'We came here to be happy, and happiness we
have at length gained. It is in our grasp; I feel it. It was not
fortune, dear mother! it was fate, it was Providence, it was God. You
have been faithful to Him, and He has brought back to you my father,
chastened and repentant. God has turned his heart to all your virtues.
Will you desert him? No, no, mother, you will not, you cannot; for his
sake, for your own sake, and for your child's, you will not!'

'For twenty years I have acted from an imperious sense of duty,' said
Lady Annabel, 'and for your sake, Venetia, as much as for my own.
Shall the feelings of a moment--'

'O mother! dearest mother! say not these words. With me, at least,
it has not been the feeling of a moment. It haunted my infancy; it
harassed me while a girl; it has brought me in the prime of womanhood
to the brink of the grave. And with you, mother, has it been the
feeling of a moment? Ah! you ever loved him, when his name was never
breathed by those lips. You loved him when you deemed he had forgotten
you; when you pictured him to yourself in all the pride of health and
genius, wanton and daring; and now, now that he comes to you penitent,
perhaps dying, more like a remorseful spirit than a breathing being,
and humbles himself before you, and appeals only to your mercy, ah! my
mother, you cannot reject, you could not reject him, even if you were
alone, even if you had no child!'

'My child! my child! all my hopes were in my child,' murmured Lady
Annabel.

'Is she not by your side?' said Venetia.

'You know not what you ask; you know not what you counsel,' said Lady
Annabel. 'It has been the prayer and effort of my life that you should
never know. There is a bitterness in the reconciliation which follows
long estrangement, that yields a pang more acute even than the first
disunion. Shall I be called upon to mourn over the wasted happiness of
twenty years? Why did he not hate us?'

'The pang is already felt, mother,' said Venetia. 'Reject my father,
but you cannot resume the feelings of a month back. You have seen
him; you have listened to him. He is no longer the character which
justified your conduct, and upheld you under the trial. His image has
entered your soul; your heart is softened. Bid him quit Venice without
seeing you, and you will remain the most miserable of women.'

'On his head, then, be the final desolation,' said Lady Annabel; 'it
is but a part of the lot that he has yielded me.'