sometimes gently hint, with a sigh, how essential his late friend the General had considered early male superintendence, in forming the character and habits of a boy—of a future soldier, especially. "It is a pity you could not get over very natural prejudices, Lady Osborne, and make, at least for your boy's sake, the acquaintance of our American neighbour."
When her blunt adviser had left her, Mabel, pursuing the train of thought which he had conjured up, fell into a reverie, the subject of which, of course, was the unvarying kindness and lofty character of him whose loss she so truly still deplored. The evening was wet and stormy, the boy, forbidden to enjoy it out of doors, had gone early to bed ; and his mother, unable to settle to any of her ordinary occupations, bethought her of an often deferred task, to which now, however, she felt unaccountably prompted to devote her solitary hours; viz., the opening of a heavy foreign wood escritoire belonging to the late Sir Jasper; which, packed up with other bulky articles by the lawyer who superintended the hurried removal from B——, had, with these, been deposited in the first instance at the Hall, and only found its way with the portraits, and other personals, quite lately, to the Hollies.
Had it been by her in the early times of her bereavement, to open and look over the treasures in the handwriting of her lost one, which it might possibly contain, would have seemed easy and natural; nay, it had even been soothing to feelings concentrated on one subject, and incapable of admitting any other. But when time has invested with a sort of awful solemnity the relics it would once have been luxury to handle and weep over, nature shrinks from reopening the scarce cicatrized wound, and rifling, with world-stained hands, the repositories of departed affection. An irresistible impulse, however, now prompted Mabel to conquer this idle repugnance, and interrogate on topics, perhaps of vital importance, to her boy, the hitherto unconsulted oracle.
The key habitually used by the owner had somehow or other been mislaid, and Mabel recollected that while force had been necessary to get at some of the other packages, her mind had revolted from the idea of breaking open her husband's private escritoire. Still disinclined to such a mode of attaining her object (one unattainable, had she wished it, till the following day), she began that idle desultory review of her own keys which, on such occasions is resorted to, with slight hope, and less chance of success.
A delicate little Bramah, with whose precise appearance she was not familiar, struck her as likely to suit the lock. But when on being applied it not only fitted the intricate wards, but had evidently been made for them, it flashed on her grateful recollection that on purchasing the desk, within a few months of their happy marriage, her husband, with the chivalrous gallantry of his nature, had presented his wife with the duplicate key; which, had she been endowed with the aggregate curiosity of Blue Beard's seven wives, that very confidence would have precluded her from using.
This delicate touch of tender trustfulness did not tend to nerve her hand while unlocking, with almost a feeling of sacrilege, the escritoire, which she now recollected had been hastily closed and removed from the invalid's bed on a sudden attack of faintness; and though once or twice afterwards eagerly asked for, the request, as implying undue exertion, had been gently evaded.
It was, therefore, probably the owner's last earthly sentiments and wishes, which his faltering hands had imperfectly sought to trace ; and by them, before going further, Mabel had resolved, nay, even prayed, to be guided. This resolution was not the less fervently reiterated, that the first object which met her eye on opening the desk was her own picture — a lovely, full-length miniature — done in the palmy days of that well-nigh superseded art, by the first artist of the day, in all the bloom of youth and glow of early animation at the age of nineteen — the year in which Cecil Cunlifife's long vacation had been passed at the Hall. The original oil painting from which it was taken had been done for her father; and her brother (whose projected grand tour would, had it taken place, have separated him from his family) had stipulated for a miniature copy, all to himself, of his darling sister.
Thus doubly endeared to memory as the sole heirloom of one lost loved one, it had been transferred, on his death, to Sir Jasper, in whose eyes it had thus acquired an enhanced value ; while, to the sad survivor of both, it attained a preciousness she little thought any "counterfeit presentment" of herself could ever acquire. She put it, however, hastily aside, as she did a long fair tress of her still redundant hair, which lay beside the picture, and which she remembered had been cut off on receiving the latter by her husband, with the feint of jealousy (assumed to conceal tenderer feelings, implied in his saying— "this, at least, will be my very own!"
