‘My love!’ said Lady Annabel, one day to her daughter, ’do you think you could go out?  The physicians think it of great importance that you should attempt to exert yourself, however slightly.’

’Dear mother, if anything could annoy me from your lips, it would be to hear you quote these physicians,’ said Venetia.  ’Their daily presence and inquiries irritate me.  Let me be at peace.  I wish to see no one but you.’

‘But Venetia,’ said Lady Annabel, in a voice of great emotion, ‘Venetia—­,’ and here she paused; ‘think of my anxiety.’

’Dear mother, it would be ungrateful for me ever to forget that.  But you, and you alone, know that my state, whatever it may be, and to whatever it may be I am reconciled, is not produced by causes over which these physicians have any control, over which no one has control—­now,’ added Venetia, in a tone of great mournfulness.

For here we must remark that so inexperienced was Venetia in the feelings of others, and so completely did she judge of the strength and purity of their emotions from her own, that reflection, since the terrible adventure of Rovigo, had only convinced her that it was no longer in her mother’s power to unite herself again with her other parent.  She had taught herself to look upon her father’s burst of feeling towards Lady Annabel as the momentary and inevitable result of a meeting so unexpected and overpowering, but she did not doubt that the stranger whose presence had ultimately so fatally clouded that interview of promise, possessed claims upon Marmion Herbert which he would neither break, nor, upon reflection, be desirous to question.  It was then the conviction that a reconciliation between her parents was now impossible, in which her despair originated, and she pictured to herself her father once more at Arqua disturbed, perhaps, for a day or two, as he naturally must be, by an interview so sudden and so harassing; shedding a tear, perhaps, in secret to the wife whom he had injured, and the child whom he had scarcely seen; but relapsing, alike from the force of habit and inclination, into those previous and confirmed feelings, under whose influence, she was herself a witness, his life had been so serene, and even so laudable.  She was confirmed in these opinions by the circumstance of their never having heard since from him.  Placed in his situation, if indeed an irresistible influence were not controlling him, would he have hesitated for a moment to have prevented even their departure, or to have pursued them; to have sought at any rate some means of communicating with them?  He was plainly reconciled to his present position, and felt that under these circumstances silence on his part was alike kindest and most discreet.  Venetia had ceased, therefore, to question the justice or the expediency, or even the abstract propriety, of her mother’s conduct.  She viewed their condition now as the result of stern necessity.  She pitied her mother, and for herself she had no hope.