Blind Love

There now remained but one other person in Lord Harry's household whose

presence on the scene was an obstacle to be removed.

This person was the cook. On condition of her immediate departure

(excused by alleged motives of economy), she received a month's wages

from her master, in advance of the sum due to her, and a written

character which did ample justice to her many good qualities. The poor

woman left her employment with the heartiest expressions of gratitude.

To the end of her days, she declared the Irish lord to be a nobleman by

nature. Republican principles, inherited from her excellent parents,

disinclined her to recognise him as a nobleman by birth.

But another sweet and simple creature was still left to brighten the

sinister gloom in the cottage.

The good Dane sorely tried the patience of Fanny Mere. This countryman

of Hamlet, as he liked to call himself, was a living protest against

the sentiments of inveterate contempt and hatred, with which his nurse

was accustomed to regard the men. When pain spared him at intervals,

Mr. Oxbye presented the bright blue eyes and the winning smile which

suggested the resemblance to the Irish lord. His beardless face, thin

towards the lower extremities, completed the likeness in some degree

only. The daring expression of Lord Harry, in certain emergencies,

never appeared. Nursing him carefully, on the severest principles of

duty as distinguished from inclination, Fanny found herself in the

presence of a male human being, who in the painless intervals of his

malady, wrote little poems in her praise; asked for a few flowers from

the garden, and made prettily arranged nosegays of them devoted to

herself; cried, when she told him he was a fool, and kissed her hand

five minutes afterwards, when she administered his medicine, and gave

him no pleasant sweet thing to take the disagreeable taste out of his

mouth. This gentle patient loved Lord Harry, loved Mr. Vimpany, loved

the furious Fanny, resist it as she might. On her obstinate refusal to

confide to him the story of her life--after he had himself set her the

example at great length--he persisted in discovering for himself that

"this interesting woman was a victim of sorrows of the heart." In

another state of existence, he was offensively certain that she would

be living with him. "You are frightfully pale, you will soon die; I

shall break a blood-vessel, and follow you; we shall sit side by side

on clouds, and sing together everlastingly to accompaniment of

celestial harps. Oh, what a treat!" Like a child, he screamed when he

was in pain; and, like a child, he laughed when the pain had gone away.

When she was angry enough with him to say, "If I had known what sort of

man you were, I would never have undertaken to nurse you," he only

answered, "my dear, let us thank God together that you did not know."

There was no temper in him to be roused; and, worse still, on buoyant

days, when his spirits were lively, there was no persuading him that he

might not live long enough to marry his nurse, if he only put the

question to her often enough. What was to be done with such a man as

this? Fanny believed that she despised her feeble patient. At the same

time, the food that nourished him was prepared by her own hands--while

the other inhabitants of the cottage were left (in the absence of the

cook) to the tough mercies of a neighbouring restaurant. First and

foremost among the many good deeds by which the conduct of women claims

the gratitude of the other sex, is surely the manner in which they let

an unfortunate man master them, without an unworthy suspicion of that

circumstance to trouble the charitable serenity of their minds.