Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 01

								

me--yes, shun me, for days together--if--if I attempt to draw her to the
past?  Is there a secret?  If so, am I not old enough to know it?"
Evelyn spoke quickly and nervously, and with quivering lips.  Aubrey took
her hand, and pressing it, said, after a little pause,--
"Evelyn, this is the first time you have ever thus spoken to me.  Has
anything chanced to arouse your--shall I call it curiosity, or shall I
call it the mortified pride of affection?"
"And you, too, aye harsh; you blame me!  No, it is true that I have not
thus spoken to you before; but I have long, long thought with grief that
I was insufficient to my mother's happiness,--I who love her so dearly.
And now, since Mrs. Leslie has been here, I find her conversing with this
comparative stranger so much more confidentially than with me.  When I
come in unexpectedly, they cease their conference, as if I were not
worthy to share it; and--and oh, if I could but make you understand that
all I desire is that my mother should love me and know me and trust me--"
"Evelyn," said the curate, coldly, "you love your mother, and justly; a
kinder and a gentler heart than hers does not beat in a human breast.
Her first wish in life is for your happiness and welfare.  You ask for
confidence, but why not confide in her; why not believe her actuated by
the best and the tenderest motives; why not leave it to her discretion to
reveal to you any secret grief, if such there be, that preys upon her;
why add to that grief by any selfish indulgence of over-susceptibility in
yourself?  My dear pupil, you are yet almost a child; and they who have
sorrowed may well be reluctant to sadden with a melancholy confidence
those to whom sorrow is yet unknown.  This much, at least, I may tell
you,--for this much she does not seek to conceal,--that Lady Vargrave was
early inured to trials from which you, more happy, have been saved.  She
speaks not to you of her relations, for she has none left on earth.  And
after her marriage with your benefactor, Evelyn, perhaps it seemed to her
a matter of principle to banish all vain regret, all remembrance if
possible, of an earlier tie."
"My poor, poor mother!  Oh, yes, you are right; forgive me.  She yet
mourns, perhaps, my father, whom I never saw, whom I feel, as it were,
tacitly forbid to name,--you did not know him?"
"Him!--whom?"
"My father, my mother's first husband."
"No."
"But I am sure I could not have loved him so well as my benefactor, my
real and second father, who is now dead and gone.  Oh, how well I
remember him,--how fondly!"  Here Evelyn stopped and burst into tears.
"You do right to remember him thus; to love and revere his memory,--a
father indeed he was to you.  But now, Evelyn, my own dear child, hear
me.  Respect the silent heart of your mother; let her not think that her
misfortunes, whatever they may be, can cast a shadow over you,--you, her
last hope and blessing.  Rather than seek to open the old wounds, suffer