The next morning while we were at breakfast, our society was increased by an abrupt visitor. On hearing a rap at the street door, Mrs. Semhurst smiled, and said, “Oh, here’s Miranda: some new distress, I suppose”: she then began to warn me not to be surprised at the sight of the lady who she imagined was coming in: “she is our next door neighbour,” said she, “and a very extraordinary foreigner.”
She had proceeded no farther, when a young female, genteel and elegant in her look and manner, hastily introduced herself. Seeing a stranger, she paused; but a word of encouragement from Mrs. Semhurst brought her forward: she had in her hand an open letter, and I presently discovered that she knew but little English, and came to have its contents explained.
While this was doing I could not detach my eyes from the young lady. I remarked great symmetry in her features, and the most pleasing expression in her countenance; she hatf fine eyes, fine teeth, and long glossy black hair, which without any assistance, or any decoration but a simple ribbon, covered her shoulders in a profusion of ringlets. Her person was exquisitely formed, and her motions highly graceful; but she was almost a negro. The hue of her skin perhaps wanted some
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shades of the deep African dye; but it had passed the degree of copper colour.
When her queries were answered, and I had been introduced to her, she returned home; and Mrs. Semhurst gratified the curiosity my countenance must have proclaimed, by giving me a brief account of this charming mulatto. She said, she was the niece of a Dutch gentleman who occupied the next house, and who had been originally bred up to the study of physic. His name was Vanderparcke, and this young woman was the daughter of his brother who had settled in Batavia, and married a negro woman there. Miranda had been left an orphan when very young: her riches were immense, and this uncle was her faithful guardian, and only relation in England. She had been here only a year; and Dutch being her native language, she was frequently at a loss to express herself, though she had already made a wonderful progress; but the attainment of our language was impeded by Dr. Vanderparcke’s ignorance of it, and therefore it was that she applied on all occasions to Mrs. Semhurst who had known her from her first arrival. —To this account she added great encomiums on Miranda, who, though but eighteen years of age appeared to have reached an uncommon pitch of excellence.
A few days made this ebon-beauty as familiar with me as with her better-known friend; and such was my situation that my only anxiety was lest it should be too blissful to last. I received an immediate return from lady Donachmuir, not only congratulating me on my new acquisition, and saying whatever could recommend me; but inclosing bills to the amount of fifty pounds. I availed myself of Mrs. Semhurst’s permission by renewing my acquaintance with such of lady Cadwicke’s and Mrs. Dibart’s friends as I thought would be acceptable visitors to my patroness; and I blest lady Jane Alderway’s cruelty.
Mrs. Semhurst in a few days after I came to her, mentioned Mrs. Agthorpe as her daughter; but made no mention of her son. It did not become me to be inquisitive where I supposed there was a reason for concealment; but a letter being brought to her one morning when Miranda and I were with her, she could not forbear crying out as she looked at the direction, “Thank Heaven, it is from my son.”—“From Mr. Cyril?” said Miranda.—I started involuntarily—Mrs. Semhurst changed colour, and looked at me, while Miranda eagerly glancing at the writing, kissed the seal with the utmost affection and respect, and returned it to Mrs. Semhurst, who opened and read it in silence, I all the while tormented with fears of I knew not what.
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I had never from any one heard Mr. Cyril’s name, and I now, made suspicious by deceit, feared it had been secreted for some purpose which would be fatal to my present enjoyments. But Mrs. Semhurst, as soon as she had perused the letter, and pointed out to Miranda a paragraph intended for her decyphering, relieved my torturing anxiety by saying I was perhaps surprised at hearing she had a son.—“I did not intend,” said she, “to have told you of him till you had lived with me long enough to be satisfied of my prudent regard for you, lest at the first notice of a young man here you should have taken wing. You have no cause of alarm,” she added, “for Cyril is very sober and well inclined: his letter says I may expect him in a few weeks as he leaves Rome this day; but I assure you, Miss Hamilton, that though he comes sooner than I supposed he would think of returning, I will not expose you to the malice of the world by suffering him to live at home. He will be very happy in your society when he visits here; but I must remember I have a ward’s interests to consult now.”
Grateful as I felt for such extraordinary attention and kindness, I could not but represent to Mrs. Semhurst the propriety of my rather withdrawing from her house. This she opposed strenuously; and I ‘nothing loth,’ submitted to her decision. At that moment I wanted nothing but the absence of Miss Vanderparcke to have courageously closed to Mrs. Semhurst my peculiar situation, but this spark of bravery was soon extinguished—I dreaded the resentment of the lady in Audley square, who was often with us, and when Miranda was gone'I employed the opportunity only in learning that this Mr. Cyril was the identical person who had expressed so much concern for me at my bankers’. His mother accounted for the visits he had designed me, by his wish to assist me in recovering a part of my property, and said it was his report of my distress that had induced her to call on me while at Richmond, and had informed her of my connection with captain Dibart’s family.
Two months of the three to which my invitation extended, had slid away in a manner that sunk all past evils in present enjoyment. Mrs. Semhurst was lady Cadwicke to me, Miranda was a sister; and in forwarding her in her various and eager pursuit of improvement, I found a constant source of entertainment and delight. Knowing the period, for which I was engaged, she obtained from Mrs. Semhurst and myself, a promise that if we at its expiration chose to separate, I should fix myself permanently at Dr. Vanderparcke’s, who, good old man! was almost as desirous as his niece that I should live with her: Mrs. Semhurst,
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whenever this was mentioned, put it off with an arch smile; and ‘Yes, yes, as soon as ever I wish to part with Miss Hamilton, you shall have her.’
Miranda’s character of mind was as foreign as her hue. Her spirits were indeed ‘finely touched:’ the least circumstance affected them: joy would transport her to delightful frenzy, and the gaiety of her heart would operate on every joint and every muscle; but she had feelings so exquisitely tender, that did the distress even of a stranger but intrude with half a step on her most vivid pleasures, the exulting bosom beat no more with rapture; her joys were in an instant annihilated, and sorrow occupied her dusky countenance: tears of sympathy would start from her eyes, nor would she rest or attend to aught else while an effort to relieve the sufferer remained unexerted.
Soon after the time I am speaking of, we were for a while deprived of this amiable girl’s company: her fine nerves required the sea-air, and she left us to go to the Kentish coast. Her letters now amused us: the jargon she wrote in was diverting, though not always intelligible, and her observations were acute and just. In this interval Mr. Cyril returned: he had been informed of the addition I had made to his mother’s family, and received me with the utmost cordiality.
We staid but a short time in town after this. Mrs. Semhurst renewed her engagement with me for another three months; she offered me at the same time a twenty-pound note which I declined accepting, as I really did not want money; and I went with her to her house in Sussex. Mr. Cyril went into Hampshire to make a short visit to his sister, and in about a fortnight after our removal, he, Mr. and Mrs. Agthorpe, Dr. Vanderparcke and Miranda, joined us.
Of Mrs. Semhurst’s daughter, Mrs. Agthorpe and her husband, it is unnecessary and unfair to give portraits. I knew them never intimately; and as they are now no more, it is fitter that their actions should be their biographers than that I should attempt to design their characters.
Miranda’s health when she returned to us was apparently reestablished: the sports and graces attended the charming moor, and she attracted the utmost notice. But a few weeks made a lamentable alteration in her; she grew emaciated, weak, and hectic. We were all seriously apprehensive for her: she expressed a wish to return home: her uncle went with her: Mr. and Mrs. Agthorpe left us; and Miranda’s increasing illness soon after drew Mrs. Semhurst again to town, whither Mr. Cyril and I accompanied
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her. He took up his abode in the Temple, and as it was a season of the year when London is emptying, our leisure was wholly at liberty to attend Miranda.
Soon after she began to droop, an idea had entered my mind, which all my subsequent observation tended to strengthen, that Miranda’s malady was love, and Mr. Cyril the object of it. The playful girl had precluded common suspicion by the artlessness of her conduct and her characteristic simplicity. At her first meeting Mr. Cyril after his return home, I witnessed the ecstasy of her joy. Wild as her native woods, and free as the gale that agitated them, she was ignorant of the cold reserves fashion enjoins, and all the hypocrisies of cities. What she felt she expressed in all the force of nature; and those to whose tuition she had been committed, saw too clearly the beauty of her mind to spoil it by imposing shackles on it. Miranda could do nothing reprehensible while Reason was her judge; for she was purity itself, darkly as she was arrayed; but Miranda sinned every hour against arbitrary fashion and servile custom.
She greeted Mr. Cyril in her first interview with all the love of a sister for a sister: she hung about him: she kissed his hands and lips with rapture; and when Mrs. Semhurst laughed at her extravagance she, totally ignorant of the cause of her merriment, replied archly, “Never mind: colour won’t come off.” She tried, by repeating English words, to convince him of her industry in his absence; and closed her account with inexpressible pathos, by saying, while she looked at him with extreme tenderness, and the tears gushed from her eyes—“No praise—what could I do but learn when you away?”
On the part of Mr. Cyril I perceived less emotion, but his fondness seemed equal: he call her his dear Orra-moor, his good girl, and heard with evident interest of her endeavours and progress; but I saw nothing in him that looked like that species of attachment which the dissimilarity of their complexions might have been thought to secure them from. He seemed to love her, but as a daughter; and as he had ten years advantage of her in age, the idea was not absurd.
On our return to town she again mended, and though weak, was able to visit us frequently. I now saw clearly into her hteart: she had felt her uneasiness increase while in the house with Mr. * Cyril: she had fled him to get rid of it: her flight was inefficacious, and absence still more pernicious to her quiet. His presence again cheared her; and that she might not again be compelled to fly, she was struggling against her internal enemy.
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Attention to this amiable girl had called my thought from myself, and till she was out of all danger prevented my perceiving that Mr. Cyril’s behaviour to me was not such as common intimacy, and our comparatively short acquaintance would account for. As his friends were for the most part out of London at this time, he was perpetually in Harley street, would stay late in the evening, and then, as if out of mere laziness, prefer sleeping there. He seemed to have no suspicion about Miranda, or, if he had, he endeavoured to damp her hopes by a mode of conduct that should lead her to imagine him attached to me.
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