He was gone. No other parting sign was given; and he, who had now added one more sin to the already dark catalogue of his offences, the purchase of his freedom from a dreaded evil by a lie, was left darkling and alone.
As those two had met, so they parted--those two men whom our readers may already have divined were brothers.
True, earnest sorrows; rooted miseries; .... vexations, ripe and blown, Sure-footed griefs; solid calamities; Plain demonstrations, evident and clear, Touching their proofs e'en from the very bone-- These are the sorrows here.
More than six and thirty years have passed since Mr. Trevor, the present proprietor of Montrevor, had taken to himself a wife, young, lovely, of good family, and endowed with much excellence, both of mind and disposition.
Miss Mainwaring had consented, in obedience to her parents' wishes, to bestow her hand upon this rich and handsome suitor, death having deprived her of the first object of her young affections.
Of a gentle and confiding disposition, she had not doubted but that one so pleasing and gentlemanly in his manners and demeanour in society, so assiduous and devoted in his attentions during courtship, would prove an amiable, affectionate husband; and that in resigning her future destiny into his hands, she was securing to herself that calm happiness to which, (the first bright dreams of youth mellowed and subdued), she alone aspired.
Her trust was deceived--her hopes disappointed; too soon was it revealed to her sick heart that Henry Trevor, the courteous and agreeable member of society, was not the same Henry Trevor of domestic life; that Henry Trevor the lover, was a very different person to Henry Trevor the husband; that she had been wedded--for her beauty?--no; woman's natural vanity might have forgiven that:--for her fortune? no; that was comparatively insignificant to count much, even in the close calculations of him, into whose well-stored coffers it was carelessly flung:--for her gentle virtues, her superior qualities of mind?--no,--no abstract love of these had had their part in her lover's choice; but because in the submissive spirit--in the mild and gentle character of her he saw as one
he had thought to find a fitting subject for his purpose and his will--one easy to be bent, moulded, crushed, if it were necessary, into the slave and minister of his favourite lust--his ruling passion--his besetting sin--the grasping, covetous, all-devouring love of money!