admit of any other but solitary indulgence.  If living, there was a mystery connected with her parents, a mystery evidently of a painful character, and one which it was a prime object with her mother to conceal and to suppress.  Could Venetia, then, in defiance of that mother, that fond devoted mother, that mother who had watched through long days and long nights over her sick bed, and who now, without a murmur, was a prisoner to this very room, only to comfort and console her child:  could Venetia take any step which might occasion this matchless parent even a transient pang?  No; it was impossible.  To her mother she could never speak.  And yet, to remain enveloped in the present mystery, she was sensible, was equally insufferable.  All she asked, all she wanted to know, was he alive?  If he were alive, then, although she could not see him, though she might never see him, she could exist upon his idea; she could conjure up romances of future existence with him; she could live upon the fond hope of some day calling him father, and receiving from his hands the fervid blessing he had already breathed to her in song.

In the meantime her remaining parent commanded all her affections.  Even if he were no more, blessed was her lot with such a mother!  Lady Annabel seemed only to exist to attend upon her daughter.  No lover ever watched with such devotion the wants or even the caprices of his mistress.  A thousand times every day Venetia found herself expressing her fondness and her gratitude.  It seemed that the late dreadful contingency of losing her daughter had developed in Lady Annabel’s heart even additional powers of maternal devotion; and Venetia, the fond and grateful Venetia, ignorant of the strange past, which she believed she so perfectly comprehended, returned thanks to Heaven that her mother was at least spared the mortification of knowing that her daughter, in her absence, had surreptitiously invaded the sanctuary of her secret sorrow.

CHAPTER X.

When Venetia had so far recovered that, leaning on her mother’s arm, she could resume her walks upon the terrace, Doctor Masham persuaded his friends, as a slight and not unpleasant change of scene, to pay him a visit at Marringhurst.  Since the chamber scene, indeed, Lady Annabel’s tie to Cherbury was much weakened.  There were certain feelings of pain, and fear, and mortification, now associated with that place which she could not bear to dwell upon, and which greatly balanced those sentiments of refuge and repose, of peace and love, with which the old hall, in her mind, was heretofore connected.  Venetia ever adopted the slightest intimations of a wish on the part of her mother, and so she readily agreed to fall into the arrangement.