were any thing but favourable to her happiness as a wife. Very early after their union had Agnes discovered how very superficial were the qualities for which she had loved Trevor. A few weeks of unreserved intercourse betrayed how slight were the mental resources and accomplishments he possessed, and how flimsy were his pretensions to that genius,and talent for which her young and partial heart had given him credit. The fact was, she had been blinded by the ardour of his passion for her, and the obstinacy with which he pursued her. The determination to accomplish his wishes, in spite of all opposition, gave to him a temporary energy, which she thought had been one of the integral ingredients of his cha racter. She had been flattered by this determination, and not having been acquainted with the intermediate circumstances of his life, from the time of his first meeting her at the juvenile ball, to that in which he proposed himself for her husband, she, naturally enough, gave him credit for a constancy, which, of all other feelings, was the farthest from the nature of Trevor. Light, volatile, vain, and a sensualist, all the impressions he received were slight; and his senses once gratified, that inherent longing after novelty, which is one of the great characteristics of sensual enjoyment, took possession of his heart, and a new object soon banished the power of every other from his mind and feelings. For his deficiency in the talent, for his want of the genius, with which it had pleased her young fancy to deck out her lover, she did not blame him: it was her fault for having ima gined them, not his that he did not possess them. She She had heard, and read, and imagined the perfections of a lover, and gave these perfections to her own, of course. loved him, and consequently painted him all that she wished him to be. He, his senses charmed for the moment, and determined to succeed, agreed with her sentiments in every thing, as he would have done had they been quite contrary to what they were; and she placed this to the account of congeniality of disposition. In short, she suffered her affection to give a colour to every thing; and looking through a false medium, no wonder that judgment was deceived, when she suffered fancy to be so predominant. As Diderot is said to have recommended many foolish dramas, which had been read to him by their authors, from the circumstance of his having permitted his own imagination and fancy to work up the subject in his mind, and after his own manner, during their perusal, without attending to one word that was actually read to him, so had Agnes dressed up her lover in the colours of her own imagination, and had taken him upon her own fancied conception of his character, instead of upon any of the evidences which might have enabled her to judge of its reality. Her feelings were in his favour, and she followed their impulse. In all this, however, she was ready to blame herself. Her heart ached at her disappointment, but she loved him still ; her feelings had been too warm to subside, and it required but common attention on Trevor's part to have kept alive her affections, and to have preserved her love and esteem, though he might lose her admiration. She made up her mind to view the tinsel of his accomplishments as tinsel, and to look to his heart, and not to his head; to his goodness, and not to his talent, as the qualities that deserved her love. But when she found that he was heartless as well as shallow, when circumstance after circumstance came to her knowledge, and forced upon her the conviction of his want of principle and feeling, it was then that came the death-pang which shook her affections to their very foundation. That he should have had amours in the progress of his youth, was not strange; nor did she feel this; but that he should have heartlessly deserted the objects of his passions, and literally left the victims of his sensuality, the beings whom he had sought for pleasure, and with whom he had found it, to starve for the want of common necessaries, and for that assistance which a stranger would have rendered them, her heart bled to feel the worthlessness of the object on which she had thrown herself away; and shuddered at the dreadful certainty that she could no longer love him with that fervency by which she had once described and felt that the love of a wife ought to be characterized. The want of feeling was in the mind of Agnes the greatest of crimes. Cold-heartedness was the only thing for which she could find no excuse in all the vocabulary of her own kind feelings. Imprudence, carelessness, neglect, nay, even infidelity, she could perhaps have forgiven: but to want feeling was to be capable of all these without the hope of repent ance. She had hitherto repressed these feelings; had endeavoured to forget them; had striven to hope ;-yes, absolutely strives to hope that many of her surmises were untrue; but this tale of Julia, this eye-witnessing of one of the effects of his heartlessness and depravity, had indeed brought conviction too much home to be denied, even by a heart that wished to find its fears devoid of foundation. At this period, with his usual versatility, his manner became again attentive; he was more at home; and he seemed again to seek her society with his former pleasure. But soon the influence of fashion, that love of pleasure and notoriety, that unresisted custom of acting upon any impulse that gave him |