From this day forward Jane’s mind, fragile as it naturally was, appeared to bend at once under the double burden of Osborne’s approaching death, and his apprehended treachery; for wherever the heart is found to choose between two contingent evils, it is also by the very constitution of our nature compelled to bear the penalty of both, until its gloomy choice is made.  At present Jane was not certain whether Osborne’s absence and neglect were occasioned by ill health or faithlessness; and until she knew this the double dread fell, as we said, with proportionate misery upon her spirit.

Bitterly, indeed, did William regret the words in which he desired her “to suppose that Charles Osborne was not sick.”  Mr. Sinclair himself saw the error, but unhappily too late to prevent the suspicion from entering into an imagination already overwrought and disordered.

Hitherto, however, it was difficult, if not impossible, out of her own family, to notice in her manner or conversation the workings of a mind partially unsettled by a passion which her constitutional melancholy darkened by its own gloomy creations.  To strangers she talked rationally, and with her usual grace and perspicuity, but every one observed that her cheerfulness was gone, and the current report went, by whatever means it got abroad, that Jane Sinclair’s heart was broken—­that Charles Osborne proved faithless—­and that the beautiful Fawn of Springvale was subject to occasional derangement.

In the meantime Osborne was silent both to his father and to her, and as time advanced the mood of her mind became too seriously unhappy and alarming to justify any further patience on the part either of his family or Mr. Sinclair’s.  It was consequently settled that Mr. Osborne should set out for Bath, and compel his son’s return, under the hope that a timely interview might restore the deserted girl to a better state of mind, and reproduce in his heart that affection which appeared to have either slumbered or died.  With a brow of care the excellent man departed, for in addition to the concern which he felt for the calamity of Jane Sinclair and Charles’s honor, he also experienced all the anxiety natural to an affectionate father, ignorant of the situation in which he might find an only son, who up to that period had been, and justly too, inexpressibly dear to him.

His absence, however, was soon discovered by Jane, who now began to give many proofs of that address with which unsettled persons can manage to gain a point or extract a secret, when either in their own opinion is considered essential to their gratification.  Every member of her own family now became subjected to her vigilance; every word they spoke was heard with suspicion, and received as if it possessed a double meaning.  On more than one occasion she was caught in the attitude of a listener, and frequently placed herself in such a position when sitting with her relations at home, as enabled her to watch their motions in the glass, when they supposed her engaged in some melancholy abstraction.