Graham's Magazine, Vol XXXIII, No. 6, December 1848. Various
her support – and my presentiment has been verified. Yes, Ida Lindsay is dying! I would have saved her – I would have borne her to a more genial clime, where she might, perhaps, have revived; but she refused to give me a right to be her guardian, for it was against the will of my parent, without whose sanction, she said, our union would never prosper."
He bowed his face, while for an instant his frame shook with emotion. Hastily his father drew nearer to him, but he turned shudderingly from those words of penitence and self-reproach, and dashing aside the extended hand, rushed from the apartment.
It was, indeed, too true – Ida Lindsay was dying! The constant confinement called for by her continued exertions to obtain a livelihood, had proved too much for a constitution by no means strong – and it was his anxiety for her failing health which had caused the illness of Harry Sydney. Oh! what would not the erring father have given for power to recall the past; but it was too late – too late! A few hours after the interview with his son the intelligence of Ida's death was received, and during the whole of the succeeding evening Captain Sydney could plainly distinguish the sound of Harry's footsteps as he wildly paced his chamber, and each echo sent a thrill of remorse to his soul. Little did the repentant and sorrowing parent then think it was the last time that footfall would ever resound in his dwelling – for that night Harry Sydney departed from his home, leaving no trace of his destination. Days, weeks, months passed on, and the heart of his father grew dark with the anguish of despair, for he felt most surely that he should behold his son no more. Whither the latter had gone was a mystery he tried in vain to solve, though sometimes he remembered Harry's predilection for a mariner's life, and blighted as he had been in his affections, might he not now have followed the yearnings of former times, as the only means of gaining oblivion of his sorrows? So, night after night, Captain Sydney sat alone at his deserted hearth – a father, and yet childless, with a host of dark recollections pressing heavily upon his spirit. And at last he sought forgetfulness of his errors in the sparkling wine-cup, whose draught he drained with an intense eagerness, for it enabled him to mock at his misery.
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