Chapter 45

It has been already mentioned, that the health of Lady Pendennyss suffered
a severe shock, in giving birth to a daughter. Change of scene was
prescribed as a remedy for her disorder, and Denbigh and his wife were on
their return from a fruitless excursion amongst the northern lakes, in
pursuit of amusement and relief for the latter when they were compelled to
seek shelter from the fury of a sudden gust in the first building that
offered. It was a farm-house of the better sort; and the attendants,
carriages, and appearance of their guests, caused no little confusion to
its simple inmates. A fire was lighted in the best parlor, and every
effort was made by the inhabitants to contribute to the comforts of the
travellers.

The countess and her husband were sitting in that kind of listless
melancholy which had been too much the companion of their later hours,
when in the interval of the storm, a male voice in an adjoining room
commenced singing the following ballad, the notes being low, monotonous,
but unusually sweet, and the enunciation so distinct, as to rende every
syllable intelligible:

Oh! I have lived in endless pain,
And I have lived, alas! in vain,
For none regard my woe--
No father's care conveyed the truth,
No mother's fondness blessed my youth,
Ah! joys too great to know--

And Marian's love, and Marian's pride,
Have crushed the heart that would have died.
To save my Marian's tears--
A brother's hand has struck the blow
Oh! may that brother never know
Such madly sorrowing years!

But hush my griefs--and hush my song,
I've mourned in vain--I've mourned too long;
When none have come to soothe--
And dark's the path, that lies before,
And dark have been the days of yore,
And all was dark in youth.

The maids employed around the person of their comfortless mistress, the
valet of Denbigh engaged in arranging a dry coat for his master--all
suspended their employments to listen in breathless silence to the
mournful melody of the song.

But Denbigh himself had started from his seat at the first notes, and he
continued until the voice ceased, gazing in vacant horror in the direction
of the sounds. A door opened from the parlor to the room of the musician;
he rushed through it, and there, in a kind of shed to the building, which
hardly sheltered him from the fury of the tempest, clad in the garments of
the extremest poverty, with an eye roving in madness, and a body rocking
to and fro from mental inquietude, he beheld seated on a stone the remains
of his long lost brother, Francis.

The language of the song was too plain to be misunderstood. The truth
glared around George with a violence that dazzled his brain; but he saw it
all, he