634 



THE LIVING AND THE BEAD. 



moment the passive langour of resignation was changed with her into 

 an active principle of grief and despair. 



Clinton, to the astonishment of all his old friends, was easily per- 

 suaded, by Colonel Ashe, to join the party at dinner; and, to their still 

 greater surprise, participated more freely in general conversation than 

 he was ever known by them to have done before. The pent-up sorrows 

 of his bosom had, lor the first time since the date of his affliction, 

 found relief, in his vindication to Mrs. Ashe ; and in her assured and 

 evident sympathy, and in her features and form, he had discovered, 

 without seeking it, a living link in the chain that bound him to the 

 tomb of his lost Caroline. 



" A change came o'er the spirit of his dream ;" 



but it was not until some time subsequently, that he felt how unequal 

 upon the heart are the holds of the living and the dead ! 



Under all these complicated feelings and relations, on the part of 

 Clinton and Mrs. Ashe, added to their perfect congeniality of minds 

 and dispositions, and the dangerous facilities which the professional 

 attendance of the former afforded, to a constant personal interchange 

 of sentiments, it would be matter of surprise to the philosopher, or 

 the man of the world, no less than to the lovers of romance and the 

 sentimental, that a mutual affection should not simultaneously, how- 

 ever unconsciously, have taken root in their hearts ; and, in due 

 course of time, sprung up, and ripened into a passion deep and dan- 

 gerous. The fact, indeed, was soon fully apparent to themselves ; 

 but the Rubicon, although not criminally, yet morally, in the con- 

 sciences of the wife and the widower of the tomb, was passed. To 

 return was impossible to go farther was equally repugnant to the 

 intentions or hopes of either for theirs was an intercourse of hearts 

 and affections, which had its origin in virtue, through accidental and 

 mysterious agency, and recoiled at the bare supposition of criminality 

 and degradation. They felt that an irresistible destiny had bound 

 them, in which, as yet, their earthly feelings and infirmities had no 

 participation. 



Such sentiments and principles, however refined, and although 

 mutually confident of their own inherent honour, they felt were 

 neither compatible with their relations to each other, nor their indi- 

 vidual position in society, and that such a mode of reasoning would 

 neither be understood nor sanctioned by the world, nor did they 

 desire that it should. But they felt, at the same time, that separa- 

 tion, although the only step dictated by prudence and propriety, 

 could neither weaken nor destroy a passion, originated, and founded, 

 and established under such peculiar circumstances and influences ; 

 and that it would be infinitely more desirable to cease at once to be, 

 than to exist apart from each other. The high sense of honour, and 

 superior strength of mind of Clinton, would have impelled him, on 

 the first discovery of their mutual passion, to have torn himself at 

 once, and for ever, from the presence of Mrs. Ashe and from the 

 country ; but the instinctive penetration of that lady had anticipated 

 such a resolution, and she had bound him, by the most sacred obli- 

 gations, not to abandon her to her misery and despair, without her 



