Adeline Mowbray; or, The Mother and Daughter. Amelia Opie

against the brass edge of one of the sofas, that, stunned and wounded by the fall, he lay bleeding on the ground. Adeline involuntarily was hastening to his assistance: but recollecting how mischievous to her such an exertion of humanity might be, she contented herself with ringing the bell violently to call the servants to his aid. Then, in almost frantic haste, she rushed out of the house, ran across the park, and when she recovered her emotion she found herself, she scarcely knew how, sitting on a turf seat by the road side.

      'What will become of me!' she wildly exclaimed: 'my mother's roof is no longer a protection to me;—I cannot absent myself from it without alleging a reason for my conduct, which will ruin her peace of mind for ever. Wretch that I am! whither can I go, and where can I seek for refuge?'

      At this moment, as she looked around in wild dismay, and raised her streaming eyes to heaven, she saw a man's face peeping from between the branches of a tree opposite to her, and observed that he was gazing on her intently. Alarmed and fluttered, she instantly started from her seat, and was hastening away, when the man suddenly dropped from his hiding-place, and, running after her, called her by her name, and conjured her to stop; while, with an emotion of surprise and delight, she recognized in him Arthur, the servant of Glenmurray!

      Instantly, scarcely knowing what she did, she pressed the astonished Arthur's rough hand in hers; and by this action confused and confounded the poor fellow so much, that the speech which he was going to make faltered on his tongue.

      'Oh! where is your master?' eagerly inquired Adeline.

      'My master has sent you this, miss,' replied Arthur, holding out a letter, which Adeline joyfully received; and, spite of her intended obedience to her mother's will, Glenmurray himself could not have met with a more favourable reception, for the moment was a most propitious one to his love: nor, as it happened, was Glenmurray too far off to profit by it. On his way from Bath he went a few miles out of his road, in order, as he said, and perhaps as he thought, to pay a visit to an old servant of his mother's, who was married to a respectable farmer; but, fortunately, the farm commanded a view of the Pavilion, and Glenmurray could from his window gaze on the house that contained the woman of his affections.