“Thank you, sir, you are very obliging:  not while that young woman is in the room.—­You ought to be ashamed of yourself, General Tracy.”

Poor Emmy ran away to weep.  It seems that, in her delirium, she had spoken many things, and the servants blabbed them out to Mrs. Tracy.

“Ah, my poor wife, indeed I am:  both ashamed and sorry—­heartily sorry.  But God forgives me, Jenny, and I hope that you will too.”

“Upon, my word, general, you carry it off with a high hand:  and, not content, sir, with insulting me in my own home by bringing here your other women’s children, you have expelled poor dear, dear Julian.”

“Jane, if you will remember, he ran away himself; and you know that now I gladly would receive him:  we are all prodigal sons together, and if God can bear with us, Jane, we ought to look kindly on each other.”

“Ha! that’s always the way with old sinners like you—­canting hypocrites!  Be a man, General Tracy, if you can, and talk sense.  I never did any harm or sin in all my life yet, and don’t intend to:  and my poor boy Julian’s well enough, if they’d only let him alone; but nobody understands his heart but me.  Good boy, I’m sure there’s virtue enough left in him, if he loves his mother.”—­If he loves his mother.

“Jane, dear, I sent for you to kiss you; for I could not die in peace, nor live in peace (whichever God may please), without your pardon, Jane, for a thousand unkindnesses—­but, especially for the sin that gave me Emily.  Forgive me this, my wife.”

“Never, sir!” rejoined that miserable mind; and fancied that she was acting virtuously.  She thrust aside the kindly proffered hand; scowled at him with darkened brow; drew up her commanding height; and, calling Mrs. Siddons to remembrance, brushed away in the indignant attitude of a tragedy queen.

Emmy ran again to her father, and the vain bad mother to her bottle; we must leave them to their various avocations.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CHARLES DELAYED.

FEW things could well be more unlikely than that Emily should hear of Charles again before she saw him:  for, having left Madras as speedily as might be, now that his mission was so easily, yet so naturally, accomplished—­having posted, as we know, his overland letter—­and having got on board the fast-sailing ship Samarang, Captain Trueman, Charles, in the probable course of things, if he wrote at all, must have been his own postman.  But the Fates—­(our Christianity can afford to wink now and then at Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos; for, at any rate, they are as reasonable creatures as Chance, Luck, and Accident,)—­the Fates willed it otherwise:  and, accordingly, it is in my power to lay before the reader another genuine lucubration of Charles Tracy.

A change had come over the spirit of their dream, those youthful lovers:  and agonizing doubt must rack their hearts, threatening to rend them both asunder.  It is evident to me that Charles’s letter (which Emily showed to me with a melancholy face) was on principle less warm, less dottable with stars, and more conversant with things of this world; high, firm, honourable principle; intending very gently, very gradually, to wean her from him, if he could; for his faith in Jeanie Mackie had been shaken, and—­but let us hear him tell us of it all himself.