Page:Peterson's Magazine 1842, Volume I.pdf/388

. WORLD OF FASHION.

THE RETURN.

BY PERCIE H. SELTON.

THE summer sun was sinking in the west, purpling the embattled clouds around, and shooting long lines of light across the green hills, as a lady, attended by a cavalier, stepped forth on the terrace of Langly Manor, a noble edifice in one of the most beautiful counties of England. The sunset scene arrested their attention, and they paused to gaze on the landscape. Far away before them rolled a succession of undulating hills, spotted with woods, lanes, farms, villages, and lordly mansions, all bathed in the mellow radiance of the declining luminary. A silvery river, winding in and out among the hills, skirted the distant landscape, while immediately beyond a bold ridge towered up against the empurpled sky. Above this ridge lay piles of massy clouds, heaped one above another, and tinged with every shade of crimson, gold and purple, until, at length, toward the zenith, they faded into a pale apple green.

" How glorious !" exclaimed the lady.

"Beautiful indeed," said her attendant, " this scene reminds me of Italy. It is not often we have such a sunset in our foggy clime."

A silence of some minutes ensued, during which each gazed on the landscape, wrapt in thought. While they are thus engaged let us describe them.

The cavalier was a man of noble aspect, though a shade of melancholy hung over his countenance, and seemed illy to accord with the rich dress in which it was the fashion of that day for gentlemen of birth to be attired. His face was strikingly handsome, with finely cut features, and an eye of extraordinary beauty, though withal tinged with sadness. His hair fell in flowing ringlets down his neck and over the deep lace collar which adorned his throat and shoulders. He wore the mantle then in common use among the gallants of the day, and had throughout the air of a wealthy and high born cavalier. But all peculiarities in his dress were forgotten when you came to regard his face, but especially when that prevailing expression of melancholy forced itself on you.

His companion was more beautiful than imagination can conceive or pen describe. Tall and queenly in her person, with black, majestic eyes, and tresses that were darker than the darkest midnight, she seemed one born to captivate all observers. Her dress was a boddice of dark velvet, with a skirt of white satin, while a mantle that an empress might have been proud to wear, fell in graceful folds from her shoulders. Her exquisitely small hands and feet betokened her high lineage quite as much as the eagle glance of her eyes, and her proud majestic port. She seemed, indeed, a being above the ordinary rank of mortals, one who might have personated a Juno under the old mythology-one who would deign to love only a monarch and scarcely him. She lingered long gazing on the landscape, but at length turned away and began to trail a vine around a gigantic urn which stood on the balustrade. She had been occupied in this feminine employment some time before the cavalier spoke, though he looked furtively at her more than once, and seemed wishing to say something which he yet was half afraid to utter. At length, suddenly turning from the landscape, he approached the lady, and standing a pace or two behind her, said,

" Kate !"

The lady turned with a look of enquiry on her countenance. "Kate," he began again, and then stopped, abashed by the proud, steady look of her majestic eyes. "Kate," he repeated a third time, not daring to lift his gaze to hers, "hear me for a few minutes, and let me be free from this horrible suspense. I love you. I have long loved you, but I fear hopelessly. There is that in your haughty port, in your unembarrassed air which convinces me you love me not. But yet, hopeless as I know my case to be, like the criminal at the scaffold, it is a relief to me to unburthen myself to you. Turn not away, dear lady Katharine. If you cannot love, do not hate, but oh ! pity me. God grant that you may never know the pangs of unrequited love." The lady was touched. A tear gathered into her eye, and she suffered her companion to retain the hand which he had taken. But there was no encouragement in her emotion. Her demeanor was only the sympathy of one noble heart for another, whose distress it grieves at, but cannot redress. "Edward," she said at length, " you pain me- and oh ! would that I could return your love. I know your heart is noble and true-I know that your love is a prize for which the haughtiest of my sex might strive, and had we met under other circumstances I might have loved you, loved you as you deserved, loved you with a love which would have daily grown stronger until 99 death"Bless you ! bless you !" said the cavalier affected to tears. His companion resumed sadly. "But it must not be. Long before you returned I had lost my heart, and become the affianced bride of Edward Percy. This I have never told you before, and for that silence I now blame myself. But it was agreed that our engagement should remain a secret until he returned from his travels, and I did not, therefore, feel justified in speaking of it until now. When I tell you that I love him with all the ardor of a first passion, with all the depth of which I am capable, you will feel that I hear with pain your declaration, because I can appreciate the agony of a disappointment. Believe me, it cuts me to the very heart to hear your words.