It was night—arrivals had commenced—the lights, the music, the decorations, the sight and scent of the flowers, all added to the aching of Caroline's temples and the confusion of her ideas, as she stood in a sort of waking dream, conscious only of wretchedness, near the door of the first of the reception rooms, courtesying with a mechanical smile to each new group that appeared. She would have given the world to have been any where else, but this was the post her mother had commanded her to fill.

When the ladies of the Arden party entered, she felt a childish impulse to fling herself into the bosom of Lady Arden, and drawing all the daughters round her, entreat them to hide her from her cruel mother.

Alfred next appeared, accompanied by Sir Willoughby and Mr. Geoffery Arden. The two latter named gentlemen had been expected for some days, but had arrived only about two hours before.

Alfred presented both, and some unmeaning conversation passed about the heat of London, how long they had been on the road, &c. Our hero, the moment he came in, missed the flowers Caroline had promised to wear, and felt disappointed. If she had forgotten them in the hurry of dressing it was no very flattering token of her regard. If, on the other hand, Lady Palliser had noticed and forbid her wearing them, it was a bad symptom of his ultimate success. He longed for an opportunity of venturing some playful reproach which might lead to an explanation. When his companions moved on a step or two he drew very near, and asked in an emphatic whisper, if the chosen blossoms had faded already. A rush of colour, which the peculiar fairness of Caroline's complexion already described made the more remarkable, covered her cheeks in a moment; but she attempted no reply. After a short and somewhat anxious pause Alfred asked her to dance; she looked up suddenly but vacantly, as if scarcely comprehending what he had said, but still spoke not. He was just about to repeat his words, when Willoughby, who had been conversing with Lady Palliser, turned round and made the same request. Caroline, glancing towards her mother, and seeing her eye upon her, started, assented quickly, took Willoughby's arm, and walked to the quadrille.

Lady Palliser noted the chagrin of our hero with secret triumph, and suddenly forming one of her usually whimsical and tyrannical resolves, determined, as an appropriate punishment for the lovers, to marry her daughter to Sir Willoughby, whose match in town she had heard it confidently reported was off. Though he was but a baronet, his immense property made it at least an eligible marriage; and such, little as she cared about Caroline, she had always considered it a necessary part of etiquette some time or other to provide.

That Alfred, however, might ascribe Caroline's change to her own caprice, and be the more mortified, Lady Palliser took his arm, walked about with him for a considerable time, and treated him with more than her usual cordiality.

It had the desired effect, it threw him into complete despair; he could not now even console himself with the thought that Caroline was acting under the influence of her mother.

When the dancing had ceased, and Caroline was seated with her evidently delighted partner on a distant sofa, Lady Palliser led our hero up to her, and said, "Come, Caroline, I have no notion of giving up old friends for new ones altogether: you must dance one set with poor Alfred; do see how forlorn he looks."

Caroline was utterly confounded: had her mother forgiven them—was she going to relent.

Such happy thoughts, however, were soon scattered, for Lady Palliser, on pretext of arranging a stray ringlet, drawing very near, whispered, with a menacing frown, "Take care how you behave, and what you say." The frown and whisper destroying as they did the momentary hope, caused Caroline, on taking Alfred's arm, to look so much disappointed that it was impossible not to infer that she would rather have remained on the sofa. Yet Alfred could not bring himself to believe this! he was miserable, however, and did not know what to think; while he was so much occupied forming painful conjectures, that he himself behaved strangely and coldly.

Caroline thought with intense agony of the task she had to perform in the morning, while with a feeling allied to terror she stole from time to time a momentary glance at the features of him she must so soon mortally offend; to whom she must so soon give apparently just cause to view her henceforward with hatred and contempt. She even fancied that his countenance wore already a severity of expression she had never seen in it before. She bewildered herself too with the thought, that if she could get an opportunity and venture just to whisper, "Mr. Arden, don't mind any thing I am obliged to say to you in the morning," it might prevent his thinking so very very ill of her as he must otherwise do. This sentence she repeated to herself above an hundred times during the quadrille, yet whenever she was going to address it to Alfred, and more than once she moved her lips to begin, she either caught her mother's eye turned upon her, or she fancied it might be, and dared not look to see lest it should give her a conscious and guilty appearance; or the impression that Alfred was already displeased became so strong as to deprive her of the courage to speak to him; besides all which, her heart at each abortive attempt she made to articulate, leaped up into her throat, and by its excessive fluttering quite choked her utterance, till the convenient moment was gone by. On the music ceasing, Lady Palliser came up and took her away, as if in great haste to make some arrangement, yet, in so obliging a manner, and with so many pretty excuses, that Alfred thought her ladyship at least was unchanged.

And so must Caroline, he told himself again and again; "it can be but fancy on my part, or rather, all that seems strange and altered in her manner must proceed from her extreme delicacy, her excessive timidity, her consciousness that we now perfectly understand each other's thoughts makes her fearful to meet my eye, at least with others present; makes her afraid that all the world will know the moment they see us together what is passing in our hearts. I can well imagine one so gentle, so young, so fearful, feeling the newness of her situation, almost as though she were already a bride; having listened but this very morning, for the first time in her life, I should suppose favourably, to the accent of a lover."

Alfred had wandered into the conservatory, where, amid the intoxicating odours of ten thousand exotics—pursuing this train of thought—he luxuriated for a time in dream-like meditations on the delicacy, the devotion, the exclusive tenderness, which must necessarily characterise the attachment of a being so pure, so innocent, so unpractised in the world's ways as Caroline—his Caroline! Yes, he was now entitled to combine with her idea this endearing epithet.

He was standing the while with his arms folded and his eyes unconsciously uplifted to a brilliant lamp, as if lost in contemplation of its brightness.

A change in the music broke his reverie; when his discerning vision passing along a vista of orange trees, found its way into the drawing-room, and fell on a group preparing to waltz. Among these, and occupying the very spot hallowed to memory by the interview of the morning, he beheld Caroline standing with the arm of Willoughby round her slender waist, and her hand resting on his shoulder—a moment after the couple had launched amid the tide of changing forms; but Alfred's eye still traced them as they floated round and round the prescribed circle, till, what with the moving scene, and his own thoughts of agony, his brain went round also. He had never been able to prevail with Caroline to waltz, her plea of refusal had always been that she did not waltz. Was she then changed in every sentiment—in every opinion—in every feeling! Had she become hardened to the world—lost to personal delicacy—lost to affection—lost to him! What had she—what had she not become! and all within a few short hours.