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REMEMBRANCES OF A MONTHLY NURSE.

SECOND SERIES.

No. IV. THE COUNTESS T

THERE are two or three sketches in my note-book, which I had the precaution to write in cypher, lest some accident or other (including my own death) might bring them to the public eye, before "the fulness of time" should make it prudent to do so. Now, as the characters of my cypher are of my own invention, from the same prudential reasons, and no key of it has ever been made, except the one in my own mind, judge of my vexation the other day, when I thought I might venture to give one of these highly seasoned morsels to the gaping public, who are ever ready, with their open mouths (like so many unfledged blackbirds chirping for food), to swallow any thing of a piquante quality, that can be brought from the four quarters of the earth to satisfy their mental cravings-judge of my vexation, I say, when I discovered that I could not interpret my own hieroglyphics; that memory refused to give me back what I had so implicitly entrusted to her keeping; and that there was no court of equity I could apply to, in order that I might gain my rights.

The same thing happened to me the other day in another instance, which proves to me that this same Madame Memory is beginning to play me off a few slippery tricks, I suppose, for having laid so many heavy burdens upon her during my past life. I have a writing-desk, with a most peculiar secret drawer in it; one of no common construction. In this I have now deposited my marriage-certificate, and a few hoarded guineas, &c. Although I have opened this drawer a hundred times, and was then well acquainted with the trick of its concealment, yet I spent full four hours the other evening in trying to get at this drawer, and with the assistance of a couple of shrewd friends to boot. Vain were our researches; vain all our pressings, and thumps, and examinations. I must either break my desk to pieces with the poker in a terrible passion, or send for a cunning man skilled in desk-enigmas, to unfold to me the mystery; and this last plan pride, for the present, prevents my doing, as I still fondly hope I shall myself, in some lucky moment, recover the mighty secret.

Can we wonder then at the treasury which lies concealed under the mantle of the past? The riches of invention, and of thought, that have been, as it were, hermetically sealed up by the treachery or wilfulness of this same Madame Memory, who not seldom, when closely pressed, will give back some of the things entrusted to her keeping—she may, in one of her capricious moods, restore to me the method of my profound cypher, and the secret of my writing-desk drawer. With regard to more important mysteries between herself and the illustrious dead, they are gone, as far as regards this world, for ever; so Discovery must go hard to work, and perhaps she may stumble unawares upon some of those long hidden treasures, and drag them once more to the light of day.

In the mean time, I must make use of that part of my note-book

that I can read, or pick up a few of the crumbs of my most important narratives lying about the door of the sanctuary wherein my hoards are deposited, and make the best of them, deploring all the time that I cannot break the lock, and go in to the chamber of the mind, where every circumstance of the past is duly registered. On second thoughts, it is better not-memory is only the servant of Old Time, whose business it is to throw into obscurity, and often into oblivion, all the transactions of the present. A most industrious scavenger is he, this Time, and what a quantity of rubbish has he swept away! How much chaff with the few golden grains have been scattered up and down amongst it. Whether my locked-up sketches were the former or the latter, it is not for me to say. Let me do the best I can without them.

In a distant county, there is a lordly mansion situated on a rising ground, in the middle of an extensive and thickly wooded park. This place has been what they call a "show-house" for time immemorial. When the family is absent, tickets are easily obtained to view the grounds, gardens, and grottos on the outside the building, and the paintings, statues, and various other ornaments within. Well do I remember in my very early days, going with a smart party of friends, on a pleasant occasion, to see the wonders of T— Hall, and the impression one circumstance made upon me.

In a most superb saloon, there was one picture in a very expensive frame, placed over the marble chimney-place, which had itself been brought from Florence, and the housekeeper told us cost full three thousand pounds. My friends were much taken up with admiring the workmanship and spotless purity of this same mantle-piece, but I felt an unappeasable curiosity to gaze upon the painting within that gorgeous frame, which was most carefully veiled from sight, having a thick crimson silk curtain enclosed within a gold solid net, or rather trellis-work, which it seems was made to open in the centre like a couple of doors, but which was now locked up, and we were told, "that it was his lordship's order that no eye should ever look again upon that picture!"

"Is it an historical picture, or a portrait ?" questioned a gentleman of our party. "I am forbid to answer any questions concerning it,” said the old lady, our conductress, in no very agreeable key. "It is as much as my place is worth :" and away we were all led to inspect a whole gallery of portraits by Vandyke and his predecessors, but no charm had they now to my excited imagination. The veiled picture was all I could think on. Why it should thus be so excluded from public view, yet hold a place so distinguished! Why the domestics should be commanded to give no explanation concerning it by their lord! And why she, the housekeeper, should look so mysteriously when she told us this! All these matters weighed heavily upon my mind, and I did not enjoy the excursion half so much as I otherwise should have done, but for this shrouded picture.

"Think you," said I, on our return home, still harping on the same subject, "think you it was an ancient painting in that rich frame they would not let us see? I should rather think not, as the

carving of it was quite modern. It must be, I imagine, some portrait taken not many years ago."-" Very likely," was the calm answer of my female friend, who did not allow her mind to be disturbed with such trifles.

It happened, that the same summer I visited the hall again, but then only one person accompanied me. We spent the whole day amidst the beauties of that exquisite park, sat by the side of the trout stream, or on some rounded knoll, holding a charmed discourse with each other, or melting into ecstatic thought-in short (and I must hurry over all this for weighty reasons), I went there as a bride, and with who should a bride be with ?-her bridegroom.

I mentioned my former wishes respecting that veiled picture to my companion, wishes that had never been gratified. "We will see what soft persuasion can do to unlock that grated, gilded door," he answered. 66 Why did you not tell me of your wish before?" The arts of persuasion were tried, backed by golden arguments. The lady housekeeper could refuse us nothing. "A bride," she smilingly observed, "should have every thing her own way."

"And for how long a time?" asked I gaily, resolved to keep her in a good humour, lest she should change her mind.

"As long as she can contrive to hold the reins," answered the old lady, glancing slily at my companion. "Every thing depends on that; but in general women-I beg your pardon, ladies-lose all their power, because they do not know how to use it, when they have the whip-hand of the gentlemen, as you have now, madam: you should not suffer it to be taken from you again like a baby."

"Pretty advice!" said, smilingly, he that was then by my side, "you have tried your own receipt, madam, of course ?"

"Not I, indeed," observed the housekeeper pettishly, "there are enough fools without my making one of them; but I ask pardon-I have seen enough of matrimony in this family-no, Sir," she added more reservedly, "I am what they call a single woman,' and so I mean to continue."

With a great deal of bustle and importance, the two folding-doors of the painting were thrown open, and the portrait, as it was called, of the present countess was exposed to view. She was taken as a Venus, just rising from the sea, with a soft mist of dewy vapour round her couch of pearl, in the resemblance of a shell, giving out the prismatic colours here and there, but rather faintly. Long ringlets of flaxen hair fell in luxuriance over that perfect and juvenile form, for as yet the Venus there represented had not become a mother, and was as pure as any new-born breathing thing could be. She was playing with a profusion of pearls heaped up in a large conche-shell before her, and trying to string them together, as I conceived, that she might ornament herself with them.

"Is that considered a likeness?" I inquired. beautiful!"

"She must be very

"Beautiful, indeed!" responded the old lady, with a deep sigh"too beautiful for men to gaze on. It is only angels that should have such a form and features as she has, and only angels to look at them; but on earth they cause sad confusion. I wish that all women's 3 E

N.S.-VOL. I.

beauty had died away when Eve lost her innocence, and we should have had a much better world of it."

We could not help smiling at hearing the vehemence with which this was said, but delicacy restrained us from asking any more questions.

"It is no smiling matter, though," muttered our oracle, "for honourable and high-born people to have their peace destroyed, their honours laid in the dust, perhaps their hearts broken, and all through a yard or two of alabaster skin, and a handful of silky hair."

"What lovely blue eyes this portrait has," said he who stood beside me; "what an innocent, yet what an intelligent expression! Then the soft pencillings of those eye-brows! those long and curling lashes, so much darker than her hair! See, too, what a hand !"

"You shall see it no longer, Sir," said the old house-keeper, slapping to the trellis-work doors with a jerk, locking them up, and putting the key into her pocket.-"O young lady! you must have been beside yourself, to have let your husband look upon that picture; and I was both weak and wicked to be prevailed on to disobey his strict injunctions. God grant we may not all suffer severely for our fault."

"There is no danger on my account," replied the gentleman more immediately addressed; "I have a talisman to guard me from all danger."

"Men do not know what inflammable stuff they are made of," continued Mrs. Waters. "A gunpowder barrel has not the slightest fear of the spark. It never tries to run away from danger, and all of a sudden, bang it goes off; and, what is worse, it blows every thing to atoms that happens to be near it; carries destruction to all around it! Young gentleman, you have, I trust, more sense than a barrel of gunpowder; so fly from temptation."

"You have prevented the necessity of my doing so," said the gentleman smiling good humouredly; "you have shut up that beauty there behind that grating, as closely as ever was secluded a vestal in a nunnery."

"That lady is no vestul," murmured out the old house-keeper. Then, as if sorry for what she had said, she added, in a hurried accent -Vestals, you know, Madam, were not permitted to marry; but I will now wish you good morning, and may I be able, should I ever see you again, to congratulate you on your looking quite as happy as you do at this moment."

This kind wish was not fulfilled. A few years after, and as if by a touch of Harlequin's wand, the brilliant prospects that then surrounded me vanished like an unsubstantial dream, and the gay and joyous ride of that morning, entered that same elegant mansion, a widowed, and sorrowing woman, bearing up still with all the fortitude she could muster against the calamities that had well nigh overwhelmed her she entered that mansion in the capacity of a "Monthly Nurse."

There hung the same picture in the same costly frame as when I had stood before it, and beheld it opened to my view, in company with one whose eyes could gaze no more. I shuddered as I looked upon it, and endeavoured to brace myself up to an appearance of

composure. The very attempt is an effort of virtue, and is sure to bring healing in its wings. There is something truly sublime in calm endurance! It perhaps wins not pity half so much as the exhibition of stormy and puerile grief, but compassion obtained by such a price would be dear indeed!

The old house-keeper, Mrs. Waters, was still alive, but looked so withered and woe-begone, that I should not have known her again but for her name, and she, fortunately, did not recognise me; and this saved me from one additional pang.

"I shall see the original then of that most exquisite Venus at last," thought I, as they were conducting me to the lady's dressing-room on my arrival. I had been engaged in London, by an intimate friend, to attend upon her ladyship, whom I had never seen; and I had gone down to T House by her desire, although it was not yet decided whether she would proceed on to her house in London, to await her accouchment there, and have the benefit of her own lady's medical man, the first in the metropolis, or remain where she was.

The form of the countess was a good deal enlarged, certainly, since her portrait had been taken, but she had only changed the style of her beauty. The goddess of love and of sunny smiles could not have been handsomer, or more seductive in her allurements, than was the Countess T. Never yet have I beheld so lovely a hand and arm! so perfect a bust! so finely a proportioned foot and ankle, or so witching a smile! She seemed quite conscious of her own attractions, and had no objection to play off her dazzling charms even before me. It gave her delight to inspire admiration, as if it were necessary to her very existence, the atmosphere she breathed. It was impossible to refuse her such homage. If I, a woman, felt so spell-bound by the magic of her all-commanding beauty, what influence must she have had on man? Alas, too much!

"I have decided on proceeding immediately to London, Mrs. Griffiths," said the lovely countess to me, after she had received a visit from the professional gentleman, who lived at the market town about five miles from her residence, and was to attend her if she consented to remain in the country. "We will set off without delay for the town-house, since the sight of that horrid man, in his thick white riding-coat, and tawny buckskins, is quite sufficient for me! Heaven defend me!" she added laughing, "from coming in contact with any country practitioner in his odious gaiters! I will have my old attendant, Mr. I, who if he did not smell quite so much of camphor, would be really bearable ;"—and the countess ordered the carriage to be at the door by twelve o'clock next day.

"Did you understand me, Forster?" inquired the lady to her own female attendant, after giving this order. "Why do you stand as if you had a fit of catalepsy, rigid, there at the door?"

"I beg your pardon, my lady," returned Mrs. Forster. "I thought --that is, I imagined- I believed, that"—

"I did not inquire into your thoughts, imaginations, or belief, my good girl," interrupted the fair countess, whilst a smile played around her mouth, and dimpled her cheek, for she seemed as if it were impossible for her to frown or look displeased.-"I only desired you

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