Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No.306

Years passed on, and the old mouldering hall of the Drelincourts still reposed amid its dark pine-woods – unchanged without: within, all was not as it had been. The haughty and beautiful Blanch Drelincourt had married, without the knowledge of her friends, a person who supposed her to be the daughter of a wealthy man, and that a fortune must be forthcoming. He was undeceived too late, and found that he had to support a vain and penniless wife with an increasing family. Henry Drelincourt's education had been an expensive one, and his ruinous and profligate habits were more expensive still. It seemed clear to every one that the debts and disgrace so rapidly accumulating would leave to the heir of Drelincourt little more than the name. This young man came to pass a few weeks at his father's, to recruit his health, which had been shattered by a course of dissipation and recklessness. His sister Laura was now his only companion; and frivolous and unamiable as Laura Drelincourt was, she possessed one redeeming point, rendering her less selfish and domineering; and this was, a devoted affection for her brother.

She was never wearied of tending and studying his whims and caprices, which were not a few; and when an alarming infectious fever made its appearance in the village, and from thence spread to the hall – her brother and father being simultaneously attacked – Laura fearlessly devoted herself to the duties required in her brother's sick chamber; Mrs Drelincourt's whole time and attention being taken up with her husband. Mr Drelincourt fell the first victim to the ravages of the fearful epidemic, while death among the retainers was busy in several cases. Henry was only pronounced out of danger when his sister Laura was attacked, and her life despaired of for many days. Mrs Drelincourt, now released from attendance on her husband, nursed the suffering Laura as if she had been her own child, and with the same feelings of maternal anxiety and solicitude. Laura's life was spared; and she seemed deeply penetrated with the unselfish and tender care she had experienced from her stepmother. There was a sense of shame and deep self-abasement in her manner, which seemed to say even more forcibly than the circumstances demanded – 'I have done you wrong; you are heaping coals of fire on my head!'

When the brother and sister were permitted to see each other again, the fatal truth flashed across Laura's mind for the first time, that Henry, although spared from the violence of the fever, had received a mortal blow, from which he never would recover; his constitution, already prematurely broken, was sinking rapidly: it was too evident that he had not many weeks to live. Nor did Mrs Drelincourt endeavour to raise false hopes in the sister's bosom, but rather to strengthen and enable her to bear the inevitable doom approaching. She supported, she tended and fostered, the dying man with Christian love and motherly compassion; and he writhed in agony beneath her kindness – the secret weighing on his mind being evidently unsupportable, while he, too, murmured, 'This is indeed heaping coals of fire on my head.'

It was after a long private conference between the brother and sister, wherein recent agitation had left the invalid more weakened than usual, that Henry, faintly requesting his gentle nurse to come beside him, murmured, 'Mother' – it was the first time he had ever called her so – 'I wish you to bring poor Clari here; I wish to see her.' Clari – almost forgotten during the late scenes of sorrow enacting in the hall – left wholly to Taffy's care, had entirely escaped contagion; and in the quiet distant nursery plied her simple amusement of weaving osiers, by degrees promising to become an expert basket-manufacturer. Clari came with her afflicted mother to Henry Drelincourt's side; and with her pale face, and vacant smile, and expressionless eyes, gazed on the dying man, taking up one of his thin wasted hands, and twining the fingers round her own, muttering, 'Oh, pretty – pretty!'

Henry, in his turn, gazed on the hapless girl with a prolonged and agonized look: the big round tears coursed down his sunken cheeks – blessed tears! – as he turned towards Mrs Drelincourt, and with clasped hands and streaming eye ejaculated, 'Can you forgive me?' She seemed not to understand his meaning, and returned an inquiring and astonished look, evidently thinking, poor lady, that her patient was light-headed.

'Do you not understand me? Look at her: I did it!' he added in hollow whispers, sinking back pale and exhausted. The truth now for the first time flashed on the unhappy mother's mind; speech was denied her; and she could only fold her child in her arms, and again and again embrace her with low, pitying moans. But the poor girl had caught the sound of Henry's words, 'forgive;' and with smiles disengaging herself from her mother's arms, she knelt down beside him; and passing her long slender fingers caressingly over his wan face, she looked up at her mother, and repeated gently, 'Forgive – mother – forgive!'

Before another day had flown, Henry Drelincourt was no more: he died in his sister Laura's arms, with one of his hands clasped in his stepmother's. He had heard her words of forgiveness: and there was another present who tremblingly besought pardon too – and unfolded a tale which Henry had not power to do – and this was the weeping Laura, from whom Mrs Drelincourt heard the following sad confession of heedless, unprincipled folly: —

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