CHAPTER III.
If the love of Lady Annabel for her child were capable of increase, itmight have been believed that it absolutely became more profound andardent after that short-lived but painful estrangement which we haverelated in the last chapter. With all Lady Annabel's fascinatingqualities and noble virtues, a fine observer of human nature enjoyingopportunities of intimately studying her character, might havesuspected that an occasion only was wanted to display or develop inthat lady's conduct no trifling evidence of a haughty, proud, and eveninexorable spirit. Circumstanced as she was at Cherbury, with no onecapable or desirous of disputing her will, the more gracious andexalted qualities of her nature were alone apparent. Entertaining asevere, even a sublime sense of the paramount claims of duty in allconditions and circumstances of life, her own conduct afforded aninvariable and consistent example of her tenet; from those around hershe required little, and that was cheerfully granted; while, on theother hand, her more eminent situation alike multiplied her ownobligations and enabled her to fulfil them; she appeared, therefore,to pass her life in conferring happiness and in receiving gratitude.Strictly religious, of immaculate reputation, rigidly just,systematically charitable, dignified in her manners, yet more thancourteous to her inferiors, and gifted at the same time with greatself-control and great decision, she was looked up to by all withinher sphere with a sentiment of affectionate veneration. Perhaps therewas only one person within her little world who, both by dispositionand relative situation, was qualified in any way to question herundoubted sway, or to cross by independence of opinion the tenour ofthe discipline she had established, and this was her child. Venetia,with one of the most affectionate and benevolent natures in the world,was gifted with a shrewd, inquiring mind, and a restless imagination.She was capable of forming her own opinions, and had both reason andfeeling at command to gauge their worth. But to gain an influence overthis child had been the sole object of Lady Annabel's life, and shehad hitherto met that success which usually awaits in this world thestrong purpose of a determined spirit. Lady Annabel herself was fartoo acute a person not to have detected early in life the talents ofher child, and she was proud of them. She had cultivated them withexemplary devotion and with admirable profit. But Lady Annabel had notless discovered that, in the ardent and susceptible temperament ofVenetia, means were offered by which the heart might be trained notonly to cope with but overpower the intellect. With great powers ofpleasing, beauty, accomplishments, a sweet voice, a soft manner, asympathetic heart, Lady Annabel was qualified to charm the world; shehad contrived to fascinate her daughter. She had inspired Venetia withthe most romantic attachment for her: such as rather subsistsbetween two female friends of the same age and hearts, than betweenindividuals in the relative situations which they bore to each other.Yet while Venetia thus loved her mother, she could not but alsorespect and revere the superior being whose knowledge was her guide onall subjects, and whose various accomplishments deprived her secludededucation of all its disadvantages; and when she felt that one sogifted had devoted her life to the benefit of her child, and thatthis beautiful and peerless lady had no other ambition but to beher guardian and attendant spirit; gratitude, fervent and profound,mingled with admiring reverence and passionate affection, and togetherformed a spell that encircled the mind of Venetia with talismanicsway.
Under the despotic influence of these enchanted feelings, Venetiawas fast growing into womanhood, without a single cloud having everdisturbed or sullied the pure and splendid heaven of her domesticlife. Suddenly the horizon had become clouded, a storm had gatheredand burst, and an eclipse could scarcely have occasioned more terrorto the untutored roamer of the wilderness, than this unexpectedcatastrophe to one so inexperienced in the power of the passions asour heroine. Her heaven was again serene; but such was the effectof this ebullition on her character, so keen was her dread of againencountering the agony of another misunderstanding with her mother,that she recoiled with trembling from that subject which had so oftenand so deeply engaged her secret thoughts; and the idea of her father,associated as it now was with pain, mortification, and misery, neverrose to her imagination but instantly to be shunned as some unhallowedimage, of which the bitter contemplation was fraught with not lessdisastrous consequences than the denounced idolatry of the holypeople.
Whatever, therefore, might be the secret reasons which impelled LadyAnnabel to shroud the memory of the lost parent of her child in suchinviolate gloom, it is certain that the hitherto restless thoughconcealed curiosity of Venetia upon the subject, the rashdemonstration to which it led, and the consequence of her boldness,instead of threatening to destroy in an instant the deep and maturedsystem of her mother, had, on the whole, greatly contributed to thefulfilment of the very purpose for which Lady Annabel had so longlaboured. That lady spared no pains in following up the advantagewhich her acuteness and knowledge of her daughter's character assuredher that she had secured. She hovered round her child more like anenamoured lover than a fond mother; she hung upon her looks, she readher thoughts, she anticipated every want and wish; her dulcet tonesseemed even sweeter than before; her soft and elegant manners evenmore tender and refined. Though even in her childhood Lady Annabel hadrather guided than commanded Venetia; now she rather consulted thanguided her. She seized advantage of the advanced character and matureappearance of Venetia to treat her as a woman rather than a child, andas a friend rather than a daughter. Venetia yielded herself up to thisflattering and fascinating condescension. Her love for her motheramounted to passion; she had no other earthly object or desire but topass her entire life in her sole and sweet society; she could conceiveno sympathy deeper or more delightful; the only unhappiness shehad ever known had been occasioned by a moment trenching upon itsexclusive privilege; Venetia could not picture to herself that such apure and entrancing existence could ever experience a change.
And this mother, this devoted yet mysterious mother, jealous of herchild's regret for a father that she had lost, and whom she had neverknown! shall we ever penetrate the secret of her heart?