Ada, the Betrayed; Or, The Murder at the Old Smithy. A Romance of Passion. James Malcolm Rymer

the park.”

      Ada accompanied the old woman to her outer door, and she pointed out to the refreshed and much revived girl a handsome house, as the residence of Sir Francis Hartleton.

      She again tendered her guinea, but the kind-hearted woman replied—

      “Pho, pho, my dear. You sha’n’t change your guinea for a sup of milk.”

      The tears gathered to Ada’s eyes at this trifling act of kindness, and she grasped the hand of the good dame, warmly, as she said, in a voice of emotion—

      “I am not used to kindness.”

      “Not used to kindness? Ah, well, poor thing! If your friend, Sir Francis Hartleton, ain’t in the way, come here again.”

      “If I live,” said Ada, “I will visit you again.”

      She then, with a sweet smile, walked from the little dairy, and slowly approached the house of Sir Francis Hartleton. She paused as she neared it, and many anxious doubts and fears crossed her mind, concerning the result of an interview with the magistrate; to whom Jacob Gray’s mysterious bundle of papers was addressed, and above all, rose like a spectre, the still clinging horrible supposition that Jacob Gray might possibly be her father. She could not positively swear that he was not. In defiance of all probability he might have spoken the truth.

      She stood by the portico of the magistrate’s house, and her irresolution increased each moment that she strove to reason with her fears.

      “Dare I,” she thought, “run this dreadful risk? Heaven knows what that paper may contain which Gray sets such store by. Some awful history of crime and suffering, perchance, which would bring him to a scaffold and proclaim me the child of a murderer. Can I make conditions with the magistrates? Can I say to him, I will direct you to a packet addressed to yourself, containing, I know not what, which you can send a force, if necessary, to possess yourself of, but which you must act upon only so far as may be consistent with my feelings? Alas, no! I feel that such would not be acceded to, and I am tortured by doubts and anxieties—dreadful fears—Jacob Gray, what devil tempted you to raise so dreadful a supposition in my mind that you might be my father? And yet I do not, cannot believe you. No—but I doubt—ay doubt. There lies the agony! The fearful irresolution that cramped my very soul—cripples my exertions to be free, and makes me the unhappy, wretched thing I am. No, I cannot yet betray thee to death, Jacob Gray, although you would have taken my life, even while I slept unsuspectingly beneath your roof, I cannot, dare not yet betray thee.”

      Scarcely, in the confusion of other feelings, knowing whither she went, she passed the door of Sir Francis Hartleton’s house, nor paused till she found herself in the Bird Cage Walk, in St. James’s Park. It was still very early, but the fine bracing morning had attracted many pedestrians to the park, and the various walks were beginning to assume a gay appearance, the fashionable hour of promenading being then much earlier than it is at present.

      Many an admiring glance was cast upon the beautiful Ada as she slowly took her uncertain way beneath the tall ancient trees which have now given place to young saplings, the fall beauty of which the present generations will never enjoy. The cool air that blew across the wide expanse imparted a delicate bloom to her cheeks, that many a court beauty would have bartered a portion of her existence to obtain. The hat she wore but partially confined the long dancing black ringlets that fell in nature’s own freedom on her neck and shoulders; and, withal, there was a sweet pensiveness in her manner, and the expressions of her face, which greatly charmed and interested all the gentlemen, and greatly vexed and discomposed all the ladies, who, with one accord, voted it to be affectation.

      How little they dreamt of the deep sorrow that was in the young girl’s heart.

      She walked on till she reached the Great Mall, and then, feeling somewhat weary she sat down on one of the wooden seats, and seeing nothing, hearing nothing, she gave herself up to her own thoughts, and tears trickled slowly from her eyes, as all her meditations tended to the one conclusion that she must starve or go back to the lone house and Jacob Gray.

      She was aroused from her reverie by some one repeatedly, in an affected drawl pronouncing the word—

      “Delicious: de—licious; oh, de—licous!” immediately in front of where she sat.

      Ada looked up, and balancing himself before her, nearly on his toes, was an affectedly dressed person who was staring at her through an opera-glass, and repeating the word delicious, as conveying his extreme admiration of her. When Ada looked up he advanced with a smirk and a bow, and laying his hand on his embroidered waistcoat, said, in the same drawling, affected tone—

      “My charming little Hebe—what unearthly change—what glorious concatenation of sublime events have procured St. James’s Park the felicity of beholding you? Eh, eh, my delicious charmer?”

      “Sir,” said Ada, annoyed by the tone of the remarks, the substance of which she scarcely heard or comprehended.

      “Charming simplicity!” cried the beau; “permit me.”

      He seated himself with these words by the side of Ada, and attempted, by an affected, apeish manner, to take her hand.

      Ada shrunk from his touch, and rising with an innocent dignity, that appalled for a moment the fine gentleman, she said—

      “I do not know you, sir,” and walked onwards, leaving him the questionable credit of having turned her out of the seat.

      “Charming! charming!” she heard him say, after a few moments, as he pursued her along the Mall.

      Ada was excessively annoyed at this most disagreeable intrusion, and she quickened her pace in the hope of distancing the gallant; such, however, was not the event, for he was nearly close to her when she arrived at the next seat, which was occupied but by one gentleman, who was reading a book.

      “One stranger,” thought Ada, “may protect me from the insults of another,” and she paused close to the seat on which was the gentleman reading.

      “ ’Pon honour,” cried the beau who had followed her; “you walk most vulgarly fast. Ah! Ah! Really now, a delicious little creature like you ought to glide, not walk—to glide—positively glide. Ah! Ah! That would be delicious.”

      The gentleman who was reading looked up, his eyes met Ada’s.

      “Harry!” he cried.

      “Albert!” she replied, and bursting into tears, she clung convulsively to the arms of Albert Seyton.