Page:Mildred Pemberton.pdf/4

 time, told that suffering and sorrow had preceded the quiet of the cloister. It was with strange feelings that Mildred laid down on the little pallet appointed for her. The room was small and lofty, apparently partitioned off from one of larger size, for the height was quite disproportionate, and the walls were covered with huge frescos, containing passages from the Holy Scriptures; these were abruptly terminated by a dark, carved wainscoting, that stretched on one side. The apartment was singularly gloomy, and the subject of the fresco served anything but to relieve it—it represented the Murder of the Innocents. Not a horror was spared; here a pale, wild-looking woman struggled, but vainly, with the ruffian who could only reach her child through herself; another was flying, but the infant in her arms wore the livid hues of death. To the left a female, whose high and Jewish but handsome features were well suited to the expression of a Judith or a Jared—stood with her arm raised, and her mouth convulsed with the blending of agony and prophecy—apparently in the act of cursing; but the most touching figure of all was a woman kneeling by the bodies of two children, twisted in each other's arms and pierced by the same blow. There was such a fixed look of intense despair in the large tearless eyes, such a stupidity of horror in the set and rigid face—as if every consciousness was gone but that of horror; the eyes of Mildred were riveted upon it. The thought of how strong a parent's affection must be arose in her mind, and at that moment she reproached herself for leaving her father; then the terror of his anger, mingled with tenderness for her lover, combatted her regret. "Oh! that my mother,"—exclaimed she, throwing herself on the rude pallet below, "had lived to counsel and to love me!" And the image of that pale lady seated lonely in her dressing-room, to which she was confined for months before she died, hardened Mildred's heart against her father. She was a little creature of some six years old when Lady Pemberton died; but her wan and lovely countenance, her sweet sad voice, the tears that rose so often unbidden to her faint blue eyes, were to her child as things of yesterday. At length she slept; but the tears were yet glittering on her long eye lashes when the first rosy gleams of day-break awakened her: she started with that half recollection which attends our first confused arousing—she wondered where she was—the events of the preceding night flashed upon her—she trembled as she thought of the irrevocable step she had taken. The cross was hung at the foot of her pallet, and she flung herself on her knees before it, and a more fervent and unselfish prayer never yet arose to that heaven, where alone is pity and pardon. Her devotions over, she approached the window, and the calm and lovely scene gave its own cheerfulness: the crimson blush of the daybreak was melting around the spires that gleamed on high, and long, soft shadows fell from the ilex and cypress, whose huge size attested the long seclusion of the convent garden. The distant murmur of the little fountain was only broken by the rustle of the birds amid the leaves, and the early chirp of the cicada in the long grass beneath: Mildred felt soothed and cheered, it is so impossible for youth to resist the influence of morning. Sir Henry was wild with rage when he heard of his daughter's flight. He challenged the Count, who refused to meet the father of his future