After Long Years. A novel

Front matter

Hir. Itefobg's |tefo In 3 vola. Price, 36s. THE FIRST TEMPTATION: OR, EKITIS SICUT DETJS. A PHILOSOPHICAL ROMANCE, Translated from the German by Mes. WILLIAM R. WILDE. "This is in every respect the most remarkable novel of our time. It is truly a philosophical romance, and will be thoroughly appre ciated by the educated clergy and laity. Moreover, to the general reader it will be found one of the most interesting fictions ever met with."— Daily Post. In 3 vols. Price, 31s. 6d. SNOWED UP, Bt Mbs. OCTAVIUS OWEN, Author of "Raised to the Peerage," "Heroines of History," Ac. "Capital tales, highly entertaining, and delightful additions to our light literature."— John Bv.lL " Charming stories from the flowing and versatile pen ot Mrs. Owen."— BeWs Messenger. " A charming book."— Sporting Magazine.

" The book is replete with amusement."— Brighton Lxaminer. In 2 vols. 21s. I£ PELLEGRINO: OR, WANDERINGS AND WONDERINGS, Br CAPTAIN CLAYTON, Author of "TJbique," Ac "It contains chapters for all readers, racy narrative, abandance of *^^C1_^S^ *-^ dialogue, fresh, clear, Captain yiaycon s s » hesitation in predicting for In 3 vols. Price, 31s. 6d. YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY, By CYRUS BEDDING, Being a continuation of " Fifty Years' Recollections." " Cyrus Redding has produced one of the most valuable works which could interest the present generation, forming as it does a sort of medium between the living and departed celebrities of the last half century." — Express. " The whole tone of the work is as creditable to the orthodoxy as it is to the elasticity of our septuagenarian author's mind. The attrac tion of the work will be its chitty reminiscences of the literaires ctlebres of the last half century." — Morning Advertiser.

In 3 vols. Price, 31s. 6d. A COUNTRY VISIT, By the Author of " Constance Dale," " The Cliffords of Oakley," " Family Troubles," Ac. In 1 vol. Price, 10s. 6d. POETRY ANCIENT AND MODERN, By WALTER SAYAGE LANDOB. ANECDOTAL MEMOIRS OF ENGLISH PRINCES, AND NOTICES OF CERTAIN MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL HOUSES OF ENGLAND. Bt W. H. DAVENPORT ADAMS, Author of " Memorable Battles in English History," "The Sea-Kings of England," Ac, Ac. IN TWO VOLUMES. A NOVEL. BT MES. MACKENZIE-DANIEL, ADTHOE OF "My Sister Minnie," "Marrying for Money," "Our Brother Paul," Ac. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. fonto: T. CAUTLEY NEWBY, PUBLISHER, 30, WELBECK STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE. 1863. [THE RIGHT OF TRANSLATION IS RESERVED.]

Chapter I. Before The Wedding

" A bright, bright day for your wedding, my Lizzie," spoke out a cheerful, matronly voice, as its owner entered with privileged step a young girl's sanctum sanctorum almost as soon as the sun had risen on a fair May morning. " I am so glad that the threaten ing of those clouds last night has not been fulfilled. Wide awake, love? but I hope you have slept well, and are feeling strong and brave enough for all the fatigues of the day." " Strong and brave enough for everything but saying good-bye to you, mamma," replied VOL. I. B sweet Lizzie Anstruther, springing up in bed, and clasping her mother's neck with such vigour and impetuosity, that the good lady — grown stout and somewhat asthmatic of late years — had to beg laughingly for mercy. " But I don't promise you that I shan't break down utterly and commit all sorts of childish follies when that ceremony has to be gone through.

Oh, mamma, one need be very fond of the man one is to marry, to leave for his sake a home such as mine has been !" " Is that the conclusion my Lizzie has just come to ?" asked the mother, as she suffered her loving eyes to rest for a second or two admiringly upon the young, wistful face, up turned to her own. " No, mamma, I have felt it all along ; more now than ever, though. Sarah stayed talking to me a long while last night, and I could not get to sleep after she had left me. I am afraid dear Sarah will feel my going away very much ; it seems vain to sav so, but I have been thinking a great deal about it. If Kitty were a little older it would not matter — " " Kittie will never be to Sarah what you have been, my Lizzie ; but we must all learn to do without you, and to forgive the stranger who has invaded our quiet dwelling and stolen our sweetest home flower.

If only he makes you happy, and treats you as tenderly as we have done, I, for my part, shall gra ciously extend a pardon to him ; do you think he1 will care to take it, Lizzie darling ?" This was asked laughingly, but there was at the same time a look of something like anxiety in the mother's eye that did not escape her daughter's notice. " Mamma, you do not understand Frederick. Sarah prejudices you against him —not in tentionally, I know, dear girl ! but uncon sciously, and because, do what she will, her own dislike to him is always oozing out and influencing the minds of others on the sub ject. But wait, mamma, a little patiently — you and Sarah and all of you — and you shall B confess that your spoiled Lizzie has not been so wrong in her judgment ; you shall see and acknowledge that she is the happiest and most fortunate wife in the whole world."

" God grant it, my dearest ! but Lizzie love, I have never thought of calling your judgment in question, for the simple reason that I am sure no such faculty has been exer cised by you in this matter. When the heart speaks in favour of any individual, as yours from the very first has spoken in favour of Frederick Leonard, why then, my child, the judgment is never even appealed to. We, the lookers on, have judged this young man, Lizzie — you have only loved him." " And must love him for ever, mamma, come what may," exclaimed pretty Lizzie, rosy-cheeked now, and bending the fair head, with its coils of sunny hair, till it was hidden on her mother's ample shoulder ; '* but indeed, indeed, I feel my happiness, as far as Frederick is concerned, a perfectly assured thing. You all acknowledge that he loves me dearly."

" Yes, yes, my darling, it would be some thing more than strange if he did not, and my hope and prayer is, that this love will prove strong enough in the coming days to carry all before it. Another kiss, my Lizzie, for there is Sarah, I believe, knocking at your door, and as she is to be your sole tire woman I shall have to make immediate way for her. Don't forget, either of you, that our family breakfast, the last you will share with us, as Lizzie Anstruther, will be ready at halfpast eight. Now good-bye, dearest, though indeed I have not said half of what I came to say." As Mrs. Anstruther turned away reluctantly from the bed which contained her darling, a tall, dark, slightly-made girl, entered the room, and was at once enclosed in the impul sive Lizzie's embrace ; hugged, and squeezed, and kissed, to such an extent, that had not her powers of endurance been limitless, she must, like her mother, have cried aloud for mercy.

As it was, she only cried softly and quietly, and this — not for mercy — but because the dear sister whom she loved better than her own life was going to leave them all, and to be married to a man, whom she, Sarah An struther, — grown prematurely wise through much sorrow and some wrong — could not help regarding as totally unworthy of the jewel about to be committed to his care. " Lizzie, I have come to dress you," Sarah said, the moment she found herself relieved from the hugging ceremony, and while the tears were still glistening in her own dark eyes — "and you must make haste now, be cause I know your hair will take me a long time. Have you slept as well as you promised me you would, Lizzie ?" " Nearly as well, Sarah, and it would have been quite, if that pale, sad face of yours, had not haunted me so long after we parted.

Sarah, darling — " springing out of bed as she spoke, and beginning to unroll the masses of golden hair that her sister was to dress for the wedding — " Sarah, darling, I will never forgive you if you don't come to me in London the instant we return from the Continent. Think how delightful it will be to have you all to myself in a house of my own ! " Dear Lizzie !" " Ah, but ' dear Lizzie ' is no answer to my petition," said this spoiled child, jerking her head from under Sarah's hands, and looking up resolutely into her grave sister's face — ■" Do you mean to come to me in London or not, Sarah?" " Lizzie, we shall never get these tresses of yours arranged at this rate. Hold your head down again if you please, young lady, and keep it very still indeed — I will certainly visit Mrs. Frederick Leonard the moment Mr. Frederick Leonard invites me to do so — does that pin I have just put in hurt you, dear child?"

" No, but your suspicion of Frederick does. As if he would not be delighted to welcome any or all of my family to his house, Sarah ! Ah, how very little you know him." " Has he ever told you he would be delighted so to do, Lizzie?" After a sufficiently long pause for consideration of this question : " Perhaps not exactly in words, because we have never happened to discuss the matter; but of course in taking me into his heart, Frederick takesf into it (in a minor degree) all whom I love. If it had been otherwise, he would not have grown so dear to me that the thought of your mistrusting him causes me the bitterest pain, and casts a shadow even over this day, that ought to be wholly bright." " Lizzie, let us talk about something else, something on which we can entirely agree — do you know I have been thinking seriously dtiring the night of asking mamma to keep Kitty at home for me to educate.

I believe I could teach her as much as she is taught at school, and when you are gone my life will be so painfully devoid of interest." " An excellent idea, Sarah. Little Kit will be enchanted, and the occupation will do you a world of good. In the holidays you must both come — " Here Lizzie arrived at a full stop, and bit her pretty lips till they were redder than lips had any right to be. " I had forgotten," she explained presently, and then the little bead grew so tremulous with excitement that the coiffeure (fortunately a very Griselda for patience) had some difficulty in continuing her task. " My darling," Sarah whispered soothingly, " you do not need to be told that we will come to see you whenever circumstances per mit our doing so, only you must try to re member, Lizzie, that as a married woman you will have another will besides your own to consult — the happiest wives soon discover this, and, if they are wise, patiently submit to it."

" I am afraid I should not be wise," said Lizzie, in a low voice, and with a look that b was rarely seen on her pretty face, " if my husband's will kept any whom I love away from me; but don't let us fight with shadows, Sarah. Before another hour has passed you shall confess that you have done my poor Frederick cruel injustice — you shall receive from him a most pressing invitation to our house that is to be, in Mayfair." " Your hair is finished, Lizzie, and, I flatter myself, a complete success. . Do please come to the glass, and see how you like it. I assure you I am charmed with my own work." Lizzie would have preferred having her last observation responded to, but it was nearly a threadbare subject now, that of Sarah Anstruther's prejudice against Frederick Leonard, so the young bride elect contented herself with a little pout, and then rose and stood with her sister before the cheval glass at the other end of the room.

What a strange contrast there was between the two girls, and how strikingly it came out as the two faces so close together were reflected back from the mirror's polished sur face — one with her large, tender blue eyes, rose tinted skin, and golden hair, a fit emblem of sunshine, — the other with her dark, faded complexion, and prematurely saddened look, an equally just representation of shade. Lizzie Anstruther at eighteen was as bewitch ingly pretty, as captivating in face and form and manner, as it is possible for a mortal woman to be. Sarah Anstruther at twenty four was outwardly, and to strangers, nearly the reverse of all this. Her figure, indeed, would have been good, but for the stoop that had become habitual to it — her hair was black and glossy enough, and her eyes decidedly fine ; but every other feature as well as the complexion had been marred by that disease occasionally so fatal to feminine at tractions, and having in the present case left little hope of time even softening the cruel ravages that had been made.

At home they had grown accustomed to Sarah's changed appearance— to her ugliness (for that was the right term), and the innate worth of her character procured her, amongst her own people, as much love as if she had been the fairest of the "fair. But strangers could not help sometimes shrinking from her a little, and either from discovering this, or from some other cause, her manner towards them was cold and uninviting ; she disliked society ; she recoiled instinctively from all new faces, and in the whole neighbourhood there was not so unpopular an individual as poor Sarah Anstruther — Mrs. Anstruther's eldest daughter, and sister to that pretty bright-eyed Lizzie, who had won the coveted heart and hand of the fastidious, aristocratic, and wealthy Frederick Leonard. " Happy Lizzie, lucky girl !" sighed the young ladies, who had angled skilfully but in vain for the great matrimonial prize.

" Will she ever fully appreciate her marvel lous good fortune ?" Ah, who can say? who can answer that very pertinent question ? Looking at her as she stands now, fully arrayed in bridal white, with the flush of joy upon her fair young cheek, and the light of love kindling in her soft blue eye, one would see at least that she was entering the path before her with very vivid anticipations concerning its brightness. But the gates are yet fast closed, and all that is beyond she has received on trust or by hearsay only. No doubt the flowers grow in greater profusion than even her fond imagina tion has painted, along that golden pathway ; no doubt it is warmer and brighter than even he who is to tread it with her has assured her it will be. But wait till she has fairly got on the other side of the gates — wait till she has walked only a few hours in the heat of the day, along the road that shines so brilliantly in the distance, and then ask sweet Lizzie Anstruther, and get a truthful answer if you can, whether she fully appreciates the mar vellous good fortune that she alone has been happy enough to secure.

Chapter II. Lizzie's Day Dreams

The beams of that bright May morning sun danced merrily upon the walls, and lighted up every corner of the pleasant breakfast parlour where Mrs. Anstruther and her youngest daughter sat waiting the coming down of the two girls with whom we have just been lin gering. " What a time they are," said restless Miss Kitty, a small fair child of about twelve years old. " I want my breakfast, mamma, and then I want to be dressed myself. Lucy thinks I shall look very nice and smart in my new pink frock and white bonnet — she says I ought to have been one of Lizzie's bridesmaids, that sisters always are, little or big. Why wasn't I, mamma?" " I am afraid Lucy talks a great deal of nonsense to you, Kitty," replied mamma, rather absently, for her eyes were fixed on the door through which her darling was presently to enter, and her ear was strained to catch the first sound of the bride's light footstep on the stairs.

" But why wasn't I, mamma ?" repeated the child, who was rather addicted to perse vere with her questions — " I should like so much to have been a bridesmaid as well as the Miss Clares. Did you think me too little?" " No, Kitty, I did not think about you in this matter at all. As Sarah declined acting for her sister, it would never have done to have had you. The Clares are Mr. Leonard's friends." " I know that, but some people have lots of bridesmaids. I wonder why Sarah wouldn't be one. Lucy and the other servants don't think it was her fault. I heard every word they said about it." "Oh, Kitty, Kitty, you must get out of talking and listening to the servants, as you do, or I shall be seriously displeased with you, and perhaps send Lucy quite away. What fresh nonsense have you heard now ?"

Mrs. Anstruther was one of the last women in the world to be interested in the gossip of the servants' hall, but she had her own reasons for wishing to be informed of their remarks on this occasion. And little Miss Kitty, nothing loth to find herself attended to at last, eagerly continued — " Well, they said Sarah couldn't be one of Lizzie's bridesmaids because she was so plain, and Mr. Leonard couldn't bear ugly faces near him. They knew it, because Mrs. Clare had wanted to recommend the daughter of one of her old servants as a lady's maid for Lizzie, and when he heard about it he asked if the girl was pretty, and they said she wasn't at all, and so he wouldn't let Mrs. Clare speak about her to Lizzie. I don't think 1 should like to be going to be married to Mr. Leonard, should you, mamma?"

" No," replied Mrs. Anstruther ; but her tone was abrupt and expressive of some in ward irritation or annoyance that for the moment silenced Kitty, though, not believing herself to be the offender, a very knowing look settled on the little lady's face, as she watched her mother pacing up and down the room in as restless a mood as her own had lately been. " Kitty !" " Yes, mamma." " Let nothing ever tempt you to repeat to Sarah such impertinent remarks about her as you have just repeated to me ; and the next time you hear anything of the same sort, accidentally or otherwise, come and tell me at once. I would change every servant in the house rather than have dear Sarah's feelings wounded." "Very well, mamma; but I think Mr. Leonard is worse than the servants. Why does Lizzie like him so much?"

" Don't talk about Mr. Leonard," exclaimed the mother with a sudden flash of the eye, which proved that Kitty had approached the real source of her excitement. " Little girls like you cannot be any judges of persons more than double your age. Sit down now, Kitty, and be quiet ; I hear your sisters coming." After Lizzie had been duly admired and caressed by the two members of the family who now saw her for the first time in her wedding finery, they all took their places at the breakfast table, each trying to set an example of cheerfulness, and each, with the exception of giddy little Kittie, signally failing in the attempt. Under the most favourable circumstances it is hard to lose from a small home circle the one who has been its brightest light and its fairest ornament, but it becomes doubly, trebly hard when there is a doubt on the minds of those who are left, concerning the worthiness of the individual to Avhose keeping is committed the future happiness of the darling they are losing.

Frederick Leonard might be a great match, a rara avis, a paragon of all perfection in the eyes of the world at large, as well as in the estimation of the tender-hearted, enthusiastic girl he had chosen ; but he had certainly not succeeded in winning even a moderate share of esteem from his young bride's relatives, to whom, therefore, Lizzie's wedding day could not possibly be a joyous occasion. Very soon after the quiet family breakfast, the guests who were to accompany the bridal party to the church began to arrive. Mrs. Anstruther received them in the drawing room, while Sarah and Kitty went through the duties of their own adornment, and Lizzy (who had nothing more to do, and felt no inclination to be stared at before her time) wandered somewhat restlessly about the de serted rooms of her old home, thinking it odd that any grains of sadness should be found lurking in the sparkling cup which this day of all days it was her undoubted right and privilege to drink.

But somehow there was an uncomfortable, unsettled look about all the house this morning. The rooms not immediately re quired for the entertainment in connection with the wedding, had been left unswept and undusted; even the windows remaining closed and curtained as they had been the night before. Then the long passages, on the upper story, were almost blockaded by trunks of every shape and size — the bride's luggage ; some of which was to go with her, on her wedding tour, and the rest to be sent down straight to Pengarthen Hall, Mr. Leonard's family seat in Cornwall. Lizzie stood contemplating this formidable array of personal property for several minutes with a very thoughtful, sober look upon her girlish face. Till now she had never owned a fiftieth part of the treasures of various kinds those strapped and corded boxes contained.

From the moment her wedding day had been fixed, presents had showered in upon her from all quarters — chiefly from her own relaives and friends, because Mr. Leonard had no very near connections surviving ; in the way of family ties only a stepmother, his father's widow, who resided at Pengarthen Hall, and had the privilege of continuing to do so, if she wished it, for the term of her life. Fred erick had not inspired Lizzie with a favourable opinion of this lady, and the young bride was consequently glad when she found that Mrs. Leonard, though duly apprised of the coming nuptials, sent her nothing, and declined the invitation to be present at the wedding. " Just like her," Frederick had candidly acknowledged — " a mean, stingy, hypocri tical, unfeeling old dowager" — (those were the names he called her) — and it was no wonder that, seeing everything with his eves, Lizzie should anticipate with anything but pleasure those months in every year which she would have to spend at Pengarthen Hall, with Mrs. Leonard — dowager.

But standing now in wrapt contemplation of her many new acquisitions, Lizzie is not thinking of her husband's obnoxious step mother at all — she is thinking of herself as a bride, and of other girls whom she has known, and who have been brides before her. She is recalling the vivid delight with which many of these girls — marrying too for what they called love — had spoken of their presents, their trousseau, their wedding para phernalia generally ; and Lizzie is wondering why, to her, these things are so wholly, en tirely indifferent. It is true she has, all her life, had every positive want abundantly sup plied — she has dwelt in a home of love and plenty ; but still, as an unmarried girl, she has never even dreamt of owning the rich dresses, the costly shawls, the rare and shin ing jewels that lie hid now in those unsus picious-looking boxes.

And she knows she would have been as happy and felt herself as blest this day had she been going forth to her husband's home with nothing finer or more recherche than her old, discarded girlish wardrobe, which has been made over, since yesterday, without reserve, to little Miss Kitty ; and which that young lady is, upon the whole, rather pleased with. Lizzie has looked so pretty and so nice in all these things that her younger sister, who promises greatly to re semble her, thinks it not improbable that she may look nice and pretty in them too. A warm 'flush is on the bride's fair face as, at length, she turns from the ostentatious dis play of her recently-acquired property, and walks slowly down another corridor leading to some small and, at present, unused bed rooms. Probably she has arrived at a definite conclusion in reference to her sub lime indifference to all those fine things which hundreds of girls would have envied her, and possibly Mr. Frederick Leonard and the place he holds in his Lizzie's heart may not be wholly unconnected with the solution of the mystery.

Before the closed door of one of the rooms at the end of the passage she has just come down, Lizzie again stands still, and appears to be thinking intently. She knows that door is locked, has been locked for nearly a twelve month, during which period she has not once felt any special desire to enter it — but things are changed now ; she is going to leave her home, as her home, for ever. Mother, sisters, brother, all will henceforth be some thing different to her from what they have hitherto been — not less dear, perhaps, but still not just the same. And who could tell whether she should ever see poor Willie, good, tender-hearted, darling Willie again — the only brother, the youngest except Kitty, the sick one of the family, who, after two years of acute suffering, had been ordered a long sea voyage as the most probable, if not the only likely means of restoring, to any degree of vigour, a health that had always been extremely delicate.

So this is no mysterious, blue-beard chamber before which Lizzie stands, but only the bed room of William Anstruther, that has never been entered since he went away on that long, doubtful voyage, whose perils the fond mother magnifies a thousand fold, and whose capabilities of giving him back his loststrength she mistrusts in her heart of hearts. If she did not, why should she lock up the room he had last slept in, as we sometimes lock up the rooms of the beloved dead ; and why should she shrink from speaking in the family circle of his return amongst them, and turn pale whenever the name of Willie, any Willie, accidentally fell upon her ear ? It was of all this, and much more in con nection with it, that Lizzie was thinking as she paused in her restless wanderings before the door of her brother's room, and wished that she could have seen the inside of it just once more.

She did not indeed believe that vol. I. c his case was hopeless (youth knows better than to anticipate evil), but there was this morning such an overflowing tide of tenderness in her heart towards all the dear ones she was leaving, that she wanted to carry away with her some little stolen relic of each one,which should serve to bring them here after more vividly before her, than all their separate gifts, freely and lovingly bestowed would be able to do. Willie knew nothing of this marriage as yet, and therefore from him there was not even a gift to bear to the new home where the old faces would cease to be familiar. Lizzie must content herself with a few well-worn letters, written on his voyage out to Australia, and with a tiny sprig plucked from a tree he had planted in the flower gar den just before his long illness.

But a few months more, and he would be back in his own country, and then he should come and stay with her at Pengarthen Hall, and she would nurse and pet him, this dear, dear brother, oh, so tenderly ! And Frederick would love him for her sake, and join with her in devising schemes for his amusement and — " You naughty, naughty child ! I have been all over the house in search of you. I was beginning to be quite alarmed, and to think unpleasantly of Ginevra and the old oak chest. Lizzie darling, come and have your veil on. They are all ready and waiting for you." " Sarah, how you startled me. I had really no idea it was so late. I have been wander ing about alone, and dreaming." Poor child ! it might have been well could some of her innocent dreams have lasted a little longer. c

Chapter III. At The Wedding And After

The bridal party had returned from church amidst a clash of joyous bells that, however musical, gave one or two of the elder ladies a nervous headache, and certainly helped to increase the heartache that poor Sarah An struther had all the morning been suffering from. They rang out so cheerily and de fiantly, those noisy marriage bells, as if they were saying, " You see the deed is done, and all your croaking and all your fears can never, never undo it." The young men declared the ringers were " going it" in "jolly style," and approved highly of the uproar ; and the young ladies whispered to each other that there was always something saddening to their minds in the sound of marriage bells, and that very sweet as they were, it would be more agreeable to their feelings when they had finished ringing.