Chapter XXIV: Letter LXXIV: From Miss Cowley to Miss Hardcastle

Again I am permitted to take a better cordial than bark. Mrs. Heartley has fully explained to us the mystery relative to the portraits in Miss Flint’s possession. It appears that Mrs. Howard, apprehending that they would be more pernicious to her brother, than consolatory, requested Mrs. Heartley to secrete them from his search. She obeyed her dying friend. “But,” added Mrs. Heartley, “my feelings at this juncture were nearly as little under the control of my reason, as poor Percival’s. I wrote a letter to Miss Flint, which was dictated by my sorrow, and the romantic hope of touching her heart in favour of a child whom she had contributed to render an _orphan_ and a _beggar_. I enclosed these powerful pleaders,” continued Mrs. Heartley, taking up the miniatures, and surveying them with emotion, “and my language was not less forcible. Malcolm was employed to place my packet in her hands. He effected his purpose; for she found it on her dressing table. The next morning he was questioned, and he frankly owned, that he had, at my request, placed the parcel where she had found it. You have been faithful, Sir, in the performance of your commission, said Miss Flint, trembling and pale with fury; “be so in delivering my message _to your Mrs. Heartley_. Tell her, that her insolent and officious interference has failed, and that whilst Miss Flint’s family have no better advocates than a kept mistress, she wants no apology for renouncing it.” Malcolm bluntly told her, that she must employ some one to deliver such a message who had never heard of Mrs. Heartley; for himself, he begged leave to decline insulting his best friend. I heard no more from Miss Flint; and I concluded that she had destroyed the portraits in a similar manner as she had that of her mother. Frustrated in my project, I was forced to conceal this occurrence; and the pictures were supposed to be irrecoverably and unaccountably lost.”

Although my conscience reproached me frequently when hearing the captain bewail this loss, it never did so as to the motive from which I had acted: but it is to be feared, that my zeal in the cause of the injured, disqualified me for making a convert to justice and humanity. It is most probable that I irritated where I wished to heal; and it is certain, that I was from that time the object of Miss Flint’s implacable resentment. “Poor woman!” continued Mrs. Heartley, with compassion, “she was then under the miserable yoke of those passions, which although they _govern_, cannot _blind us_. Neither her spirit of resentment, nor any entrenchment from her prosperous fortune, could shield her from the voice within her bosom. It spoke my language with tenfold energy, and she hated me, because she knew I was in unison with her conscience. She shunned me, as she would have shunned _that_, had she been able.” “Is it not unaccountable,” added Mrs. Heartley, addressing me, “that any rational being should fear to encounter the eyes of a fellow creature under the circumstances of guilt, nay, even of folly, without considering the power of conscience, from whose suggestions this very dread arises. That Miss Flint was sensible of its power is certain. Nor do I believe, with some, that it is possible for us to outlive its authority. When I hear of such, who are said to be hardened by sin, and become callous by guilt, I no more believe it, than I do those tales I hear of the elixir for perpetuating our existence here for ever. I am convinced that God will not be mocked by the creatures of his power, and I have only to follow the bold and impious offender of his laws to his hours of privacy, to learn, that he cannot evade that Being’s presence, whose commands he insults.” I was more disposed to shorten this conversation, than to dispute the truths it contained. Lady Maclairn’s conscience wants no stimulants. Douglass entered, and we became cheerful. You love the doctor, you say, prithee who does not? but no one shall love him so well as Horace. You have heard of his gallantry three or four nights he past in my antichamber!

RACHEL COWLEY.