Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 05

								

"Dearest Caroline!" said the silver voice of Evelyn, "for Heaven's sake,
do not thus wantonly resolve on your own unhappiness!  You wrong
yourself, Caroline! you do, indeed! You are not the vain ambitious
character you affect to be!  Ah, what is it you require?  Wealth?  Are
you not my friend; am I not rich enough for both?  Rank?  What can it
give you to compensate for the misery of a union without love?  Pray,
forgive me for speaking thus.  Do not think me presumptuous, or romantic;
but, indeed, indeed, I know from my own heart what yours must undergo!"
Caroline pressed her friend's hand with emotion.
"You are a bad comforter, Evelyn.  My mother, my father, will preach a
very different doctrine.  I am foolish, indeed, to be so sad in obtaining
the very object I have sought!  Poor Doltimore! he little knows the
nature, the feelings of her whom he thinks he has made the happiest of
her sex; he little knows--"  Caroline paused, turned pale as death, and
then went rapidly on, "but you, Evelyn, you will meet the same fate; we
shall bear it together."
"No! no! do not think so!  Where I give my hand, there shall I give my
heart."
At this time Maltravers half rose, and sighed audibly.
"Hush!" said Caroline, in alarm.  At the same moment, the whist-table
broke up, and Cleveland approached Maltravers.
"I am at your service," said he; "I know you will not stay the supper.
You will find me in the next room; I am just going to speak to Lord
Saxingham."  The gallant old gentleman then paid a compliment to the
young ladies, and walked away.
"So you too are a deserter from the ballroom!" said Miss Merton to
Maltravers as she rose.
"I am not very well; but do not let me frighten you away."
"Oh, no!  I hear the music; it is the last quadrille before supper: and
here is my fortunate partner looking for me."
"I have been everywhere in search of you," said Lord Doltimore, in an
accent of tender reproach: "come, we are almost too late now."
Caroline put her arm into Lord Doltimore's, who hurried her into the
ballroom.
Miss Cameron looked irresolute whether or not to follow, when Maltravers
seated himself beside her; and the paleness of his brow, and something
that bespoke pain in the compressed lip, went at once to her heart.  In
her childlike tenderness, she would have given worlds for the sister's
privilege of sympathy and soothing.  The room was now deserted; they were
alone.
The words that he had overheard from Evelyn's lips, "Where I shall give
my hand, there shall I give my heart," Maltravers interpreted but in one
sense,--"she loved her betrothed;" and strange as it may seem, at that
thought, which put the last seal upon his fate, selfish anguish was less
felt than deep compassion.  So young, so courted, so tempted as she must
be--and with such a protector!--the cold, the unsympathizing, the
heartless Vargrave!  She, too, whose feelings, so warm, ever trembled on
her lip and eye.  Oh! when she awoke from her dream, and knew whom she