Attempt > Volume 3

220 THE ATTEMPT.
' I and the young Christiana who live in our houae, and atudy with my father, and read under his
direction. There are five, all from the south, who are, like me, preparing to be ministers of the gospel.'
Another wide yawn from Elly. ' Do you think your father will stay much longer, if so, I shall go
to bed ? ' "
And then Elizabeth half goes to sleep, and dreams, and wakes up suddenly, with a
vague fear that they are plotting something at the window, and that it is about her.
" 'What is it, Mr Anthony?' said she, very fierce. 'Is it—they do not think that I would
ever—ever dream—or think of marrying you ?' "
One should scarcely recognise the same wayward, proud beauty, some months
after, in the quiet, broken-spirited girl, who listens calmly to the proposal, the idea
of which she so scorned that day, and merely asks time to think of it. By that time
her life seemed to her a burden, though it was no hard life, only a little dull and
wearisome; but, instead of trying to make her path as bearable as possible, she
kicked against every obstacle she encountered, and so became bruised and miserable.
Any change seems to her then a desirable one, and so she says, she will think of it;
but before she has time to think, a glimpse of her old love comes to her, and poor
Anthony is forever thrown overboard.
I must not, however, linger over this early part of the story; over Elly's folly,
and Sir John's selfishness. Then comes the illness, the touching, seemingly death¬
bed scene, and Madame Tourneur's silent repentance; and here. Miss Thackeray says,
her story should have stopped, and so, from an artistic point of view, it might have
been well, but as a view of human nature it would have failed. We have yet to see
Elizabeth come forth from suffering, ennobled and purified, and revive and expand
under the genial influence of kind Miss Dampier.
Next follow some bright, bracing scenes in England, the most hearty and spirited
in the book, with clever, kind-hearted, would-be cynical Will Dampier laughing at
his cousin's silly love affair, and his aunt's romance, though finally becoming a victim
to the siren himself ; and Miss Dampier feeding the romance with sentiment, and
petting Elly, and Elly herself getting the better of her past life, sending her vacil¬
lating lover back to his betrothed, refusing Will Damf)ier, and returning to her Paris
home, as the saying goes, a wiser and a better girl than she was before; and then,
after a while, comes the denoument, where all is explained, and all are made happy—
dear, romantic Aunt Jean (Miss Dampier) hardly less so than the principal
parties.
It is a pleasant story, and pleasantly written ; simple and unaffected in style,
with here and there an under-cuirent of humour—as, for example, in that last scene.