THE FRENCH CONVUI.SIVKS. 647 



Capable of triumphing over every trial a gentleness and sweetness 

 of disposition that gained her the adoration of her inferiors, and at 

 the same time an incalculable power of resistance against every thing 

 tending to oppress her. By marrying Delmare she only changed 

 masters, by being transferred from the Isle of Bourbon to her hus- 

 band's estate in Brie, she only changed her prison and her solitude. 

 Reared in the desert neglected by her father surrounded by slaves 

 for whom she had no other succour or consolation but her compassion 

 or her tears, she had been accustomed to say to herself, " A day 

 will come when every thing in my existence shall undergo an altera- 

 tion a day, when I shall be loved when I shall give my whole 

 heart to him who will give me his. In the mean time let me bear it ; 

 let me be silent, and keep my love for the man who shall come to 

 deliver me." But this Messiah came not. Colonel Delmare was a man 

 of iron captious, jealous, vindictive, morose. The brilliant clay had 

 passed when, as Lieutenant Delmare, he breathed triumph in the air 

 of camps forgotten by his ungrateful country, the retired officer saw 

 himself condemned to endure all the consequences of marriage ; that 

 is to say, to be the husband of a young and lovely woman, the owner 

 of a comfortable estate and of a flourishing manufactory. The con- 

 sequence was, that the Colonel was peevish and irritable, an excellent 

 master before whom every body trembled wife, servants, horses, 

 and dogs. Such was the husband of the gentle and delicate Indiana; 

 and the stranger who beheld her frail and sylph-like figure so 

 young, so beautiful, and so melancholy in the midst of her old fa- 

 shioned house, and by the side of her old husband, would have 

 pitied the wife of Colonel Delmare, and perhaps Colonel Delmare 

 more than his wife. 



The next personage is the fox-hunting baronet, Sir Ralph Brown, 

 or as he is sometimes called, Sir Brown ; and this character is the most 

 laboured and original of the set. He is cousin to Indiana, and had 

 been brought up with her in the Isle of Bourbon. Nature, in giving 

 Sir Ralph a heart exquisitely susceptible and warm, had denied him 1 

 the power of expressing his sensations, either by looks or words. He 

 was slow, heavy, phlegmatic, and cold ; and as the interior man was 

 judged of by the exterior, Sir Ralph was despised and overlooked 

 both by his parents and by the world. Thus thrown upon himself, 

 he became an egotist a lonely, musing, melancholy being. Indiana, 

 equally forlorn as himself, became his only resource ; and during ten 

 years she was every thing to him his occupations, his joy, his riches ; 

 a young flower, whose blooming he watched with impatience, in the 

 hope of her one day becoming his bride. But his eldest brother, 

 who monopolized the affection of his parents, happening to die, Sir 

 Ralph was, much to his own surprise, taken to supply his place, and, 

 in spite of his passion for Indiana, was married to the betrothed of 

 his deceased brother. This lady died in England, and on Sir Ralph's 

 return to the Isle of Bourbon, he found Indiana married to Delmare : 

 and as he could not live without her, he became domesticated with 

 them, with the husband's plenary consent. So complete was the re- 

 straint which he exercised over himself, that neither Delmare nor 

 Indiana herself were ever aware of the real nature of his passion, and 



