Sir Richard Crofts brought Mr. Rochely to Lord Montreville at the time appointed; and in consequence of the conversation then held, his Lordship was confirmed in his resolution of persisting in the plan Sir Richard had laid down, to force Emmeline to accept the good fortune offered her. Lord Montreville had sent as soon as he got to town to Delamere's lodgings, whose servants said that he had slept there, but was then gone out. His Lordship concluded he was gone to Clapham; but as he could not remedy his uneasiness on that head, he was obliged to endure it. About twelve o'clock Delamere had arranged matters for his concealment; and about three, as Lord Montreville was dressing to go out, Millefleur, together with Delamere's footman and groom, came as they had been ordered to Berkley-Square. This circumstance was no sooner related to Lord Montreville by his valet de chambre, than he ordered Millefleur to be sent up. The Frenchman related to his Lordship, that his master was certainly gone to Mr. Percival's; but Lord Montreville concluded he was gone to Scotland, and, in a tempest of anger and vexation, cursed the hour when he had listened to the advice of Sir Richard Crofts, the harshness of whose proceedings had, he imagined, precipitated the event he had so long dreaded. He was so entirely persuaded that this conjecture was the truth, that he first gave orders for a post-chaise and four to be ready directly; then recollecting that if he overtook his son he had no power to force him back, he thought it better to take with him some one who could influence Emmeline. His youngest daughter was still in Yorkshire; Mrs. Stafford he knew not where to find; but he supposed that Mrs. Ashwood, with whom she had lived some months, might have power to persuade her; and not knowing what else to do, indeed hardly knowing what he expected from the visit, he ordered his coachman to be as expeditious as possible in conveying him to the house of that lady.

Mrs. Ashwood, her brother, and four or five other persons related to the family, were at dinner. Lord Montreville entered the room; spoke to those he knew with as much civility as he could; but not seeing Emmeline among them, his apprehensions were confirmed. He desired they would not disturb themselves; and declined sharing their repast; but being unable to conceal his emotion till it was over, he said to Mrs. Ashwood—'I am sorry, Madam, to trouble you on this unhappy business. I did hope you would have had the goodness at least to inform me of it. What can I do?' exclaimed he, breaking suddenly from his discourse and rising—'Good God, what can I do?'

The company were silent, and amazed.

Mrs. Ashwood, however, said, 'I am sorry that any thing, my Lord, has disturbed your Lordship. I am sure I should have been happy, my Lord, could I have been of any service to your Lordship in whatever it is.'

'Disturbed!' cried he, striking his forehead with his hand, 'I am distracted! When did she go? How long has she been gone?'

'Who, my Lord?'

'Miss Mowbray—Emmeline—Oh! it will be impossible to overtake them!'

'Gone! my Lord?'

'Gone with Delamere!—Gone to Scotland!'

'Miss Mowbray was however in the house not an hour ago,' said Miss Galton; 'I saw her myself go up the garden just as we sat down to dinner.'

'Then she went to meet him!—then they went together!'—exclaimed Lord Montreville, walking round the room.

An assertion so positive staggered every one. They rose from table in confusion.

'Let us go up,' said Mrs. Ashwood; 'I can hardly think it possible, my Lord, that Miss Mowbray is gone, unless your Lordship absolutely saw them.'

Yet Mrs. Ashwood remembered that Delamere had been there in the morning, and that Emmeline had dined early alone, and had remained by herself all the rest of the day, under pretence of sickness; and she began to believe that all this was done to give her time to elope with Delamere.

She went up stairs; and Lord Montreville, without knowing what he did, followed her. The stairs were carpetted; any one ascending was hardly heard; and Mrs. Ashwood suddenly throwing open the door of her chamber, Lord Montreville saw her, with her handkerchief held to her face, hanging over a packet of papers which lay on the table before her.

Emmeline did not immediately look up—an exclamation from Lord Montreville made her take her handkerchief from her eyes.

She arose; tried to conceal the sorrow visible in her countenance yet wet with tears, and assuming as much as she could her native ease and sweetness, she advanced towards his Lordship, who still stood at the door, amazed, and asked him if he would pardon her for desiring him to sit down in a bed-chamber; if not, she would wait on him below. She then went back to the table; threw the papers into the casket that was on it; and placing a chair between that and the fire, again asked him if he would do her the honour to sit down.

Lord Montreville did so, but said nothing. He was ashamed of his precipitancy; yet as Emmeline did not know it, he would not mention it; and was yet too full of the idea to speak of any thing else.

Mrs. Ashwood had left them—Emmeline continued silent.

Lord Montreville, after a long pause, at length said, with a stern and displeased countenance, 'I understand, Miss Mowbray, that my son was here this morning.'

'Yes, my Lord.'

'Pray, do you know where he now is?'

'I do not, indeed. Is he not at your Lordship's house?'

'No; I am told by his servants that he is gone to Mr. Percival's—But you—'(continued he, laying a strong emphasis on the word) 'you, Miss Mowbray, are I dare say better informed of his intentions than any one else.'

'Upon my word, my Lord,' answered Emmeline, astonished, 'I do not know. He said nothing to me of an intention to go any where; on the contrary, he told me he should be here again to-morrow.'

'And is it possible you are ignorant of his having left London this morning, immediately after he returned from visiting you?'

'My Lord, I have never yet stooped to the meanness of a falsehood. Why should your Lordship now suppose me guilty of it? I repeat—and I hope you will do me the justice to believe me—upon my honour I do not know whither Mr. Delamere is gone—nor do I know that he has left London.'

Lord Montreville could not but believe her. But while his fears were relieved as to the elopement, they were awakened anew by the uncertainty of what was become of his son, and what his motive could be for this sudden disappearance.

He thought however the present opportunity of speaking to Emmeline of his resolution was not to be neglected.

'However ignorant you may be, Miss Mowbray,' said he, 'of the reason of his having quitted his lodgings, you are not to learn that his motive for estranging himself from his family, and becoming a stranger to his father's house, originates in his inconsiderate attachment to you. Contrary to the assurances you gave me at Swansea, you have encouraged this attachment; and, as I understand from Sir Richard Crofts, you peremptorily and even rudely refuse the opportunity now offered you of establishing yourself in rank and affluence, which no other young woman would a moment hesitate to accept. Such a refusal cannot be owing to mere caprice; nor could it possibly happen had you not determined, in despite of every objection, and of bringing discord into my family, to listen to that infatuated and rash young man.'

'Your Lordship does not treat me with your usual candour. I have promised you, voluntarily promised you, not to marry Mr. Delamere without your Lordship's consent. To prevent his coming here was out of my power; but if I really aspired to the honour of which your Lordship thinks me ambitious, what has prevented me from engaging at once with Mr. Delamere? who has, I own to you, pressed me repeatedly to elope. My Lord, while I am treated with kindness and confidence, I can rely upon my own resolution to deserve it; but when your Lordship, on suspicion or misrepresentation, is induced to withdraw that kindness and confidence—why should I make a point of honour, where you no longer seem to expect it?'

The truth of this answer, as well as it's spirit, at once hurt and irritated Lord Montreville.

Determined to separate Emmeline from his son, he was mortified to be forced to acknowledge in his own breast that she merited all his affection, and angry that she should be in the right when he wished to have found something to blame in her conduct. Pride and self-love seemed to resent that a little weak girl should pretend to a sense of rectitude, and a force of understanding greater than his own.

'Miss Mowbray,' said his Lordship sharply, 'I will be very explicit with you—either consent to marry Mr. Rochely, whose affection does you so much honour, or expect from me no farther kindness.'

'Your Lordship knows,' answered Emmeline, 'that I have no friend on whom I have the least claim but you. If you abandon me—but, my Lord, ought you to do it?—— I am indeed most friendless!'

She could no longer command her tears—sobs obliged her to cease speaking.

Lord Montreville thought her resolution would give way; and trying to divest himself of all feeling, with an effort truly political, he determined to press his point.

'It is in your power,' resumed he, 'not only to place yourself above all fear of such desertion, but to engage my affection and that of my whole family. You will be in a situation of life which I should hardly refuse for one of the Miss Delameres. You will possess the most unbounded affluence, and a husband who adores you. A man unexceptionable in character; of a mature age; and whose immense fortune is every day encreasing. You will be considered by me, and by Lady Montreville, as a daughter of the house of Mowbray. The blemish of your birth will be wiped off and forgotten.'

Emmeline wept more than before.

And his Lordship continued, 'If you absurdly refuse an offer so infinitely above your expectations, I shall consider myself as having more than done my duty in putting it in your way; and that your folly and imprudence dissolve all obligation on my part. You must no longer call yourself Mowbray; and you must forget that you ever were allowed to be numbered among the relations of my family. Nor shall I think myself obliged in any manner to provide for a person, who in scorn of gratitude, prudence and reputation, throws from her an opportunity of providing for herself.'

Emmeline regained some degree of resolution. She looked up, her eyes streaming with tears, and said, 'Well, my Lord! to the lowest indigence I must then submit; for to marry Mr. Rochely is not in my power.'

'We will suppose for a moment,' resumed Lord Montreville, 'that you could realize the visionary hopes you have presumed to indulge of uniting yourself to Mr. Delamere. Dear as he is to me and his mother, we are determined from that moment to renounce him—never shall the rebellious son who has dared to disobey us, be again admitted to our presence!—never will we acknowledge as his wife, a person forced upon us and introduced into our family in despite of our commands, and in violation of duty, honour, and affection. You will be the occasion of his being loaded with the curses of both his parents, and of introducing misery and discord into his family. Can you yourself be happy under such circumstances? In point of fortune too you will find yourself deceived—while we live, Mr. Delamere can have but a very slender income; and of every thing in our power we shall certainly deprive him, both while we live, and at our decease. Consider well what I have said; and make use of your reason. Begin by giving up to me the ridiculous witnesses of a ridiculous and boyish passion, which must be no longer indulged; to keep a picture of Delamere is discreditable and indelicate—you will not refuse to relinquish it?'

He reached over the table, and took from among two or three loose papers, which yet lay before Emmeline, a little blue enamelled case, which he concluded contained a miniature of Delamere, of whom several had been drawn. Emmeline, absorbed in tears, did not oppose it. The spring of the case was defective. It opened in his hand; and presented to his view, not a portrait of his son, but of his brother, drawn when he was about twenty, and at a period when he was more than a brother—when he was the dearest friend Lord Montreville had on earth. A likeness so striking, which he had not seen for many years, had an immediate effect upon him.

His brother seemed to look at him mournfully. A melancholy cast about the eye-brows diminished the vivacity of the countenance, and the faded colour (for the picture had been painted seven and twenty years) gave it a look of languor and ill health; such perhaps as the original wore before his death, when a ruined constitution threatened him for some months, tho' his life terminated by a malignant fever in a few hours.

The poor distrest Emmeline was the only memorial left of him; and Lord Montreville felt her tears a reproach for his cruelty in thus threatening to abandon to her fate, the unhappy daughter of this once loved brother.

Sir Richard Crofts and Lady Montreville were not by, to intercept these sentiments of returning humanity. He found the tears fill his eyes as he gazed on the picture.

Emmeline, insensible of every thing, saw it not; and not conscious that he had taken it, the purport of his last words she believed to relate to a sketch she had herself made of Delamere. She was therefore surprized, when Lord Montreville arising, took her hand, and in a voice that witnessed the emotion of his soul, said—'Come, my dear Emmeline, pardon me for thus distressing you, you shall not be compelled to marry Mr. Rochely if you have so great a dislike to him. You shall still have an adequate support; and I trust I shall have nothing to fear from your indiscretion in regard to Delamere.'

'Your Lordship,' answered Emmeline, without taking her handkerchief from her eyes, 'has never yet found me capable of falsehood: I will repeat, if you desire it, the promise I gave you—I will even take the most solemn oath you shall dictate, never to be the wife of Mr. Delamere, unless your Lordship and Lady Montreville consent.'

'I take your promise,' answered his Lordship, 'and shall rely firmly upon it. But Emmeline, you must go from hence for your own sake; your peace and reputation require it; Delamere must not frequent the house where you are: you must conceal from him the place of your abode.'

'My Lord, I will be ingenuous with you. To go from hence is what I intend, and with your Lordship's permission I will set out immediately for Mrs. Stafford's. But to conceal from Mr. Delamere where I am, is not in my power; for I have given him a solemn promise to see him if he desires it, wherever I shall be: and as I hope you depend on my honour, it must be equally sacred whether given to him or you. You will therefore not insist on my breaking this engagement, and I promise you again never to violate the other.'

With this compromise, Lord Montreville was obliged to be content. He entreated Emmeline to see Rochely again, and hear his offers. But she absolutely refused; assuring Lord Montreville, that were his fortune infinitely greater, she would not marry him, tho' servitude should be the alternative.

His Lordship therefore forbore to press her farther. He desired, that if Delamere wrote to her, or saw her, she would let him know, which she readily agreed to; and he told her, that so long as she was single, and did nothing to disoblige him, he would pay her an hundred guineas a year in quarterly payments. He gave her a bank note of fifty pounds; and recommending it to her to go as soon as possible to Mrs. Stafford's, he kissed her cheek with an appearance of affection greater than he had yet shewn, and then went home to prepare for the reception of Lady Montreville, whose arrival he did not greatly wish for; dreading lest her violence and ill-temper should drive his son into some new extravagance. But as her will was not to be disputed, he submitted without remonstrance to the alteration of the plan he had proposed; which was, that his family should pass their Christmas in Norfolk, whither he intended to have returned.

The next day Delamere was again at Clapham, very early.

Emmeline, the additional agitation of whose mind had prevented her sleeping during the night, appeared more indisposed than she had done the day before.

Delamere, very much alarmed at her altered looks, anxiously enquired the cause? And without hesitation she told him simply all that had passed; the promise she had given to his father, to which she intended strictly to adhere, and the arrangement she had agreed to on condition of being persecuted no more on the score of Mr. Rochely.

It is impossible to describe the grief and indignation of Delamere, at hearing this relation. He saw all the hopes frustrated which he had been so long indulging; he saw between him and all he loved, a barrier which time only could remove; he dared not hope that Emmeline would ever be induced to break an engagement which she considered as binding; he dared not flatter himself with the most distant prospect of procuring the consent of Lord and Lady Montreville, and therefore by their deaths only could he obtain her; which if he had been unnatural enough to wish, was yet in all probability very distant; as Lord Montreville was not more than seven and forty, and of an excellent constitution; and Lady Montreville three years younger.

Passion and resentment for some moments stifled every other sentiment in the heart of Delamere. But the impediments that thus arose to his wishes were very far from diminishing their violence.

The more impossible his union with Emmeline seemed to be, the more ardently he desired it. The difficulties that might have checked, or conquered an inferior degree of passion, served only to strengthen his, and to render it insurmountable—

It was some moments before Emmeline could prevail upon him to listen to her. She then enquired why he had concealed himself from his father, and where he had been?

He answered, that he had avoided Lord Montreville, because, had he met him, he found himself incapable of commanding his temper and of forbearing to resent his sending Sir Richard Crofts to her, which he had promised her not to do. That therefore he had taken other lodgings in another part of the town, where he intended to remain.

Emmeline exhorted and implored him to return to Berkley-Square. He positively refused. He refused also to tell her where he lodged. And complaining loudly of her cruelty and coldness, yet tenderly entreating her to take care of her health, he left her; having first procured permission to see her the next day, and every day till she set out for Woodfield.

When he was gone, Miss Mowbray wrote to Lord Montreville—

'My Lord,

'In pursuance of the word I passed to your Lordship, I have the honour to acquaint you that Mr. Delamere has just left me. I endeavoured to prevail on him to inform me where he lodges; but he refuses to give me the least information. If it be your Lordship's wish to see him, you will probably have an opportunity of doing it here, as he proposed being here to-morrow; but refused to name the hour, apprehending perhaps that you might meet him, as I did not conceal from him that I should acquaint you with my having seen him.

I have the honour to be,
my Lord,
your Lordship's
most obedient servant,
Emmeline Mowbray.'

Clapham, Dec. 3.

Lord Montreville received this letter in her Ladyship's dressing-room. The servant who brought it in, said it came from Clapham; and Lady Montreville insisted on seeing its contents. She had been before acquainted with what had passed; and bestowed on her son the severest invectives for his obstinacy and folly. Poor Emmeline however, who was the cause of it, was the principal object of her resentment and disdain. Even this last instance of her rectitude, could not diminish the prejudice which embittered the mind of Lady Montreville against her. She lamented, whenever she deigned to speak of her, that the laws of this country, unlike those of better regulated kingdoms, did not give people of fashion power to remove effectually those who interfered with their happiness, or were inimical to their views. 'If this little wretch,' said she, 'was in France, it would not be difficult to put an end to the trouble she has dared to give us. A letter de cachet would cure the creature of her presumption, and place her where her art and affectation should not disturb the peace of families of high rank.'

Lord Montreville heard these invectives without reply, but not without pain.

Augusta Delamere, who arrived in Berkley-Square the same morning that Lady Montreville did, felt still more hurt by her mother's determined hatred to Emmeline, whom she languished to see, and had never ceased to love.

Miss Delamere inheriting all the pride of her mother, and adding to it a sufficient share of vanity and affectation of her own, had taken a dislike to the persecuted Emmeline, if possible more inveterate than that of Lady Montreville. Tho' she had never seen her, she detested her; and exerted all her influence on her mother to prevent her being received into the family as her father's relation. Fitz-Edward had praised her as the most interesting woman he had ever seen. Miss Delamere had no aversion to Fitz-Edward; and tho' he had never seemed sensible of the honour she did him, she could not divest herself wholly of that partiality towards him, which made her heartily abhor any woman he seemed to admire. When to this cause of dislike was added, what she called the insolent presumption of the animal in daring to attempt inveigling her brother into the folly of marrying, she thought she might indulge all the rancour, envy, and malignity of her heart.

When Lady Montreville had read the letter, she threw it down on the table contemptuously.

'It requires no answer,' said she to the servant who waited.

The man left the room.

'Well, my Lord,' continued she, addressing herself to her husband, 'what do you intend to do about this unhappy, infatuated boy?'

'I really know not,' answered his Lordship.

'I will tell you then,' resumed she—'Go to this girl, and let her know that you will abandon her pennyless; force her to accept the honour Mr. Rochely offers her; and, by shewing a little strength of mind and resolution, break these unworthy chains with which your own want of prudence has fettered your son.'

'It has already been tried, Madam, without success. Consider that if I am bound by no obligations to support this young person, I am also without any power over her. To force her to marry Mr. Rochely is impossible. I have however her promise that she will not enter into any clandestine engagement with Delamere.'

'Her promise!' exclaimed Lady Montreville.—'And are you weak enough, my Lord, to trust to the promise of an artful, designing creature, who seems to me to have already won over your Lordship to her party? What want of common sense is this! If you will not again speak to her, and that most decisively, I will do it myself! Send her to me! I will force her not only to tell me where Delamere has had the meanness to conceal himself, but also oblige her to relinquish the hopes she has the insolence to indulge.'

Miss Delamere, who wanted to see the wonderful creature that had turned her brother's head, and who was charmed to think she should see her humbled and mortified, promoted this plan as much as possible. Augusta, dreading her brother's violence, dared not, and Lord Montreville would not oppose it, as he believed her Ladyship's overwhelming rhetoric, to which he was himself frequently accustomed to give way, might produce on Emmeline the effect he had vainly attempted. He therefore asked Lady Montreville, whether she really wished to see Miss Mowbray, and when?

'I am engaged to-morrow,' answered she, 'all day. But however, as she is a sort of person whom it will be improper to admit at any other time, let her be here at ten o'clock in the morning. She may come up, before I breakfast, into my dressing-room.'

'Shall I send one of the carriages for her?' enquired his Lordship.

'By no means,' replied the Lady. 'They will be all wanted. Let her borrow a coach of the people she lives with. I suppose all city people now keep coaches. Or if she cannot do that, a hack may be had.' Then turning to her woman, who had just brought her her snuff-box, 'Brackley,' said she, 'don't forget to order the porter to admit a young woman who will be here to-morrow, at ten o'clock; tho' she may perhaps come in a hack.'

Lord Montreville, who grew every hour more uneasy at Delamere's absence, now set out in search of him himself. He called at Fitz-Edward's lodgings; but he was not yet come to town, tho' hourly expected. His Lordship then went to Clapham, where he hoped to meet his son; but instead of doing so, Emmeline put into his hands the following letter—

'I intended to have seen you again to-day; but the pain I felt after our interview yesterday, has so much disordered me, that it is better not to repeat it. Cruel Emmeline!—to gratify my father you throw me from you without remorse, without pity. I shall be the victim of his ambition, and of your false and mistaken ideas of honour.

'Ah! Emmeline! will the satisfaction that you fancy will arise from this chimerical honour make you amends for the loss of such an heart as mine! Yet think not I can withdraw it from you, cold and cruel as you are. Alas! it is no longer in my power. But my passions, the violence of which I cannot mitigate, prey on my frame, and will conduct to the grave, this unhappy son, who is to be sacrificed to the cursed politics of his family.

'I cannot see you, Emmeline, without a renewal of all those sensations which tear me to pieces, and which I know affect you, though you try to conceal it. For a day or two I will go into the country. Remember your promise not to remove any where but to Mrs. Stafford's; and to let me know the day and hour when you set out. You plead to me, that your promise to my father is sacred. I expect that those you have passed to me shall be at least equally so. Farewel! till we meet again. You know that seeing you, and being permitted to love you, is all that renders supportable the existence of your unhappy

F. D.'

'This letter, my Lord,' said Emmeline, was delivered by a porter. I spoke to the man, and asked him from whence he brought it? He said from a coffee-house at Charing-Cross.'

'Did you answer it?'

'No, my Lord,' said Emmeline, blushing; 'I think it required no answer.'

He then told her that Lady Montreville expected to see her the next day; and named the hour.

Emmeline, terrified as she was at the idea of such an interview, was forced to assure him she would be punctual to it; and his Lordship took an hasty leave, still hoping he might meet his son. He was hardly gone, before another porter brought to Emmeline a second letter: it was from Augusta Delamere.

'At length, my dear Emmeline, I am near you, and can tell you I still love you; tho' even that satisfaction I am forced to snatch unknown to my mother. Oh, Emmeline! I tremble for your situation to-morrow. The dislike that both my mother and sister have taken to you, is inconceivable; and I am afraid that you will have a great deal of rudeness and unkindness to encounter. I write this to prepare you for it; and hope that your conscious innocence, and the generosity with which you have acted, will support you. I have been taken to task most severely by my mother for my partiality to you; and my sister, in her contemptuous way, calls you my sweet sentimental friend. To be sure my brother's absence is a dreadful thing; and great allowances are to be made for my mother's vexation; tho' I own I do not see why it should prevent her being just. I will try to be in the room to-morrow, tho' perhaps I shall not be permitted. Don't say you have heard from me, for the world; but be assured I shall always love you as you deserve, and be most truly

your affectionate and faithful,
A. Delamere.'

Berkley-Square, Dec. 5.

---

CHAPTER II

Emmeline had the convenience of Mrs. Ashwood's carriage, who agreed to set her down in Berkley-Square. She was herself sitting for her picture; and told Miss Mowbray she would send the chariot back for her when she got to the house of the painter.

Exactly at ten o'clock they arrived at the door of Lord Montreville; and Emmeline, who had been arguing herself into some degree of resolution as she went along, yet found her courage much less than she thought she should have occasion for; and with faultering steps and trembling nerves she went up stairs. The man who conducted her, told her that his Lady was not yet up, and desired her to wait in an anti-room, which was superbly furnished and covered with glasses, in which Emmeline had leisure to contemplate her pale and affrighted countenance.

The longer the interview was delayed the more dreadful it appeared. She dared not ask for Miss Augusta; yet, at every noise she heard, hoped that amiable girl was coming to console and befriend her. But no Augusta appeared. A servant came in, mended the fire, and went down again; then Miss Delamere's maid, under pretence of fetching something, took a survey of her in order to make a report to her mistress; and Emmeline found that she was an object of curiosity to the domesticks, who had heard from Millefleur, and from the other servants who had been at Swansea, that this was the young woman Mr. Delamere was dying for.

An hour and a half was now elapsed; and poor Emmeline, whose imagination had been busied the whole time in representing every form of insult and contempt with which she expected to be received, began to hope that Lady Montreville had altered her intention of seeing her.

At length, however, Mrs. Brackley, her Ladyship's woman, was heard speaking aloud to a footman—Walter, tell that young woman she may be admitted to see my Lady, and shew her up.

Walter delivered his message; and the trembling Emmeline with some difficulty followed him.

She entered the dressing-room. Her Ladyship, in a morning dress, sat at a table, on which was a salver with coffee. Her back was to the door, where stood Mrs. Brackley; who, as Emmeline, hesitating, seemed ready to shrink back, said, with a sort of condescending nod, 'There, you may go in, Miss.'

Emmeline entered; but did not advance.

Lady Montreville, without rising or speaking, turned her head, and looked at her with a scowling and disdainful countenance.

'Humph!' said she, looking at her eldest daughter, who sat by the fire with a newspaper in her hand—'humph!' as much as to say, I see no such great beauty in this creature.

Miss Delamere, whose countenance wore a sort of disdainful sneer, smiled in answer to her mother's humph! and said, 'Would you have her sit down, Madam?'

'Aye,' said Lady Montreville, turning again her head towards Emmeline—'You may sit down.'

There was a sofa near the door. Emmeline, hardly able to stand, went to it.

A silence ensued. Lady Montreville sipped her coffee; and Miss Delamere seemed intent upon the newspaper.

'So!' cried her Ladyship, 'my son has absented himself! Upon my word, Miss What-d'ye-call-it, (for Mowbray I don't allow that your name is) you have a great deal to answer for. Pray what amends can you ever hope to make to my Lord, and me, for the trouble you have been the cause of?'

'I sincerely lament it, Madam,' answered Emmeline, forcing herself to speak; 'and do assure you it has been on my part involuntary.'

'Oh, no doubt on't. Your wonderful beauty is the fatal cause. You have used no art, I dare say; no pretty finesse, learned from novels, to inveigle a silly boy to his undoing.'

'If I had been disposed, Madam, to take advantage of Mr. Delamere's unhappy partiality for me—'

'Oh dear! What you was coy? You knew your subject, no doubt, and now make a merit of what was merely a piece of art. I detest such demure hypocrites! Tell me,—why, if you are not disposed to take advantage of Mr. Delamere's folly, you do not accept the noble offer made you by this banker, or whatever he is, that my Lord says is worth above an hundred thousand pounds? The reason is evident. A little obscure creature, bred on the Welch mountains, and who was born nobody knows how, does not so easily refuse a man of fortune unless she has some other views. You would like a handsome young man with a title! Yes! you would like to hide your own obscurity in the brilliant pedigree of one of the first families in Europe. But know, presumptuous girl, that the whole house shall perish ere it shall thus be contaminated—know'—— She grew inarticulate with passion; pride and malignity seemed to choak her; and she stopped, as if to recover breath to give vent to her rage.

Miss Delamere took the opportunity to speak—

'Indeed, child,' said she, 'it is hurting yourself extremely; and I am really sorry you should be so deceived. My brother can never marry you; and as Lord Montreville has brought you up, under the notion of your belonging to a part of his family, we are really interested, my mother and I, in your not going into a bad course of life. If you do not marry this rich city-man, what do you think is to become of you?'

'My Lord Montreville has been so good as to assure me,' said Emmeline—her words were so faint, that they died away upon her lips.

'What does she say, Fanny?' asked Lady Montreville.

'Something of my father's having assured her, Madam.'

'Don't flatter yourself, girl,' resumed her Ladyship, 'don't deceive yourself. If you refuse to marry this man who offers to take you, not one shilling shall you ever receive from this family; determine therefore at once; send to the person in question; let him come here, and let an agreement for a settlement be directly signed between Lord Montreville and him. Lord Montreville will in that case give you a fortune. I will hear no objection! I will have the affair closed this morning! I will have it so!'

Lady Montreville, accustomed to undisputed power in her own family, expected from every body an acquiescence as blind as she found from her tradesmen and servants, who endured her ill-humour and gave way to her caprices. But she forgot that Emmeline was equally unaccustomed to her commands, and free from the necessity of obeying them. The gentlest and mildest temper will revolt against insolence and oppression: and the cruelty and unfeminine insults she had received, concluded by this peremptory way of forcing her into a marriage from which her whole soul recoiled, at length restored to her some portion of that proper spirit and presence of mind which had been frightened from her. Conscious that she deserved none of these ungenerous insults, and feeling herself superior to her who could cruelly and wantonly inflict them, she regained her courage.

'If your Ladyship has nothing more to say,' said she, rising, 'I shall have the honour to wish you a good morning; for I believe Mrs. Ashwood has been waiting for me some time.'

'Don't tell me of Mrs. Ashwood—but tell me where is my son? Where is Delamere?'

'I know not,' answered Emmeline. 'I have already told my Lord Montreville that I am entirely ignorant.'

'Nobody believes it!' said Miss Delamere.

'I am sorry for it,' replied Emmeline, coolly. 'If, however, I did know, it is not such treatment, Madam, that should compel me to give any information.' She then opened the door and walked down stairs. A footman met her, whom she desired to enquire for Mrs. Ashwood's carriage. Before the man could descend to obey her, a violent ringing was heard. The footman said it was his Lady's bell, and ran up to answer it; while Emmeline still descending, heard somebody softly calling her. She looked up, and saw Augusta Delamere leaning over the bannisters; she put up her finger as if to prevent Emmeline's speaking, threw her a letter, and immediately disappeared.

The spirits of Emmeline were again greatly hurried by this transient view of her friend. She put the letter hastily into her pocket, and was got down into the hall, where she spoke to another footman to see for her carriage; but the man whom she had met on the stairs, now came to say his Lady must see her again. Emmeline answered that she had already made her friend wait, and must beg to be excused returning to her Ladyship this morning. The man however said, that he dared not disobey his Lady, nor call up the chariot.

Emmeline, alarmed at the idea of being detained, advanced towards the door, told the porter (who had not heard this dialogue,) to open it, and walked resolutely into the street.

The two footmen followed her to the door; but contented themselves with looking after her, without attempting to stop her.

'She is pretty enough, however,' said one to the other, 'to excuse our young Lord.'

'The devil's in't if she is not,' answered the other.

Emmeline heard this; and between vexation at their impertinence, and fear of their following her, she found her whole strength again forsake her.

She walked on however towards Charles-Street, looking round for Mrs. Ashwood's carriage, but could not see it. She was totally unacquainted with the streets, where she had never been on foot before; but recollected that she might get an hackney-coach, which was the more necessary, as snow was falling fast, and her muslin cloaths were already wet almost through.

She was picking her way, still in some hopes of seeing the carriage, when an hackney-coach passed empty. Emmeline looked wishfully towards it. The man stopped, and asked if she wanted a coach? She answered yes, as eagerly as if she had been afraid of a disappointment; and hurrying into it, told the man to drive to Clapham.

Just as he was mounting the box, another hack passed, and a young officer who was in it looked earnestly into that where Emmeline sat; then calling to his driver to stop, he leaped out, and Emmeline saw Fitz-Edward at the door of her coach.

'Miss Mowbray!' said he—'Is it possible! alone and in this equipage, in Berkley-Square! Where is Delamere?'

Before Emmeline had time to answer him he had opened the coach door.

'It snows too much,' said he, 'for a comfortable conference, unless you will give me leave to sit by you; where are you going to?'

'To Clapham,' answered Emmeline.

'Oh! take me with you,' said he. 'I have a thousand things to say to you.'

He gave her no time to refuse: but flinging half a crown to the man who had driven him, he got into the coach which she was in, and ordered the man to shut the door and go where he had been directed.

Emmeline was vexed at this incident, as she was too uneasy to wish for the presence of any one, and impatient to open the letter in her pocket. But Fitz-Edward was not easily discouraged; and possessed, together with perfect good breeding, a fortunate sort of assurance with which nobody was ever long displeased.

He enquired after Mrs. Stafford with a degree of interest for which Emmeline felt inclined to love him. She related all she knew of her; and her eyes reassumed their lustre, while she told him how soon she was likely to see her. He then renewed his questions about Delamere.

Emmeline could not dissemble; and indeed saw in this case no reason why she should. She therefore told him ingenuously all that had happened since they met at Swansea; most of which he already knew from Delamere. He watched her looks however while she was speaking; and by her blushes, her manner, and the softness of her eyes, he thought he saw evidently enough that Delamere was no longer indifferent to her. Her indignation at the treatment she had just received from his mother and sister, dyed her cheeks with crimson while she related it; but when she returned to speak of Delamere, she forgot her anger, and seemed to feel only pity and tenderness.

Fitz-Edward, a most perfect judge of female hearts, made his observations on all this, with which he knew he should most effectually gratify his friend; and in his insinuating way, he said all he could think of to encrease her compassion for her lover, and inflame her resentment against those who impeded a union, which he was pretty sure Emmeline now wished for, as well as Delamere.

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CHAPTER III

When they arrived at Clapham, Emmeline found Mrs. Ashwood was not yet returned. Fitz-Edward entreated her to sing to him; and either was, or pretended to be, in raptures at her improvement since they had met in the summer.

About half an hour after four, Mrs. Ashwood came in; and throwing open the parlour door, asked Emmeline, in no very sweet accent, 'Why she had given her the trouble to go in her carriage to Berkley-Square, if she intended going home by any other conveyance?'

Mrs. Ashwood was subject to causeless fits of ill-humour, to which Emmeline was a good deal accustomed; and concluding she was now seized with some sudden discomposure of temper, mildly answered, 'That she supposed there had been a mistake; for that the chariot did not come for her at the appointed time.'

'Mistake!' replied the other lady, sharply; 'I don't know as to mistake; but if you had chosen it, you might have staid dinner with Lady Montreville.'

Emmeline, without seeming to attend to the asperity of the address, desired to introduce Colonel Fitz-Edward.

As this short dialogue had passed without Mrs. Ashwood's having entered the room, she had not seen the stranger, who now advanced towards her.

The title of Colonel, added to his military air and handsome figure, seemed to gain at once her favourable opinion; and her countenance losing the unpleasing expression of ill-temper, immediately put on its best smile, and an affectation of softness and complacency with which she frequently adorned it.

She seemed to consider the handsome young soldier as a conquest worthy all her ambition; and finding he was the most intimate friend of Delamere, had no apprehension that his admiration would be diverted by the youth and attractions of Emmeline.

Fitz-Edward presently understood her character; and with admirable adroitness acted the part of a man afraid of being too much charmed. He cast an arch look at Emmeline; then made to the Lady of the house some compliments so extravagant, that only the weakest vanity could prevent her seeing its ridicule. But Fitz-Edward, who found in a moment that nothing was too gross to be believed, fearlessly repeated the dose; and before dinner came in, she was in the best humour imaginable, and pressed him so earnestly to partake of it, that, after an apology for sitting down in his morning dishabille, he consented.

The same unlimited flattery was continued during dinner by Fitz-Edward, and received by the lady with the same avidity; and Emmeline, tho' half-angry with him for the pleasure he seemed to take in making Mrs. Ashwood absurd, could not help being amused with the scene.

Before their repast ended, she was so much charmed with her new acquaintance, and so much longed to shew him to her female friends, and her other admirers, that she could not forbear pressing him to stay to a card party, which she was to have in the evening.

He loved the ridiculous; and, influenced by a vanity as silly as that he delighted to expose, he took pleasure in shewing how extremely absurd he could make women appear, who were not on other occasions void of understanding. Tho' he had really business with Lord Montreville, who had left several messages at his lodgings desiring to see him, and was going thither when Emmeline met him, yet he accepted Mrs. Ashwood's invitation, on condition of being allowed to go home to dress.

He was no sooner gone than she flew to her toilet, and Emmeline to a second perusal of the letter she had received from Augusta Delamere.

'I am forbidden to see you, my dearest Emmeline; and perhaps may not have an opportunity of giving you this. My heart bleeds for you, my sweet friend. I fear my father will be prevailed upon wholly to abandon you. They are all inventing schemes to force you into a marriage with that odd-looking old Rochely. He has been here once or twice, and closetted with my father; and part of the scheme of to-day is, to persuade you to dine here with him. But I am almost sure you will not stay; for unless my mother can command herself more before you than she does when she is talking about you, I think you will be frightened away. I am certain, my dear Emmeline, from what I have heard, tho' they say but little before me, that no endeavours will be omitted to drive you to marry Rochely; and that they will persecute you every way, both by persuasions, and by distressing you. But be assured, that while Augusta Delamere has any thing, you shall share it. Indeed I love you, not only as if you were my sister, but, I think, better. Ah! why are there such unhappy impediments to your being really so? At present I foresee nothing but perplexity; and have no dependance but on you. I know you will act as you ought to do; and that you will at last prevail with Delamere to act right too. Whoever loves you, cannot long persist in doing ill; and surely it is very ill done, and very cruel, for Delamere to make us all so unhappy. I need not tell you to arm yourself with fortitude against the attacks that will be made upon you. You have more fortitude and resolution than I have. Situated as you have been, I know not what I should have done; but I fear it would not have been so worthy of praise as the noble and disinterested part you have acted; which, tho' unaccompanied with the thousand amiable qualities of heart and understanding you possess, would ever command the esteem and admiration of your faithful and affectionate

Augusta Delamere.'

'Do not write to me till you hear from me again; as I should incur great displeasure if known to correspond with you.

A. D.'

Charmed as Emmeline was by the tender solicitude and affectionate simplicity of her beloved friend, the pleasure this letter gave her was very much abated by learning that the domestic infelicity of Lord Montreville's family fell particularly heavy on her. She now recollected what Mrs. Ashwood had said on her first entrance into the room, when she returned home; and concluded from thence that she had seen Lady Montreville, tho' her whole attention was so immediately engrossed by the Colonel, that she had no more named it. She therefore grew anxious to hear what had been said; and her own toilet being very soon over, she sent to desire admittance to that of Mrs. Ashwood; on receiving which, she attended her, and begged to know whether she had seen Lady Montreville, and what had passed?

Mrs. Ashwood was in so happy a disposition, that she hesitated not to oblige her; and while she finished the important business of accommodating a pile of black feathers, jet and crape, upon her head, 'the mockery of woe' which she did not even affect to feel, she gave Emmeline the following account, interlarded with directions to her woman.

'Why, my dear, you must know that when I got to Gainsborough's [more to the left] he had unluckily a frightful old judge, or a bishop, or some tedious old man with him, and I was forced to wait: I cannot tell what possessed me, but I entirely forgot that I was to send the chariot back for you. So the chariot [put it a little forwarder] staid. I thought the tiresome man, whoever he was, would never have gone; however he went at last [raise the lower curl] and then I sot. You cannot think how much the likeness is improved! So when I had done [give me the scraper; here is some powder on my eye-brow] I went away, thinking to call on you; but as I went by Butler's, I remembered that I wanted some pearl-coloured twist to finish the purse I am doing for Hanbury. I was almost an hour matching it. Well, then I thought as I was so near FrivolitÉ's door, I might as well call and see whether she had put the trimming on the white bombazeen, as you know we agreed would be most the thing. There were a thousand people in the house; you know there is never any possibility of getting out of that creature's room under an hour.' [Oh! heaven! thought Emmeline, nor is there any end to the importance you affix to trifles which interest nobody else.] 'So, however, at last I got to Berkley-Square, and stopped at the door. The man at the door said you was gone. I thought that very odd, and desired another servant go up and see, for I concluded it was some mistake. After a moment or two, the footman came down again, and said if I was the Lady Miss Mowbray lived with, his Lady desired I would walk up. Upon my word it is a noble house! When I got into the room, there was Lady Montreville and her daughters. Her Ladyship was extremely polite, indeed; and after some discourse, "Mrs. Ashwood," said she, "you know Miss Mowbray's situation: I assure you I sent for her to-day with no other view in the world but for her own good, and you know, [dear me! here is a pimple on my chin that is quite hideous; give me a patch.] you know that for her to refuse Mr. Rochely is being absolutely blind to her own interest; because you must suppose, Mrs. Ashwood, that she is only deceiving herself when she entertains any thoughts of my son; for that is a thing that never can happen, nor ever shall happen; and besides, to give my Lord and me all this trouble, is a very ungrateful return to us for having brought her up, and many other obligations she has received at our hands; and will be the ruin of herself; and the greatest perverseness in the world. You, Mrs. Ashwood, are, I hear, a very sensible woman [where is the rouge box?] and I dare say, now you know how agreeable it would be to me and my Lord to have Miss Emmeline come to her senses about Mr. Rochely, you will do your endeavours to persuade her to act reasonably; and then, tho' she has behaved very disrespectful and very ill, which is only to be forgiven on account of her knowing no better, I shall countenance her, and so will my Lord." This was, as near as I remember, Emmeline, what my Lady said to me. You know [the milk of roses is almost out] you know I could not refuse to tell her I would certainly talk to you. I was surprised to find her Ladyship so obliging and affable, as you had told me she is reckoned so very proud. She ordered her gentleman to give me a ticket for a rout and a supper her Ladyship gives on Tuesday three weeks; and she said, that as she did not doubt but that you would discover your own interest by that time, I should take one for you. Look you, here it is.'

'I shall be in Dorsetshire, I hope, long before Tuesday se'nnight,' said Emmeline, laying the card coolly on the toilet. She found Mrs. Ashwood had nothing more material to say; and being apprehensive that she impeded the last finish which her dress and person required, she thanked her, and went back into her own room.

The eagerness and resolution with which Lady Montreville opposed her son's marriage, appeared from nothing more evidently, than from her thus endeavouring to solicit the assistance of Mrs. Ashwood, and humbling herself to use flattery and insinuation towards a person to whom it is probable nothing else could have induced her to speak. With persons in trade, or their connections, or even with gentlemen, unless of very ancient and honourable families, she seldom deigned to hold any communication; and if she had occasion to speak to them individually, it was generally under the appellation of 'Mr. or Mrs. I forget the name;' for to remember the particular distinctions of such inferior beings, was a task too heavy for Right Honourable intellects. When she spoke of such collectively, it was under the denomination of 'the people, or the folks.'

With that sort of condescension that seems to say, 'I will humble myself to your level,' and which is in fact more insolent than the most offensive haughtiness, her Ladyship had behaved to Mrs. Ashwood; who took it for extreme politeness, and was charmed on any terms to obtain admission to the house of a woman of such high fashion, and who was known to be so very nice in the choice of her company.

In return for so much favour, she had been lavish of her assurances that she would influence Miss Mowbray; and came home, fully determined to talk to her sharply; believing too, that to make her feel the present dependance and uncertainty of her situation by forcing her to bear a fit of ill-humour, might help to determine her to embrace the affluent fortune that would set her above it. This it was that occasioned her harsh address to Emmeline; which would have been followed by acrimonious reflections and rude remonstrances, under the denomination of 'necessary truths and friendly advice,' had not the presence of Fitz-Edward, and his subsequent enchanting conversation, driven all that Lady Montreville had said out of her mind, and left it open only to the delightful prospect which his compliments and praises afforded her.

The company assembled to cards at the usual hour. Rochely was among them; who had not seen Emmeline since the rejection of his proposal, with which Sir Richard Crofts was obliged to acquaint him, tho' he had softened the peremptory terms in which it had been given. He had this evening adorned himself in a superb suit of cut velvet of many colours, lined with sables; which tho' not in the very newest mode, had been reckoned very magnificent at several city assemblies; and he had put it on as well in honour of Lord Montreville, with whom he had dined, as in hopes of moving the perverse beauty for whom he languished. But so far was this display of clumsy affluence from having any effect on the hard heart of Emmeline, that it rather excited her mirth. And when with a grave and solemn aspect he advanced towards her, she felt herself so much disposed to laugh at his figure, that she was forced to avoid him, and took refuge at the table, round which the younger part of the company assembled to play.

Mrs. Ashwood had fixed Fitz-Edward to that where she herself presided; and where she sat triumphantly enjoying his high-seasoned flattery; while her female competitors, hearing he was the son of an Irish Earl, and within three of being a Peer himself, contemplated her supposed conquest with envy and vexation, which they could not conceal, and which greatly added to her satisfaction.

Several persons were invited to stay supper; among whom were Fitz-Edward and Rochely. About half an hour before the card-tables broke up, a servant brought a note to Emmeline, and told her that it required an answer. The hand was Delamere's.

'For two days I have forborne to see you, Emmeline, and have endeavoured to argue myself into a calmer state of mind; but it avails nothing; hopeless when with you, yet wretched without you, I see no end to my sufferings. I have been about the door all the evening; but find, by the carriages, that you are surrounded by fools and coxcombs. Ah! Emmeline! that time you owe only to me; those smiles to which only I have a right, are lavished on them; and I am left to darkness and despair.

'There is a door from the garden into the stable-yard, which opens into the fields. As I cannot come to the house (where I find there are people who would inform Lord Montreville that I am still about London,) for pity's sake come down to that door and speak to me. I ask only one moment; surely you will not deny me so small a favour, and add to the anguish which consumes me. I write this from the neighbouring public-house, and wait your answer.

F. Delamere.'

Emmeline shuddered at this note. It was more incoherent than usual, and seemed to be written with a trembling and uncertain hand. She had left the card-table to read it, and was alone in the anti-room; where, while she hesitated over it, Rochely, whose eyes were ever in search of her, followed her. She saw him not: but wholly occupied by the purport of the note, he approached close to her unheeded.

'Are you determined, Miss Mowbray,' said he, 'to give me no other answer than you sent somewhat hastily to Lord Montreville, by my friend Sir Richard Crofts? May I ask, are you quite determined?'

'Quite, Sir!' replied she, starting, without considering and hardly knowing what she said; but feeling he was at that moment more odious to her than ever, she snatched away the hand he attempted to take, and flew out of the room like a lapwing.

The dismayed lover shook his head, surveyed his cut velvet in the glass, and stroaked his point ruffles, while he was trying to recollect his scattered ideas.

Emmeline, who had taken refuge in her bed-chamber, sat there in breathless uncertainty, and unable to determine what to do about Delamere. At length, she concluded on desiring Fitz-Edward to go down to him; but knew not how to speak to the colonel on such a subject before so many witnesses, nor did she like to send for him out of the room. She rung for a candle, and wrote on a slip of paper.

'Delamere is waiting at a door which opens into the fields, and insists upon speaking to me. Pray go down to him, and endeavour to prevail on him to return to his father. I can think of no other expedient to prevent his engaging in some rash and improper attempt; therefore I beseech you to go down.'

When she had written this, she knew not how to deliver it; and for the first time in her life had recourse to an expedient which bore the appearance of art and dissimulation. She did not chuse to send it to Fitz-Edward by a servant; but went down with it herself; and approaching the table where he was settling his winnings—

'Here, colonel,' said she, 'is the charade you desired me to write out for you.'

'Oh! read it colonel; pray read it;' cried Mrs. Ashwood, 'I doat upon a charade of all things in nature.'

He answered, that 'he would reserve it for a bon bouche after supper.' Then looking significantly at Emmeline, to say he understood and would oblige her, he strolled into the anti-room; Emmeline saying to him, as he passed her, that she would wait his return in the parlour below.

Fitz-Edward disappeared; and Emmeline, in hopes of escaping observation, joined the party of some young ladies who were playing at a large table, and affected to enter into their conversation. But she really knew nothing that was passing; and as soon as they rose on finishing their game, she escaped in the bustle, and ran down into the parlour, where in five or six minutes Fitz-Edward found her.

He wore a look of great concern; and laid down his hat as he came in, without seeming to know what he did.

'Have you seen Mr. Delamere, Sir?' said Emmeline.

'Seen him!' answered he; 'I have seen him; but to no manner of purpose; his intellects are certainly deranged; he raves like a madman, and absolutely refuses to leave the place till he has spoken to you.'

'Why will he not come in, then?' said Emmeline.

'Because,' said Fitz-Edward, 'Rochely is here, who will relate it to that meddling fellow, Sir Richard Crofts, and by that means it will get to his father. I said every thing likely to prevail on him to be more calm; but he will hear nothing. I know not what to do,' continued he, rising, and walking about the room. 'I am convinced he has something in his head of fatal consequence to himself. He protests he will stay all night where he is. In short, he is in an absolute frenzy with the idea of Rochely's success and his own despair.'

'You frighten me to death,' said Emmeline. 'Tell me, colonel, what ought I to do?'

'Go to him,' returned Fitz-Edward; 'speak to him only a moment, and I am persuaded he will be calm. I will go with you; and then there can be nothing wrong in it.'

'I will go, then,' said she, rising and giving Fitz-Edward her hand, which trembled extremely.

'But it is very cold,' remarked he: 'had not you better take a cloak?'

'There is my long pelisse in the back parlour,' answered she.

Fitz-Edward fetched it, wrapt her in it, and led her down stairs; and by a garden door, they reached a sort of back stable-yard, where rubbish and stable-litter was usually thrown, and which opened into a bye-lane, where the garden-wall formed a sudden angle. Delamere received her with transport, which he tried to check; and reproached her for refusing to come down to him.

Seizing the opportunity, as soon as he would give her leave to speak, she very forcibly represented to him the distress of his family at his absence, and the particular uneasiness it inflicted on his sister Augusta.

'I knew not,' said Delamere, 'that she was come home.'

Emmeline told him she was, and related the purport of her letter, and again besought him to put an end to the uncertainty and anxiety of his family.

Delamere heard her with some impatience; and holding her hands in his, vehemently answered—'It is to no purpose that my father either threatens or persuades me. He has long known my resolution; and the unhappiness which you so warmly describe arises solely from his and my mother's own unreasonable and capricious prejudice—prejudice founded in pride and avarice. I do not think myself accountable for distress to which they may so easily put an end. But as to Augusta, who really loves me, I will write to her to make her easy. Now Emmeline, since I have listened to you, and answered all you have to urge, hear my final determination—If you still continue firm in your chimerical and romantic obstinacy, which you call honour, I go from hence this evening, never to return—you condemn me to perpetual exile—you give me up to despair!'

He called aloud, and a post-chaise and four, which had been concealed by the projection of the wall, attended by two servants, drove round. 'There,' continued Delamere, 'there is the vehicle which I have prepared to carry me from hence. You know whether I easily relinquish a resolution once formed. If then you wish to save my father and mother from the anguish of repentance when there will be no remedy—if you desire to save from the frenzy of desperation the brother of your Augusta, and to snatch from the extremity of wretchedness the man who lives but to adore you, go with me—go with me to Scotland!'

Astonished and terrified at the impetuosity with which he pressed this unexpected proposal, Emmeline would have replied, but words were a moment wanting. Fitz-Edward taking advantage of her silence, used every argument which Delamere had omitted, to determine her.

'No! no!' cried she—'never! never! I have passed my honour to Lord Montreville. It is sacred—I cannot, I will not forfeit it!'

'The time will come,' said Fitz-Edward, 'believe me it will, when Lord Montreville will not only be reconciled to you, but'——

'And what shall reconcile me to myself? Let me go back to the house, Mr. Delamere; or from this moment I shall consider you as having taken advantage of my unprotected state, and even of my indiscreet confidence, to offer me the grossest outrage. Let me go, Sir!' (struggling to get her hand from Fitz-Edward) 'Let me go! Mr. Delamere.'

'What! to be driven into the arms of Rochely? No, never, Emmeline! never! I know I am not indifferent to you. I feel that I cannot live without you; nay, by heaven I will not! But if I suffer this opportunity to escape, I deserve indeed to lose you.'

They all this while approached the chaise. Delamere had hired servants, whom he had instructed what to do. They were ready at the door of the carriage. Emmeline attempted in vain to retreat. Delamere threw his arms around her; and assisted by Fitz-Edward, lifted her into it with a sort of gentle violence. He leaped in after her, and the chaise was driven away instantly.

Fitz-Edward, to whom this scene was wholly unexpected, returned to the company he had left with Mrs. Ashwood. He had not any notion of Delamere's design when he went to him, but heartily concurred in its execution; and tho' he did not believe Delamere intended to marry Emmeline, yet his morals were such, that he congratulated himself on the share he had had in putting her into his power, and went back with the air of a man vastly satisfied with the success of his exploit.

'Goodness! colonel,' exclaimed Mrs. Ashwood, 'supper has been waiting for you this half hour. Upon my word we began to suspect that you and Miss Mowbray were gone together. But pray where is she?'

'Miss Mowbray, Madam! I really have not been so happy as to be of her party.'

'Why, where in the world can she be?' continued Mrs. Ashwood. 'However, as the colonel is come we will go to supper. [The company were standing round the table.] I suppose Miss Mowbray will come presently; she has a pretty romantic notion of contemplation by moonlight.'

Supper, however, was almost over, and Miss Mowbray did not appear. Mrs. Ashwood, engaged wholly by the gallant colonel, thought not of her; but Rochely remarked that her absence was somewhat singular.

'So it is I declare,' said Miss Galton; 'do Mrs. Ashwood send and enquire for her again.'

The chambers, the drawing-room, dressing-room, closets, and garden were again searched. Miss Mowbray was not to be found! Mrs. Ashwood was alarmed—Rochely in dismay—and the whole company confusedly broke up; each retiring with their several conjectures on the sudden disappearance of the fair Emmeline.

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CHAPTER IV

For some moments after Emmeline found herself in the chaise, astonishment and terror deprived her of speech and even of recollection. While Delamere, no longer able to command his transports at having at length as he hoped secured her, gave way to the wildest joy, and congratulated himself that he had thus forced her to break a promise which only injustice he said could have extorted, and only timidity and ill-grounded prejudice have induced her to keep.

'Do you then hope, Sir,' said Emmeline, 'that I shall patiently become the victim of your rashness? Is this the respect you have sworn ever to observe towards me? Is this the protection you have so often told me I should find from you? And is it thus you intend to atone for all the insults of your family which you have so repeatedly protested you would never forgive? by inflicting a far greater insult; by ruining my character; by degrading me in my own eyes; and forcing me either to violate my word solemnly given to your father, or be looked upon as a lost and abandoned creature, undone by your inhuman art. I must now, indeed, seem to deserve your mother's anger, and the scorn of your sister; and must be supposed every way wretched and contemptible.'

A shower of tears fell from her eyes, and her heart seemed bursting with the pain these cruel reflections gave her.

Delamere, by all the soothing tenderness of persuasion, by all the rhetoric of ardent passion, tried to subdue her anger, and silence her scruples; but the more her mind dwelt on the circumstances of her situation, the more it recoiled from the necessity of entering under such compulsion into an indissoluble engagement. The rash violence of the measure which had put her in Delamere's power, while it convinced her of his passion, yet told her, that a man who would hazard every thing for his own gratification now, would hardly hereafter submit to any restraint; and that the bonds in which he was so eager to engage, would with equal violence be broken, when any new face should make a new impression, or when time had diminished the influence of those attractions that now enchanted him.

Formed of the softer elements, and with a mind calculated for select friendship and domestic felicity, rather than for the tumult of fashionable life and the parade of titled magnificence, Emmeline coveted not his rank, nor valued his riches. No woman perhaps can help having some regard for a man, who she knows ardently and sincerely loves her; and Emmeline had felt all that sort of weakness for Delamere; who in the bloom of life, with fortune, title, person and talents that might have commanded the loveliest and most affluent daughter of prosperity, had forsaken every thing for her, and even secluded himself from the companions of his former pleasures, and the indulgences his fortune and rank afforded him, to pass his youth in unsuccessful endeavours to obtain her.

The partiality this consideration gave her towards him, and the favourable comparison she was perpetually making between him and the men she had seen since her residence near London, had created in her bosom a sentiment warmer perhaps than friendship; yet it was not that violent love, which carrying every thing before it, leaves the mind no longer at liberty to see any fault in the beloved object, or any impropriety in whatever can secure it's success, and which, scorning future consequences, risks every thing for it's present indulgence.

Still artless and ingenuous as when she first left the remote castle where she had been brought up, Emmeline had not been able to conceal this affection from Delamere. Her eyes, her manner, the circumstance of the picture, and a thousand nameless inadvertences, had told it him repeatedly; but now, when he seemed to have taken an ungenerous advantage of that regard, it lost much of it's force, and resentment and disdain succeeded.

Delamere tried to appease her by protestations of inviolable respect, of eternal esteem, and unalterable love. But there was something of triumph even in his humblest entreaties, that served but to encrease the anger Emmeline felt; and she told him that the only way to convince her he had for her those sentiments he pretended, was to carry her back immediately to Mrs. Ashwood's, or rather to Lord Montreville, there to acknowledge the attempt he had made, and that it's failure had been solely owing to her determined adherence to her word.

Delamere, presuming on his ascendancy over her, attempted to interest her passions rather than tranquillize her reason. He represented to her how great would be her triumph when he presented her as his wife to the imperious Lady Montreville, who had treated her with so much unmerited scorn, and set her above the haughty Fanny Delamere, who had insulted her with fancied superiority.

But Emmeline had in her breast none of those passions that find their gratification in humbling an enemy. Too generous for revenge; too gentle for premeditated resentment; she saw these circumstances in a very different light, and felt that she should be rather mortified than elated by being forced into a family who wished to reject her.

Sir Richard Crofts, the object of Delamere's hatred and detestation, was the subject of those acrimonious reflections that his respect for his father and mother prevented his throwing on them. The influence of this man had, he said, made Lord Montreville deaf to the voice of nature, and forgetful of his own honour; while he was plunged into the dark and discreditable labyrinth of political intrigue, and acquired an habit of subterfuge and duplicity unworthy a nobleman, a gentleman, or a man.

Emmeline cared nothing about Sir Richard Crofts, and could not enter into the bitterness of his resentment towards him. Nothing he had yet been able to urge had shaken her resolution not to become his wife, even tho' he should oblige her to go with him into Scotland.

The ruder passions of anger and resentment had no influence over her mind. While he argued with warmth, or ran into reproaches, Emmeline found she had nothing to fear. But tho' he could not rouse her pride, or awaken her dislike against his family, but rather found them recoil on himself; he hoped in that sensibility of temper and that softness of heart to which he owed all the attention she had ever shewn him, he should find a sure resource. In her pity, an advocate for his fault—in her love, an inducement not only to forgive but to reward him.

And when he pleaded for compassion and forgiveness, the heart of Emmeline felt itself no longer invulnerable. But against this dangerous attack she endeavoured to fortify that sensible heart, by considering the probable event of her yielding to it.

'If I marry Delamere contrary to the consent of his family, who shall assure me that his violent and haughty spirit will bear without anguish and regret, that inferior and confined fortune to which his father's displeasure will condemn him? His love, too ardent perhaps to last, will decline; while the inconveniences of a narrow fortune will encrease; and I, who shall be the cause of these inconveniences, shall also be the victim. He will lament the infatuation which has estranged him from his family, and thrown him, for some years at least, out of the rank in which he has been used to appear; and recovered from the delirium of love, will behold with coldness, perhaps with hatred, her to whom he will impute his distresses. To whom can I then appeal? Not to my own heart, for it will condemn me for suffering myself to be precipitated into a measure against my judgment; nor to his family, who may answer, "thy folly be upon thine own head;" and I have no father, no brother to console and receive me, if he should drive me from him as impetuously as now he would force me to be his. I shall be deprived even of the melancholy consolation of knowing I have not deserved the neglect which I fear I shall never be able to bear. But if my steady refusal now, induces him to return, it is possible that Lord Montreville, convinced at once of my adherence to the promise given him, and of the improbability of Delamere's desisting, may consent to receive me into his family; or if the inveterate prejudice of his wife still prevents his doing so, I shall surely regain his confidence and esteem. He will not refuse to consider me as his brother's daughter, and as such, he will enable me to pass my days in easy competence with Mrs. Stafford; a prospect infinitely preferable in my eyes to the splendid visions offered me by Delamere, if they cannot be realized but at the expence of truth and integrity.'

Confirmed in her determination by reflections like these, Emmeline was able to hear, without betraying any symptoms of the emotion she felt, the animated and passionate protestations of her lover. She assumed all the coldness and reserve which his headlong and inconsiderate attempt deserved. She told him that his want of respect and consideration had forfeited all the claim he might otherwise have had to her regard and esteem; that she certainly would quit him the moment she was able; and that tho' she might not be fortunate enough to do so before they reached Scotland, yet it would not be in his power to compel her to be his wife.

Delamere for some time imputed this language to sudden resentment; and again by the humblest submissions sought to obtain her forgiveness and to excite her pity. But having nearly exhausted her spirits by what she had already said, she gave very little reply to his entreaties. Her silence was however more expressive than her words. She took from him her hand, as often as he attempted to hold it, and would not suffer him to wipe away the tears that fell from her eyes; while to his arguments and persuasions she coldly answered, when she answered at all, 'that she was determined:' and they arrived at Barnet before he had obtained the smallest concession in his favour.

Delamere had undertaken this enterprize rather in despair, than from any hope of it's success, since he did not believe Emmeline would come out to him when he requested it; and had she been either alone, or only with Mrs. Ashwood, she certainly had not done it. Chance had befriended him in collecting a room full of company, and still more in sending Rochely among them. His abrupt approach while she read Delamere's note, had hurried her out of her usual presence of mind; and Fitz-Edward, whom mere accident had brought to Mrs. Ashwood's house, and whom she had taken with her in hopes of his influencing Delamere to return to his father, had contributed to her involuntary error.

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CHAPTER V

Delamere had taken no precaution to secure horses on the road; and it was not till after waiting some hours that he procured four from Barnet. When they arrived there, it was past one o'clock; and Emmeline, who had gone thro' a very fatigueing day, and was now overcome with the terror and alarm of being thus hastily snatched away, could hardly sit up. She was without an hat; and having no change of cloaths, urged the inconvenience she must endure by being forced to go a long journey so situated. She wished to have stopped at the first stage; but Delamere thought, that in her present temper to hesitate was to lose her. He consented however to go for a moment into the house, where, while he gave a servant orders to go on to Hatfield to bespeak four horses, she drank a glass of water; and then Delamere intreating her to return to the chaise, she complied, for there was nobody visible at the inn but the maid and ostler; and she saw no likelihood of any assistance, had she applied for it.

They hastened with great expedition to Stevenage; but before they reached that place, Emmeline, who had ceased either to remonstrate or complain, was so entirely overwhelmed and exhausted, that she could no longer support herself.

His fears for her health now exceeded his fears for losing her, and he determined to stop for some hours; but when she made an effort to leave the chaise she was unable, and he was obliged to lift her out of it. He then ordered the female servants to be called up, recommended her to their care, and entreated her to go to bed for some hours.

Long darkness and excessive weeping had almost deprived her of sight; her whole frame was sinking under the fatigue she had undergone both of body and mind; and unable to struggle longer against it, she lay down in her cloaths, desiring one of the maids to sit by her.

Delamere came to the door of the room to enquire how she did. The woman told him what she had requested; and desiring they would obey her in every thing, and keep her as quiet as possible, he went not to repose himself, but to write to Fitz-Edward.

'Dear George,

'While my angelic Emmeline sleeps, I, who am too happy to sleep myself, write to desire you will go to Berkley-Square and keep the good folks there from exposing themselves, or making a great bustle about what has happened, which they will soon know. As my Lord has long been prepossessed with the idea of a Scottish jaunt, it is very likely he may attempt to pursue us. Say what you will to put such plans out of his head. I shall be in London again, in a very short time. Farewell, dear George.

Your's, ever,
F. D.'

Emmeline in the mean time fell into a sleep, but it was broken and interrupted. Her spirits had been so thoroughly discomposed, that rest was driven from her. She dozed a moment; then suddenly started up, forgot where she was, and looked wildly round the room. An half-formed recollection of the events of the preceding day then seemed to recur, and she besought the maid who sat by her to go to Mr. Delamere and tell him she must be directly carried to Mrs. Stafford's; and having said this, and sighed deeply, she sunk again into short insensibility.

Thus past the remainder of the night; and before seven in the morning Delamere was at the door, impatient to know how she had rested.

The maid admitted him, and told him, in a low voice, that the Lady was in a quieter sleep than she had been the whole night. He softly approached the bed, and started in terror when he saw how ill she looked. Her cheek, robbed of it's bloom, rested on her arm, which appeared more bloodless than her cheek; her hair, which had been dressed without powder, had escaped from the form in which it had been adjusted, and half concealed her face in disordered luxuriance; her lips were pale, and her respiration short and laborious. He stood gazing on her a moment, and then, shocked at these symptoms of indisposition, his rapid imagination immediately magnified them all. He concluded she was dying; and in an agony of fear, which deprived him of every other idea, he took up in breathless apprehension her other hand, which lay on the quilt. It was hot, and dry; and her pulse seemed rather to flutter, than to beat against his pressure.

His moving her hand awakened her. She opened her eyes; but they had lost their lustre, and were turned mournfully towards him.

'Delamere,' said she, in a low and tremulous voice, 'Delamere, why is all this? I believe you have destroyed me; my head is so extremely painful. Oh! Delamere—this is cruel!—very cruel!'

'Let me go for advice,' cried he, eagerly. 'Wretch that I am, what will now become of me!'

He ran down stairs; and Emmeline making an effort to recover her recollection, tried to sit up; but her head was so giddy and confused that it was not till after several attempts she left the bed, even with the assistance of the servant. She then drank a glass of water; and desiring to have more air, would have gone to the window, but could only reach a chair near it, where she sat down, and throwing her arm on a table, rested her head upon it.

In a few moments Delamere returned up stairs. His wild looks, and quick, half-formed questions, explained what passed in his mind.

She told him faintly she was better.

'Shall I bring up a gentleman to see you who I am assured is able in his profession? I fear you are very ill.'

She answered, 'no!'

'Pray suffer him to come; he will give you something to relieve your head.'

'No!'

'Do not, Emmeline—do not, I conjure you, refuse me this favour?'

He took her hand; but when he found how feverish she was, he started away, crying—'Oh! let him, let him come!'

He ran down stairs to fetch him, and returned instantly with the apothecary; a sensible, well-behaved man, of fifty, whose appearance indicated feeling and judgement. He approached Emmeline, who still sat with her head reclined on the table, and felt her pulse.

'Here is too much fever indeed, Sir,' said he; 'the young lady has been greatly hurried.'

'But what—what is to be done, Sir?' said Delamere, eagerly interrupting him.

'Quiet seems absolutely necessary. Pardon me, Sir; but unless I know your situation in regard to her, I cannot possibly advise.'

'Sir,' said Emmeline, who had been silent rather from inability to contend than from unconsciousness of what was passing round her—'if you could prevail with Mr. Delamere to restore me to my friends'—

'Come with me, Sir,' cried Delamere; 'let me speak to you in another room.'

When they were alone, he conjured Mr. Lawson to tell him what he thought of the lady?

'Upon my word, Sir, she is in a very high fever, and it seems to be occasioned by extreme perturbation of spirits and great fatigue. Forgive, Sir, if I ask what particular circumstance has been the cause of the uneasiness under which she appears to labour? If it is any little love quarrel you cannot too soon adjust it.'

Delamere stopped his conjectures, by telling him who he was; and gave him in a few words the history of their expedition.

Mr. Lawson protested to him that if she was hurried on in her present state, it would be surprising if she survived the journey.

'She shall stay here then,' replied Delamere, 'till she recovers her fatigue.'

'But, Sir,' enquired Mr. Lawson, 'after what you have told me of your father, have you no apprehension of a pursuit?'

His terror at Emmeline's immediate danger had obliterated for a moment every other fear. It now recurred with redoubled violence. He remembered that Rochely was at Mrs. Ashwood's on the evening of Emmeline's departure; and he knew that from him Sir Richard Crofts, and consequently Lord Montreville, would have immediate intelligence.

He struck his hands together, exclaiming, 'She will be every way lost!—lost irretrievably! If my father overtakes us, she will return with him, and I shall see her no more!'

He now gave way to such unbounded passion, walking about the room, and striking his forehead, that Lawson began to believe his intellects were as much deranged as the frame of the fair sufferer he had left. For some moments he attended to nothing; but Mr. Lawson, accustomed to make allowances for the diseases of the mind as well as those of the body, did not lose his patience; and at length persuaded him to be calmer, by representing that he wasted in fruitless exclamation the time which might be employed in providing against the apprehended evil.

'Good God! Sir,' cried he at length, 'what would you have me do?'

'What I would earnestly recommend, Sir, is, that you quiet the young lady's mind by telling her you will carry her whither she desires to go; and at present desist from this journey, which I really believe you cannot prosecute but at the hazard of her life; at present, farther agitation may, and probably will be fatal.'

'And so you advise me to let her stay till my father comes to tear her from me for ever! or carry her back by the same road, where it is probable he will meet me? Impossible! impossible!—but is she really so very ill?'

'Upon my life she is at this moment in a high fever. Why should I deceive you? Trust me, it would in my opinion be the height of inhumanity to carry her into Scotland in such a situation, if you love her'——

'If I love her, Sir!' cried Delamere, half frantic—'talk not of if I love her! Merciful heaven!—you have no idea, Mr. Lawson, of what I suffer at this moment!'

'I have a perfect idea of your distress, Sir; and wish I knew how to relieve it. Give me a moment's time to consider; if indeed the young lady could'—

'What, Sir? speak!—think of something!'

'Why I was thinking, that if she is better in a few hours, it might be possible for you to take her to Hertford, where she may remain a day or two, till she is able to go farther. There you would be no longer in danger of pursuit; and if she should grow worse, which when her mind is easier I hope will not happen, you will have excellent advice. Perhaps, when the hurry of her spirits subsides, she may, since this has happened, consent to pursue the journey to the North; or if not, you can from thence carry her to the friends she is so desirous of being with, and avoid the risk of meeting on the road those you are so anxious to shun.'

Tho' Delamere could not think, without extreme reluctance, of relinquishing a scheme in which he had thought himself secure of success; yet, as there was no alternative but what would be so hazardous to the health of Emmeline, he was compelled to accede to any which had a probability of restoring it without putting her into the hands of his father.

Mr. Lawson told him it was only fifteen miles from Stevenage to Hertford—'But how,' said he, 'will you, Sir, prevent your father's following you thither, if he should learn at this place that you are gone there?'

Delamere was wholly at a loss. But Mr. Lawson, who seemed to be sent by his good genius, said—'We must get you from hence immediately, if Miss Mowbray is able to go. You shall pass here as my visitors. You shall directly go to my house, and there be supplied with horses from another inn. This will at least make it more difficult to trace your route; and if any enquiry should be made of me, I shall know what to say.'

Delamere, catching at any thing that promised to secure Emmeline from the pursuit of Lord Montreville, went to her to enquire whether she was well enough to walk to Mr. Lawson's house.

He found her trying to adjust her hair; but her hands trembled so much, it was with difficulty she could do it. He desired her to dismiss the maid who was in the room; then throwing himself on his knees before her, and taking her burning hands in his, he said—'Arbitress of my destiny—my Emmeline! thou for whom only I exist! be tranquil—I beseech you be tranquil! Since you determine to abide by your cruel resolution, I will not, I dare not persist in asking you to break it. No, Emmeline! I come only to entreat that you would quiet your too delicate mind; and dispose of me as you please. Since you cannot resolve to be mine now, I will learn to submit—I will try to bear any thing but the seeing you unhappy, or losing you entirely! Tell me only that you pardon what is past, and you shall go to Mrs. Stafford's, or whithersoever you will.'

Emmeline beheld and heard him with astonishment. But at length comprehending that he repented of his wild attempt, and would go back, she said hastily, as she arose from her chair—'Let us go, then, Delamere; let us instantly go. Thank God, your heart is changed! but every hour I continue with you, is an additional wound to my character and my peace.'

She attempted to reach her cloak, but could not; her strength forsook her; her head became more giddy; she staggered, and would have fallen, had not Delamere caught her in his arms, and supported her to the chair she had left.

'Hurry not yourself thus, my Emmeline,' cried he; 'in mercy to me try to compose yourself, and spare me the sight of all this terror, for which believe me you have no reason.'

He sat down by her; and drawing her gently towards him, her languid head reposed on his shoulder, and he contemplated, in silent anguish, the ravage which only a few hours severe anxiety had made on that beauteous and expressive countenance.

He called to the maid, who waited in the next room, and desired her to send up Mr. Lawson; before whose entrance a shower of tears, the first she had shed for some hours, a little relieved the full heart of Emmeline.

Mr. Lawson desired Delamere would not check her tears; and in a friendly and consolatory manner told her what Delamere proposed to do. Emmeline, after this explanation, was still more anxious to depart; but Mr. Lawson greatly doubted whether she was able.

'I can walk, indeed I can,' said she, 'if you will each lend me an arm.'

Mr. Lawson then gave her a few drops in a glass of water, which seemed to revive her; and Delamere wrapping her carefully in her cloak, they led her between them to a neat brick house in the town, where Mrs. Lawson, a matron-like and well-behaved woman, and her daughter, a genteel girl of twenty, who had been apprized of Emmeline's situation, received her with great kindness and respect.

Breakfast was prepared for her, but she could eat nothing. The heaviness of her eyes, her pallid countenance, and the tenseness across her temples, seemed to threaten the most alarming consequences. Mrs. Lawson endeavoured to persuade her to go to bed; but her eagerness to be gone from thence was so great, that she evidently encreased the difficulty by endeavouring to surmount it. She had indeed considered, that if Lord Montreville overtook them, which was not only possible but probable, all the merit of her conduct would be lost.—She would appear to be carried back, not by her strict adherence to her promise, but by the authority of his Lordship; and instead of the pride and credit of a laudable and virtuous action, would be liable to bear all the imputation of intentional guilt. This reflection, added to the sense she could not fail to have of her improper situation in being so long alone with Delamere under the appearance of having voluntarily gone off with him, made her so impatient to be gone, that she declined any repose however necessary; and Mr. Lawson thought there was less to be feared from indulging than from opposing her.

Lawson therefore went himself to hasten the horses; and while he was absent, Emmeline, who remained with his wife, expressed so much fear that Delamere might alter his intentions of returning, and so much uneasiness at the thoughts of being seen at another inn, in the disordered dress she now wore, with a young man of Delamere's appearance, that Mrs. Lawson was truly concerned for her, and communicated to Delamere the source of the extreme anxiety she appeared to suffer.

He came to her; and she gently reproached him for all the inconvenience and uneasiness he had brought upon her. Her soft complaints, and the distress pictured on her speaking face, he felt with a degree of anguish and self-reproach that made him happy to agree to a plan proposed by Mrs. Lawson, which was, that she should be accommodated with cloaths of Miss Lawson's, and that Miss Lawson herself should accompany her to Hertford.

This latter offer, Emmeline eagerly accepted; and Delamere, who saw how much it soothed and relieved her, did not object to it. She was therefore immediately equipped with a morning dress, and her agitation of mind seemed to subside; but changing her cloaths, trifling as the exertion was, fatigued her so much, that Mr. Lawson on his return looked very grave; and Delamere, who watched his looks as if his existence depended upon his opinion, was wild with apprehension. The chaises (for Delamere had ordered one for himself, that the ladies might suffer no inconvenience by being crouded) were ready, and Lawson recollecting that Emmeline would require a more quiet situation than an inn could afford, told her that he had a sister at Hertford who would receive her with pleasure, and accommodate her at her house as long as she would stay—'And remember,' added he, 'that Lissy is to continue with you till you leave Hertford.'

Emmeline, extremely sensible of all she owed to this excellent man, could only sigh her thanks; and to shorten them, Mr. Lawson put her and his daughter into the travelling chaise which Delamere had bought for this expedition. Delamere followed in another; and between one and two o'clock they arrived at Hertford, and were set down at the door of an elegant house; where Mrs. Champness, the wife of a man of fortune, received her niece with great affection; and having heard in another room the history of the young lady she had with her, immediately gave orders to have a bed-chamber prepared, and shewed the utmost solicitude for her accommodation.

Delamere, seeing her so well situated for the night, and happy to find she bore her short journey with less increase of fatigue than he apprehended, consented at her request to leave her, and went to the inn, where he dined, and soon afterwards returned to enquire after her.

Miss Lawson came down to him, and told him Miss Mowbray was in bed, and had taken a medicine Mr. Lawson had sent to compose her; but that it was yet impossible to say much of her situation. She told him he must by no means attempt to see her for the remaining part of the day, and begged he would himself try to take some repose: to which salutary advice Delamere at length consented; his haggard looks and exhausted spirits sufficiently testifying how much he wanted it.

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CHAPTER VI

The evening on which Emmeline had been so suddenly missing from the house of Mrs. Ashwood, Rochely had left it in as much anguish as his nature was capable of feeling.

He had not for many years so seriously thought of matrimony as since he had seen Miss Mowbray. Her beauty first attracted him: the natural civility of her manner was by him, who had frequently met only contempt and derision from the young and beautiful, construed into encouragement; and though his hopes had been greatly damped by his knowledge of Delamere's attachment to her, yet they were almost as quickly revived by the great encouragement to persevere, which he had received from Lord Montreville. He fancied that the barriers between her and Delamere being insurmountable, she could not fail of being dazzled by so splendid a fortune as he could himself offer her. That evening, she looked more than usually lovely, and he determined with new ardour to pursue her. But her disappearance put an end to all his brilliant visions; and convinced him that his wealth, on which he had so long been accustomed to value himself, had failed of procuring him the favour of the only woman with whom he was disposed to share it. He was too well convinced that Delamere had carried her off: and though deprived of all hope for himself, he was too angry at the good fortune of his rival to forbear an attempt to disturb him in it's possession. He drove therefore from Clapham to the house of Sir Richard Crofts, where he had the mortification of hearing that Sir Richard was gone with Lord Montreville to the country house of Lord Dornock, and was not expected to return 'till the next day.

Rochely, aware that the only possible chance of preventing Delamere's marriage was by an immediate pursuit, was greatly chagrined at this unavoidable delay. He sat down, however, and with his usual laboured precision wrote to Sir Richard Crofts, informing him of what had happened. This was the operation of near an hour; and he then sent off a man on horseback with it, who arriving at Lord Dornock's about three in the morning, roused the family with some difficulty, and delivered to Sir Richard the intelligence, which was immediately conveyed to Lord Montreville; who having read Mr. Rochely's letter, could not flatter himself with any hope that this alarm might be as groundless as one he had before had on the same subject.

The disobedience of his son; the broken faith of Emmeline; and the rage, complaints, and reproaches of Lady Montreville, all arose together in his imagination; and anger, vexation, and regret, took possession of his heart.

He had recourse in this, as in all other emergences, to Sir Richard Crofts, who advised him immediately to pursue them.

As soon therefore as the sleeping servants could be collected, and the carriage prepared, his Lordship and Sir Richard set out for London together.—Lord Montreville determining to follow the fugitives as expeditiously as possible, though he hoped but little success from the pursuit.

Such was his apprehension of the clamours and passions of his wife, that he could not determine to see her 'till he had at least done all that was possible to recover her son. He therefore wrote to her a short letter, stating briefly what had happened, and giving her hopes that he should be able to overtake the parties before they were married. This he ordered to be delivered to her in the morning; and directed his servant to hasten to him with his travelling chaise and four post horses.

The man, however, who had the care of the carriages, believing his Lord would stay out all night, had gone out also, and taken with him the keys.

By this delay, and the blunders of the affrighted servants, who in their haste only impeded each other, it was near nine o'clock before his Lordship and Sir Richard left London. At Barnet, they heard of the fugitives, and easily traced them from thence to Hatfield; after which believing all farther enquiries useless, they passed through Stevenage (having sent on before for horses,) without asking any questions which might have led them to discover that Delamere and Emmeline had gone from thence towards Hertford only an hour and an half before their arrival.

This was fortunate for the pursued; for an enquiry would probably have led to questions which Mr. Lawson would have found it very difficult to evade.

Lord Montreville, however, and Sir Richard, hurried on to Buckden; where being obliged to get out for some refreshment for themselves and their servants, his Lordship renewed the question—'At what time did a young gentleman and lady' (describing Delamere and Emmeline) 'pass by?'

The people told him they remembered no such persons about the time he named.

Lord Montreville then applied at the other houses, and made several other enquiries; but received only a general assertion that no such persons had been that way within the last four and twenty hours, or even within a week.

Sir Richard Crofts, who piqued himself upon his sagacity, told his Lordship that stupidity, the love of falsehood, or Delamere's bribes, might occasion this failure of intelligence; but there could be no doubt of their being gratified with better information when they got to Stilton. To Stilton therefore they went, but heard exactly the same answers as they had done at the last stage.

Sir Richard was now again to seek for some plausible conjecture that might quiet the apprehensive anxiety of Lord Montreville, who guessed and dreaded he knew not what.

He now said, that as there could be no doubt of the young people's having gone towards Scotland, from the information they had obtained at Barnet and Hatfield, it was most likely that in the apprehension of a pursuit they had afterwards quitted the high road, and were advancing to the borders of Scotland across the country, which must considerably lengthen and impede their journey; therefore if they themselves proceeded directly to the town where these marriages are usually celebrated, the probability was that they should arrive before Delamere and Miss Mowbray; and by such a circumstance the connection would be as effectually prevented as it could be by their overtaking them on the road.

Lord Montreville, despairing of being able by any means to obstruct a marriage on which his son seemed to be so determined, and harrassed in mind as much as he was fatigued in body, suffered himself to be carried forward merely through inability to determine what he could do better; and though quite hopeless of it's success, pursued his journey.

The innocent cause of all this trouble and anxiety remained in the mean time at the hospitable house of Mrs. Champness; where Miss Lawson attended her with all possible kindness and solicitude. It was indeed impossible to be with her without loving her; unless to an heart insensible, like that of Mrs. Ashwood, to all but her own ideal perfections; or steeled by pride, like that of Lady Montreville.

A night passed in quiet sleep had greatly restored her; and her fever, though not gone, was considerably abated. Every noise, however trifling, still made her start; her nerves were by no means restored to their tone, and her spirits continued to be greatly affected. The idea which seemed to press most painfully on her mind, was the blemish which the purity of her character must sustain by her being so long absent with Delamere—a blemish which she knew could hardly ever be removed but by her returning as his wife.

But to break her promise to Lord Montreville; a promise so solemnly given; and to be compelled into a marriage which, however advantageous and fortunate it would appear under other circumstances, would now bring with it a severe alloy of mortification in the displeasure of his family; was a measure which she could not determine to pursue.

Her resentment towards Delamere for what was passed was not yet enough subdued by his reluctant repentance, to reconcile her to the thoughts of putting herself again into his power. Yet she could not suppose he would suffer her to return to London alone, if she had courage to attempt it; or was she sure that when there, Mrs. Ashwood would receive her.

These reflections made her so restless and uneasy that she could not conceal their source from Miss Lawson; who, tho' possessed of a very good understanding, was too young and too little acquainted with the world to be able to advise her.

The handsome person and high rank of Delamere, and his violent love and concern for Emmeline, made her suppose it impossible that she could help returning it, or be long able to resist his importunity. She concluded therefore that finally it would be a match; and was impressed with a sentiment that amounted almost to veneration for Miss Mowbray, whom she considered as a prodigy of female virtue and resolution.

Delamere had been several times to speak to Miss Lawson; and he had pleaded the violence of his passion with so much effect, that the soft-hearted girl became his warm advocate with Emmeline, and represented his tenderness and his contrition, 'till she consented (as she was now able to sit up) to admit him.

On his entrance, he said something, he hardly knew what, to Emmeline. She held out her hand to him in token of forgiveness. He seized it eagerly, and pressed it to his heart, while he gazed on her face as if to enquire there what passed in hers.

'Remember, Delamere,' said she, 'remember I am content to forgive your late rash and absurd attempt, only on condition of your giving me the most positive assurance that you will carry me directly to Mrs. Stafford's, and there leave me.'

Hard as these terms appeared, after the hopes he had entertained on undertaking the journey, he was forced to submit; but it was evidently with reluctance.

'I do promise then,' said he, 'to take you to Mrs. Stafford's; but'——

'But what?' asked Emmeline.

'Do you not mean, when you are there, to exclude me for ever?—Mrs. Stafford is no friend of mine.'

'I have already told you, Mr. Delamere, that I will see you wherever I am, under certain restrictions: and tho' your late conduct might, and indeed ought to induce me to withdraw that promise, yet I now repeat it. But do not believe that I will therefore be persecuted as I have been; recollect that I have already been driven from Mowbray Castle, from Swansea, and from Mrs. Ashwood's, wholly on your account.'

'Your remedy, my Emmeline, is, to consent to inhabit a house of your own, and suffer me to be the first of your servants.'

The varying colour of her complexion, to which the emotions of her mind restored for a moment the faint tints of returning health, made Delamere hope that her resolution was shaken; and seizing with his usual vehemence on an idea so flattering, he was instantly on his knees before her imploring her consent to prosecute their journey, and intreating Miss Lawson's assistance, to move her inexorable friend.

Emmeline was too weak to bear an address of this sort. The feebleness of her frame ill seconded the resolution of her mind; which, notwithstanding the struggles of pity and regard for Delamere, which she could not entirely silence, was immoveably determined. Rallying therefore her spirits, and summoning her fortitude to answer him, she said—'How can you, Sir, solicit a woman, whom you wish to make your wife, to break a promise so solemn as that I have given to your father? Could you hereafter have any dependance on one, who holds her integrity so lightly? and should you not with great reason suspect that with her, falsehood and deception might become habitual?'

'Not at all,' answered Delamere. 'Your promise to my father is nugatory; for it ought never to have been given. He took an unfair advantage of your candour and your timidity; and all that you said ought not to bind you; since it was extorted from you by him who had no right to make such conditions.'

'What! has a father no right to decide to whom he will entrust the happiness of his son, and the honour of his posterity? Alas! Delamere, you argue against yourself; you only convince me that I ought not to put the whole happiness of my life into the hands of a man, who will so readily break thro' his first duties. The same impatient, pardon me, if I say the same selfish spirit, which now urges you to set paternal authority at defiance, will perhaps hereafter impel you, with as little difficulty, to quit a wife of whom you may be weary, for any other person whom caprice or novelty may dress in the perfections you now fancy I possess. Ah! Delamere! shall I have a right to expect tenderness and faith from a man whom I have assisted in making his parents unhappy; and who has by my means embittered the evening of their lives to whom he owes his own? Do you think that a rebellious and unfeeling son is likely to make a good husband, a good father?'

'Death and madness!' cried Delamere, relapsing into all the violence of his nature—'what do you mean by all this! Selfish! rebellious! unfeeling!—am I then so worthless, so detestable in your eyes?'

His extravagant expressions of passion always terrified Emmeline; but the paroxysm to which he now yielded, alarmed her less than it did Miss Lawson, who never having seen such frantic behaviour before, thought him really mad. She tremblingly besought him to sit down and be calm; while the pale countenance of Emmeline which she shewed him, convinced him he must subdue the violence of his transports, or hazard seeing her relapse into that alarming state which had forced him to relinquish his project. This observation restored his senses for a moment.—He besought her pardon, with tears; then again cursed his own folly, and seemed on the point of renouncing the contrition he had just assured her he felt. The scene lasted till Emmeline, quite overcome with it, grew so faint that she said she must go to bed; and then Delamere, again terrified at an idea which he had forgot but the moment before, consented to retire if she would again repeat her forgiveness.

She gave him her hand languidly, and in silence. He kissed it; and half in resentment, half in sorrow, left her, and returned to the inn, in a humour which equally unfitted him for society or solitude. Obliged, however, to remain in the latter, he brooded gloomily over his disappointment; and believing Emmeline's life no longer in danger, he fancied that his fears had magnified her illness. He again deprecated his folly for having consented to relinquish the prosecution of his journey, and for having agreed to carry her where he feared access to her would be rendered rare and difficult, by the inflexible prudence and watchful friendship of Mrs. Stafford. Sometimes he formed vague projects to deceive her, and carry her again towards Scotland; then relinquished them and formed others. He passed the night however nearly without sleep, and the morning found him still irresolute.

At eight o'clock, he went to the house of Mrs. Champness; and Miss Lawson came down to him, but with a countenance in which uneasiness was so visible, that Delamere was almost afraid of asking how Miss Mowbray did.

She told him that she had passed a restless and uncomfortable night, and that the conversation he had held the evening before had been the cause of an access of fever quite as high as the first attack; and, that tho' she tried to conquer her weakness, and affected ability to prosecute a journey for which she hourly grew more eager, it was easy to see that she was as unfit for it as ever. Miss Lawson added, that if in a few hours she was not better, she should send to Mr. Lawson to come from Stevenage to see her. This account renewed with extreme violence all the former terrors of Delamere, which a few hours before he had been trying to persuade himself were groundless.

He now reproached himself for his thoughtless cruelty; and Miss Lawson seized this opportunity to exhort him to be more cautious for the future, which he readily and warmly protested he would be. He promised never again to give way to such extravagant transports, and pressed to be admitted to see Emmeline; but Miss Lawson would by no means suffer him to see her 'till she was more recovered from the effects of his frenzy.

In the afternoon, he was allowed to drink tea in Emmeline's room, and expressed his sincere concern for his indiscretion of the evening before. He tried, by shewing a disposition to comply with all her wishes, to obliterate the memory of his former indiscretion. Emmeline was willing to forget the offence, and pardon the offender, on his renewing his promise to take her the next day towards London, on her route into Dorsetshire; if she should be well enough to undertake the journey.

The spirit and fortitude of Emmeline, fatal as they were to his hopes, commanded the respect, esteem, and almost the adoration of Delamere; while her gentleness and kindness oppressed his heart with fondness so extreme, that he was equally undone by the one and the other, and felt that it every hour became more and more impossible for him to live without her.

It was agreed, that as it would be impossible to reach Woodfield from Hertford, without stopping one night on the road, they would proceed thro' London to Staines the first day, and from thence go on early the next to the house of Mrs. Stafford.

After lingering with her as long as he could, Delamere took his leave for the evening, determined to observe the promises he had made her, and never again to attempt to obtain her but by her own consent. When he made these resolves, he really intended to adhere to them; and was confirmed in his good resolutions when he the next morning found her ready to trust herself with him, calm, chearful, full of confidence in his promises, and of gentleness and kindness towards him.

Emmeline took an affectionate leave of her amiable acquaintance, Miss Lawson, whose uncommon kindness, on so short a knowledge of her, filled her heart with gratitude. She promised to write to her as soon as she got to Woodfield, and to return the cloaths she had borrowed, to which she secretly purposed adding some present, to testify her sense of the civilities she had received.

Delamere enclosed, in a letter which he sent by Miss Lawson to her father, a bank note, as an acknowledgment of his extraordinary kindness.

They quickly arrived in London; and as Emmeline still remained in the resolution of avoiding a return to Mrs. Ashwood, they changed horses in Piccadilly to go on.

Tho' by going to her former residence she might have escaped a longer continuation, and farther journey, with Delamere, of the impropriety of which she was very sensible; yet she declined it, because she knew that as her adventure might be explained several ways, Mrs. Ashwood and Miss Galton were very likely to put on it the construction least in her favour; and she was very unwilling to be exposed to their questions and comments, till she could, in concert with Mrs. Stafford, and with her advice, give such an account of the affair as would put it out of their power to indulge that malignity of remark at her expence of which she knew they were capable.

She therefore dispatched a servant to Mrs. Ashwood with a note for her cloaths, whom Delamere directed to rejoin them at Staines.

At that place they arrived early in the evening; and Emmeline, to whom Delamere had behaved with the utmost tenderness and respect, bore her journey without suffering any other inconvenience than some remaining languor, which was now more visible in her looks than in her spirits. Charmed with the thoughts of so soon seeing Mrs. Stafford, and feeling all that delight which a consciousness of rectitude inspires, she was more than usually chearful, and conversed with Delamere with all that enchanting frankness and sweetness which made her general conversation so desireable.

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CHAPTER VII

As they had an hour or two on their hands, which Emmeline wished to employ in something that might prevent Delamere from entertaining her on the only subject he was ever willing to talk of when they were together, she desired him to enquire for a book. He went out, and returned with some volumes of novels, which he had borrowed of the landlord's daughter; of which Emmeline read in some a page, and in others a chapter, but found nothing in any, that tempted her to go regularly through the whole.

While she was reading, Delamere, equally unable to occupy himself with any other object whether she was absent or present, sat looking at her over the table which was between them. After some time passed in this manner, their supper was brought in, and common conversation took place while it was passing. When it was removed, Emmeline returned again to the books, and took up one she had not before opened.—It was the second volume of the Sorrows of Werter. She laid it down again with a smile, saying—'That will not do for me to-night.'

'What is it?' cried Delamere, taking it from her.—'O, I have read it—and if you have, Emmeline, you might have learned the danger of trifling with violent and incurable passions. Tell me—could you ever be reconciled to yourself if you should be the cause of a catastrophe equally fatal?'

Still meaning to turn the conversation, she answered gaily—'O, I fancy there is very little danger of that—you know the value of your existence too well to throw it inconsiderately away.'

'Do not be too certain of that, Emmeline. Without you, my life is no longer valuable—if indeed it be supportable; and should I ever be in the situation this melancholy tale describes, how do I know that my reason would be strong enough to preserve me from equal rashness. Beware, Miss Mowbray—beware of the consequence of finding an Albert at Woodfield.'

'It is very unlikely I should find any lover there. I assure you I desire none; nor have I any other wish than to pass the remainder of the winter tranquilly with my friend.'

'If then you really never wish to encourage another, and if you have any sensibility for the pain I feel from uncertainty, why will you not solemnly engage yourself to me, by a promise which cannot be broken but by mutual consent?'

'Because we are both too young to form such an engagement.—You are not yet quite one and twenty; a time of life in which it is impossible you can be a competent judge of what will make you really happy. I am more than two years younger: but short as has been my knowledge of the world, I have already seen two or three instances of marriages made in consequence of early engagements, which have proved so little fortunate that they have determined me never to try the experiment. Should you bind yourself by this promise, which you now think would make you easy, and should you hereafter repent it, which I know to be far from improbable, pride, obstinacy, the shame of retracting your opinion, would perhaps concur to prevent your withdrawing it; and I should receive your hand while your heart might be attached to another. The chains which you had yourself put on, in opposition to the wishes of your family, you would, rather than own your error, rivet, tho' your inclination prompted you to break them; and we should then be both miserable.—No, Delamere—let us remain at liberty, and perhaps—— '

'It is impossible, Madam!' cried Delamere, suddenly and vehemently interrupting her—'It is absolutely impossible you could argue thus calmly, if you had any regard for me—Cold—cruel—insensible—unfeeling girl! Oh! fool, fool that I am, to persist in loving a woman without an heart, and to be unable to tear from my soul a passion that serves only to make me perpetually wretched. Cursed be the hour I first indulged it, and cursed the weakness of mind that cannot conquer it!'

This new instance of ungovernable temper, so contrary to the promises he had given her at Hertford, extremely provoked Emmeline, who answered very gravely—

'If you desire, Sir, to divest yourself of this unfortunate passion, the task is already half accomplished. Resolve, then, to conquer it wholly: restore me to that tranquillity you have destroyed—vindicate my injured reputation, which your headlong ardour has blemished—give me back to the kindness and protection of your father—and determine to see me no more.'

This spirited and severe answer, immediately convinced Delamere he had gone too far. He had never before seen Emmeline so much piqued, and he hastened to appease her.

'Pardon me!—forgive me, Emmeline! I am not master of myself when I think of losing you! But you, who feel not any portion of the flame that devours me, can coolly argue, while my heart is torn in pieces; and deign not even to make any allowance for the unguarded sallies of unconquerable passion!—the phrenzy of almost hopeless love! Sometimes, when I think your coldness arises from determined and insurmountable indifference—perhaps from dislike—despair and fury possess me. Would you but say that you will live only for me—would you only promise that no future Rochely, none of the people you have seen or may see, shall influence you to forget me—I should, I think, be easier!'

'You have a better opinion of yourself, Mr. Delamere,' answered Emmeline, calmly, 'than to believe it probable. But be that as it may, I have told you that I will neither make or receive any promises of the nature you require. I have already suffered too much from your extravagant passion to put it farther in your power to distress me. But I shall be better able to reassume this conversation to-morrow—to-night I am fatigued; and it is time for us to separate.'

'And will you leave me, then, Emmeline?—leave me too in anger?'

'I am not angry, Mr. Delamere—here is my hand.'

'This hand,' exclaimed he, eagerly grasping it, 'which ought to have been mine!—Now, even now, that you are about to tear yourself from me, it should have been mine for ever! But I have relinquished my prize at the moment I might have secured it; and if I lose it entirely my own folly only will be the cause.'

'These violent transports may terrify me, but shall not alter my determination. Quit my hand, Mr. Delamere,' continued she, struggling to disengage it—'I will not be detained.'

She rang the bell; and the waiter almost instantly entering, she took a candle and went to the apartment prepared for her: while Delamere, vexed to have commanded himself so little, and to be so unable to adhere to the good resolutions he had made, dared not attempt to prevent her.

He had now again to make his peace, but would not venture to take any steps towards it that night; and he retired to his own room, considering how he might remain near her after she got into Dorsetshire, and dreading the hour of even a temporary separation.

The next morning Emmeline, impatient to be gone, dressed herself early; and just as she was about to go down to hasten their breakfast and departure, she saw, from a window that looked into the yard of the inn, a phaeton and four enter it, remarkable for the profusion of expensive and ill-fancied ornaments with which both the carriage and harness were covered. In it were two gentlemen wrapped in great coats, as the weather was very severe; on whom Emmeline casting a transient glance, discovered that one of them was Elkerton.

She was a good deal alarmed at his arrival: for she had reason to fear, that this man, to whom she had a decided aversion, would see her, and know that she was travelling alone with Delamere. She saw him get out, and give directions for putting up his horses, telling the people who came out to attend him that he should breakfast and stay there some hours.

Since his unfortunate rencontre with Delamere at Mrs. Ashwood's, he had almost entirely relinquished the pursuit of Emmeline. He had never been able to shake off the ridicule his vanity had brought upon him, and therefore had forborne to enter the circle where it had happened. He had, however, seen Miss Mowbray once or twice in public, and she had been too generally admired not to interest his pride in keeping up the acquaintance, tho' she treated him always with coldness, and found it difficult to be barely civil. She knew that he was severely mortified by her indifference, and that in matters of scandal and gossiping no old woman could be a greater adept. When therefore personal pique was added to his natural love of anecdote, Emmeline apprehended so much from him, that she determined, if possible, to escape his sight.

To do this, however, was very difficult. She saw him and his companion take possession of a room that had windows looking into the yard through which she must of necessity pass, and where, when the post-chaise drew up, they must see whoever got into it. She wrapped herself up in her cloak, pulled her hat over her eyes, and holding up her handkerchief as if to guard her face from the cold, she passed unobserved to the room where Delamere was waiting breakfast.

The remembrance of his last night's behaviour was in some measure obliterated by the alarm she had felt at the sight of Elkerton. Delamere looked melancholy and dejected. Emmeline speaking to him with her usual sweetness, seemed to have forgotten the offence he had given her, and tried to restore his good humour as if she had been the aggressor: but he continued gloomy and pensive.

They began their breakfast, and conversed on different subjects.

'Did you observe,' said Emmeline, 'the phaeton which drove in just now?'

'No—what was there remarkable about it?'

'Nothing, but that one of the persons it contained was Elkerton, the poor man you made so absurd at Mrs. Ashwood's, when he boasted of knowing you. I hope I shall get away without his seeing me—I should extremely dislike meeting him.'

'Stupid dog!—why should you care whether you meet him or no?'

'Because he must think it so strange that I am here with you.'

'Let him—Of what consequence is it to us what such a puppy thinks? I cannot possibly care about it.'

'But I do, Mr. Delamere,' said Emmeline, somewhat gravely.—'You will recollect that I may be very much injured by the scandal such a man may circulate.'

'Well, well, my dear Emmeline—we will set out directly, and you will not meet him.—I will order the chaise.'

He went out for that purpose as soon as their breakfast ended; but a few paces from the door was accosted by Elkerton, who feeling himself in point of figure equal to speak to any man, addressed him with all the confident familiarity of an old acquaintance.

'Sir, your most obedient humble servant.'

'Your servant, Sir;' replied Delamere, brushing by him.

'Sir, I hope you, and my Lord and Lady Montreville, have been well since I had last the honour of seeing you?'

'Since you oblige me, Sir, to acknowledge the acquaintance, I must remind you that our last meeting was attended with some circumstances which should make you not very desirous of recollecting it.'

'Oh, dear! very far from not wishing to remember it, I am always pleased with such agreeable badinage from my friends, and some how or other contrive to be even with them. Prithee, dear boy, whither are you going?—perhaps we are travelling the same road?'

'I hope not,' said Delamere, turning from him, and advancing towards the bar.

Elkerton, unabashed, followed him.

'If we are,' continued he, 'I think you shall take me into your post-chaise. I am going to pass a month with a friend in Hampshire; and Jackman, who loves driving, tho' he knows nothing of the matter, persuaded me to use an open carriage; but it is so cold, that I believe I shall let him enjoy it alone the rest of the way. Suppose we go together, if your destination is the Winchester road?'

Delamere was so provoked at this forwardness, that he found he should be unable to give a moderate answer.—He therefore turned away without giving any.

'Pray, Sir,' said the bar maid to Elkerton, 'who is that young gentleman?'

'Lord Montreville's son,' replied he; 'and one of the strangest fellows in the world.—Sometimes we are as intimate as brothers; and now you see he'll hardly speak to me.'

'Perhaps, Mr. Elkerton,' said the woman, smiling, 'the young gentleman may have very good reasons for not taking another companion in his post-chaise.'

Elkerton pressed her to explain herself.

'Why you must know,' said she, 'that there's a young lady with him; one of the prettiest young women I ever see. Last night, after they comed here, his walet was pretty near tipsey; so he come and sot down here, and told me how his master had hired him to go along with 'em to Scotland; but that before they got near half way, somehow or other 'twas settled for 'em to come back again. But don't say as I told you, Mr. Elkerton, for that would be as much as my place is worth.'

This intelligence awakened all the curiosity of Elkerton, together with some hopes of being able to revenge himself on Delamere for his contempt and rudeness.

'Egad!' cried he, 'I'll have a peep at this beauty, however.'

So saying, he strutted across the yard, and placed himself under a little piazza which made a covered communication between the rooms of the inn which were built round the yard, and along which they were obliged to pass to get into the chaise.

The room door opened—Delamere and Emmeline appeared at it.

'Draw up, postillions, as close as you can,' cried the waiter.

Delamere, holding Emmeline's hand, advanced; but on seeing Elkerton, she stepped back into the room.

'Come, come,' said Delamere—'never concern yourself about that impertinent fellow.'

Elkerton, tho' he did not distinctly hear this speech, had caught a view of the person to whom it was addressed; and tho' her face was concealed, her height and air convinced him it was Miss Mowbray.

'How do you, Madam?' exclaimed he, bowing and advancing—'Miss Mowbray, I hope I have the happiness of seeing you well.'

'We are in haste, Sir,' said Delamere, leading Emmeline towards the chaise.

'Nay, my good friend,' returned Elkerton, 'allow me I beg to pay my respects to this lady, with whom I have the honour of being acquainted—Miss Mowbray, permit me—— '

He would have taken the hand which was disengaged; but Emmeline shrunk from him, and stepped quickly into the chaise.

Elkerton still advanced, and leaning almost into it, he said—'Your long journey, I hope, has not too much fatigued you.'

'By heaven!' exclaimed Delamere, 'this is too much! Sir, you are the most troublesome, insolent fool, I ever met with!'

So saying, he seized Elkerton by the collar, and twisting him suddenly round, threw him with great violence against one of the pillars of the piazza.

He then got into the chaise; and taking out of his pocket two or three cards, on which his address was written, he tossed them out of the window; saying, with a voice that struck terror into the overthrown knight on the ground—'You know where to hear of me if you have any thing to say.'

The chaise now drove quickly away; while Delamere tried to reassure Emmeline, who was so much terrified by the suddenness of this scuffle, that she had hardly breath to reproach him for his impetuosity. He answered, that he had kept his temper too long with the meddling ideot, and that to have overlooked such impertinence without resentment was not in his nature. He tried to laugh off her apprehensions; and flattered by the anxiety she felt for his safety, all his gaiety and good humour seemed to return.

But Emmeline, extremely hurt to find that Elkerton was informed of the journey she had taken, and vexed that Delamere had engaged in a quarrel, the event of which, if not personally dangerous to him, could not fail of being prejudicial to her, continued very low and uneasy the rest of their journey, reflecting on nothing with pleasure but on her approaching interview with Mrs. Stafford.

But this hoped-for happiness was soon converted into the most poignant uneasiness. On their arrival at Woodfield, Emmeline had the pain of hearing that Mrs. Stafford, who had two days before been delivered of a daughter, had continued dangerously ill ever since. The physicians who attended her had that day given them hopes that her illness might end favourably; but she was still in a situation so precarious that her attendants were in great alarm.

As she had anxiously expected Emmeline, and expressed much astonishment at not having heard from her the week before, which was that on which she had purposed to be with her, and as she still continued earnestly to enquire for news of Miss Mowbray, Mr. Stafford insisted on informing her she was arrived; and this intelligence seemed to give her pleasure. She desired Emmeline might come to her bed-side: but she was so weak, that she could only in a faint voice express her pleasure at the sight of her; and pressing her hand, begged she would not leave her.

It was impossible Emmeline could speak to her on the subject of Delamere, as the least emotion might have been of the most fatal consequence; and tho' she earnestly wished he might not have been invited to stay, she was obliged to let it take it's course. She left her friend's room no more that evening; and gave her whole thoughts and attention to keeping her quiet and administering her medicines, which Mrs. Stafford seemed pleased to receive from her hands.

Mr. Stafford was one of those unfortunate characters, who having neither perseverance and regularity to fit them for business, or taste and genius for more refined pursuits, seek, in every casual occurrence or childish amusement, relief against the tedium of life. Tho' married very early, and tho' father of a numerous family, he had thrown away the time and money, which should have provided for them, in collecting baubles, which he had repeatedly possessed and discarded, 'till having exhausted every source that that species of idle folly offered, he had been driven, by the same inability to pursue proper objects, into vices yet more fatal to the repose of his wife, and schemes yet more destructive to the fortune of his family. Married to a woman who was the delight of her friends and the admiration of her acquaintance, surrounded by a lovely and encreasing family, and possessed of every reasonable means of happiness, he dissipated that property, which ought to have secured it's continuance, in vague and absurd projects which he neither loved or understood; and his temper growing more irritable in proportion as his difficulties encreased, he sometimes treated his wife with great harshness; and did not seem to think it necessary, even by apparent kindness and attention, to excuse or soften to her his general ill conduct, or his 'battening on the moor' of low and degrading debauchery.

Mrs. Stafford, who had been married to him at fifteen, had long been unconscious of his weakness: and when time and her own excellent understanding pressed the fatal conviction too forcibly upon her, she still, but fruitlessly, attempted to hide from others what she saw too evidently herself.

Fear for the future fate of her children, and regret to find that she had no influence over her husband, together with the knowledge of connections to which she had till a few months before been a stranger, had given to Mrs. Stafford, whose temper was naturally extremely chearful, that air of despondence, and melancholy cast of mind, which Emmeline had remarked with so much concern on their first acquaintance.

To such a man as Mr. Stafford, the arrival of Delamere afforded novelty, and consequently some degree of satisfaction. He took it into his head to be extremely civil to him, and pressed him to continue some time at his house; but Delamere well knew that Emmeline would be made unhappy by his remaining more than one night; as Mr. Stafford entered however so warmly into his interest, he begged of him to recollect whether there was not any house to be let within a few miles of Woodfield.

Mr. Stafford instantly named a hunting seat of Sir Philip Carnaby's, which he said would exactly suit him. It's possessor, whom some disarrangement in his affairs had obliged to go abroad for a few years, had ordered it to be let ready furnished, from year to year.

Delamere went the next morning to the attorney who let it; and making an agreement for it, ordered in all the requisites for his immediate residence; and, till it was ready, accepted Mr. Stafford's invitation to remain at Woodfield.

Emmeline, who confined herself wholly to her friend's apartment, knew nothing of this arrangement 'till it was concluded: and when she heard it, remonstrance and objection were vain.

The illness of Mrs. Stafford, tho' it did not gain ground, was still very alarming, and called forth, to a painful excess, that lively sympathy which Emmeline felt for those she loved. She continued to attend her with the tenderest assiduity; and after five days painful suspence, had the happiness to find her out of danger, and well enough to hear the relation Emmeline had to make of the involuntary elopement.

Mrs. Stafford advised her immediately to write to Lord Montreville; which her extreme anxiety only had occasioned her so long to delay.

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CHAPTER VIII

Lord Montreville and Sir Richard Crofts, after exhausting every mode of enquiry at the end of their journey, without having discovered any traces of the fugitives, returned to London. The uncertainty of what was become of his son, and concern for the fate of Emmeline, made his Lordship more unhappy than he had yet been: and the reception he met with on his return home did not contribute to relieve him; he found that no intelligence had been received of Delamere; and Lady Montreville beset him with complaints and reproaches. The violence of her passions had, for some months, subjected her to fits; and the evasion of her son, and her total ignorance of what was become of him, had kept her in perpetual agony during Lord Montreville's absence. His return after so successless a journey encreased her sufferings, and she was of a temper not to suffer alone, but to inflict on others some part of the pain she felt herself.

Lord Montreville attempted in vain to appease and console her. Nothing but some satisfactory account of Delamere had the least chance of succeeding; and his Lordship, who now supposed that Delamere and Emmeline were concealed in the neighbourhood of London, determined to persevere in every means of discovering them.

For this purpose he had again recourse to the Crofts'; and Sir Richard and both his sons readily undertook to assist him in his search, and particularly the elder undertook it with the warmest zeal.

This young man inherited all the cunning of his father, together with a coolness of temper which supplied the place of solid understanding and quick parts; since it always gave him time to see where his interest lay, and steadiness to pursue it. By incessant assiduity he had acquired the confidence of Lady Montreville, to whom his attention and attendance were become almost necessary.

Her Ladyship never dreamed that a man of his rank could lift his eyes to either of her daughters, and therefore encouraged his constant attendance on them both; while Crofts was too sensible of the value of such an alliance not to take advantage of the opportunities that were incessantly afforded him.

Lady Montreville had repeatedly declared, that if Delamere married Emmeline all that part of the fortune which she had a right to give away should be the property of her eldest daughter. This was upwards of six thousand pounds a year; and whether this ever happened or not, Crofts knew that what was settled on younger children, which must at all events be divided between the two young ladies, would make either of them a fortune worth all attempts, independent of the connection he would form by it with Lord Montreville, who now began to make a very considerable figure in the political world.

With these views, Crofts had for near two years incessantly applied himself to conciliate the good opinion of the whole family, with so much art that nobody suspected his designs. The slight and contemptuous treatment he had always received from Delamere, he had affected to pass by with the calm magnanimity of a veteran statesman; and emulating the decided conduct and steady indifference of age, rather than yielding to the warmth of temper natural to five and twenty, he was considered as a very rising and promising young man by the grave politicians with whom he associated, and by those of his own age a supercilious and solemn coxcomb.

He had studied the characters of the two Miss Delameres, and found that of the eldest the fittest for his purpose; tho' the person of the youngest, and the pride which encased the heart of the other, would have made a less able politician decide for Augusta. But he saw that the very pride which seemed an impediment to his hopes, might, under proper management, contribute to their success. He saw that she really loved nobody but herself; that her personal vanity was greater than the pride of her rank; and that her heart was certainly on that side assailable. He therefore, by distant hints and sighs, affected concealment; and artful speeches gave her to understand that all his prudence had not been able to defend him from the indiscretion of a hopeless passion.

While he was contented to call it hopeless, Miss Delamere, tho' long partial to Fitz-Edward, could not refuse herself the indulgence of hearing it; and at length grew so accustomed to allow him to talk to her of his unbounded and despairing love, that she found it very disagreeable to be without him.

He saw, that unless a title and great estate crossed his path, his success, tho' it might be slow, was almost certain. But he was obliged to proceed with caution; notwithstanding he would have been very glad to have secured his prize before the return of Delamere to his family threw an obstacle in his way which was the most formidable he had to contend with.

He affected, however, the utmost anxiety to discover him; and recited to Lord Montreville an exhortation he intended to pronounce to him, if he should be fortunate enough to do so.

Nothing could be a greater proof of his Lordship's opinion of Crofts than his entrusting him with a commission, which, if successful, could hardly fail of irritating the fiery and ungovernable temper of Delamere, and driving him into excesses which it would require all the philosophic steadiness of Crofts to support without resentment.

While Sir Richard and his two sons therefore set about the difficult task of finding Delamere, Lord Montreville went himself to Fitz-Edward; but heard that for many days he had not been at his apartments, that he had taken no servants with him, and that they knew not whither he was gone, or when he would return.

Lord Montreville, who had depended more on the information of Fitz-Edward than any other he hoped to obtain, left a note at his lodgings desiring to see him as soon as he came to town, and went back in encreased uneasiness to his own house. But among the numberless letters which lay on his library table, the directions of which he hastily read in a faint hope of news of Delamere, he saw one directed by the hand of Emmeline. He tore it eagerly open—it contained an account of all that had happened, written with such clearness and simplicity as immediately impressed it's truth; and it is difficult to say whether Lord Montreville's pleasure at finding his son still unmarried, or his admiration at the greatness of his niece's mind, were the predominant emotion.

When the former sentiment a little subsided, and he had time to reflect on all the heroism of her conduct, he was almost ashamed of the long opposition he had given to his son's passion; and would, if he had not known his wife's prejudices invincible, have acknowledged, that neither the possession of birth or fortune could make any amends to him, who saw and knew how to value the beauty of such a mind as that of Emmeline. The inveterate aversion and insurmountable pride of Lady Montreville, he had no hope of conquering; and she had too much in her power, to suffer his Lordship to think of Delamere's losing such a large portion of his inheritance by disobeying her. For these reasons he checked the inclination he felt rising in his own heart to reward and receive his niece, and thought only of taking advantage of her integrity to separate his son from her for ever.

He went with the letter in his hand to Lady Montreville's apartment, where he found Mr. Crofts and the two young ladies.

He read it to them; and when he had finished it, expressed in the warmest terms his approbation of Miss Mowbray's conduct. Lady Montreville testified nothing but satisfaction at what she called 'the foolish boy's escape from ruin,' without having the generosity to applaud her, whose integrity was so much the object of admiration.

Possessing neither candour nor generosity herself, she was incapable of loving those qualities in another; and in answer to Lord Montreville's praises of Emmeline, which she heard with reluctance, she was not ashamed to say, that perhaps were the whole truth known, his Lordship would find but little reason to set up his relation's character higher than that of his own children—to which her eldest daughter added—'Why, to be sure, Madam, there is, as my father says, something very extraordinary in Miss Mowbray's refusing such a match—that is, if she has no other attachment.'

Augusta Delamere heard all that her father said in commendation of her beloved Emmeline, with eyes suffused with tears, which drew on her the anger of her mother and the malignant sneers of her sister.

The two young ladies however were sent away, while a council was held between Lord and Lady Montreville and Crofts, on what steps it was immediately necessary to take.

Several ideas were started, but none which his Lordship approved. He determined therefore to write to his son; with whose residence at Tylehurst, the house of Sir Philip Carnaby, Emmeline's letter acquainted him; and wait his answer before he proceeded farther.

With this resolution, Lady Montreville was extremely discontented; and proposed, as the only plan on which they could depend, that his Lordship, under pretence of placing her properly, should send Emmeline to France, and there confine her till Delamere, hopeless of regaining her, should consent to marry Miss Otley.

Her Ladyship urged—'That it could not possibly do the girl any harm; and that very worthy people had not scrupled to commit much more violent actions where their motive was right, tho' less strong, than that which would in this case actuate Lord Montreville, which was,' she said, 'to save the sole remaining heir of a noble house from a degrading and beggarly alliance.'

'Hold! Madam,' cried Lord Montreville, who was extremely displeased at the proposal, and with the speech with which it closed—'Remember, I beg of you, that when you speak of the Mowbray family, you speak of one very little if at all inferior to your own; nor should you, Lady Montreville, forget, in the heat of your resentment, that you are a woman—a woman too, whose birth should at least give you a liberal mind, and put you above thinking of an action as unfeminine as inhuman. Surely, as a mother who have daughters of your own, you should have some feeling for this young woman; not at all their inferior, but in being born under circumstances for which she is not to blame, and which mark with sufficient unhappiness a life that might otherwise have done as much honour to my family as I hope your daughters will do to your's.'

The slightest contradiction was what Lady Montreville had never been accustomed to bear patiently. The asperity therefore of this speech, and the total rejection of her project, threw her into an agony of passion which ended in an hysteric fit.

Lord Montreville, less moved than usual, committed her to the care of her daughters and women, and continued to talk coolly to Crofts on the subject they were before discussing.

After considering it in every point of view, he determined to leave Delamere at present to his own reflections; only writing to him a calm and expostulatory letter; such as, together with Emmeline's steadiness, on which he now relied with the utmost confidence, might, he thought, effect more than violent measures. His Lordship wrote also to Emmeline, strongly expressing his admiration and regard, and his confidence and esteem encreased her desire to deserve them.

Mrs. Stafford was now nearly recovered; and Delamere settled at his new house, where he always returned at night, tho' he passed almost every day at Woodfield.

His mornings were often occupied in those amusements of which he had been so fond before his passion for Emmeline became the only business of his life; and secure of seeing her continually, and of telling how he loved her, he became more reasonable than he had hitherto been.

The letters, however, which now arrived from Lord Montreville, a little disturbed his felicity. They gave Emmeline an opportunity to exhort him to return to London—to make his peace with his father, and quiet the uneasiness of Lady Montreville, which his Lordship represented as excessive, and as fatal to her health as to the peace of the whole family.

Emmeline urged him by every tie of duty and affection to relieve the anxiety of his family, and particularly to attend to the effect his absence and disobedience had on the constitution of his mother, which had long been extremely shaken. But to all her remonstrances, he answered—'That he would not return, till Lady Montreville would promise never to renew those reflections and reproaches which had driven him from Audley-Hall; and to which he apprehended he should now be more than ever exposed.'

As Emmeline could not pretend to procure such an engagement from her Ladyship, all she could do was to inform Lord Montreville of his objection, and to leave it to him to make terms between Delamere and his mother.

Near a month had now elapsed since Emmeline's arrival at Woodfield; and the returning serenity of her mind had restored to her countenance all it's bloom and brilliancy. She had indeed no other uneasiness than what arose from her anxiety to procure quiet to her Uncle's family, and from her observations on the encreasing melancholy of Mrs. Stafford, for which she knew too well how to account.

Even this, however, often appeared alleviated by her presence, and forgotten in her conversation; and she rejoiced in the power of affording a temporary relief to the sorrows of one whom she so truly loved.

This calm was interrupted by Elkerton, by whom the affront he had received at Staines, from Delamere, had not been forgotten, tho' he by no means relished the thoughts of resenting it in the way his friend Jackman, and all who heard of it, proposed.

To risk his life and all his finery, seemed a most cruel condition; but Jackman protested there was no other by which he could retrieve his honour. And his friend at whose house he was, on the borders of Hampshire, who had been an officer in the military service of the East India Company, and had acquired a princely fortune, felt himself inspired with all the punctilios of a soldier, and declared to Elkerton that if he put up with this affront no man of honour could hereafter speak to him.

Poor Elkerton, who in the article of fighting, as well as many others, extremely resembled 'le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,' made all the evasions in his power; while his soi disant friends, who enjoyed his distress, persisted in pushing him on to demand satisfaction of Delamere; but after long debates, he determined first to ask him for an apology. There was, he thought, some hope of obtaining it; if not, he could only in the last extremity have recourse to the desperate expedient of a challenge. He wrote therefore a letter to Delamere, requesting, in the civilest and mildest terms, an apology for his behaviour at Staines; and sent it by a servant; as it was not more than twenty miles from the house where he was, to that Mr. Delamere had taken.

Delamere returned a contemptuous refusal; but neither mentioned the letter to Emmeline, nor thought again about it's writer.

The unfortunate Elkerton, who reproached incessantly his evil stars for having thrown this hot-headed boy in his way, could not conceal from his friends the unaccommodating answer he had received to his pacific overture; and it was agreed that Elkerton must either determine to fight him, or be excluded from good company for ever. The challenge, therefore, penned by the Asiatic hero, was copied with a trembling hand by Elkerton; and Jackman, who had offered to be his second, set out with him for the town near Tylehurst.

On their arrival, Jackman took a post-chaise to carry the billet to Delamere, leaving the terrified Elkerton to settle all his affairs, both temporal and spiritual, against the next morning, when Delamere was appointed to meet him on a heath near the town, at seven o'clock.

Jackman found Delamere with Fitz-Edward, who had arrived there that day. He delivered his letter, and Delamere immediately answered it by saying he would not fail to attend the appointment, with his friend Colonel Fitz-Edward.

During Jackman's absence, Elkerton tried to argue himself into a state of mind fit for the undertaking of the next day. But he found no arguments gave him any sort of satisfaction, save two; one was, that as most disputes ended with firing a brace of pistols in the air, the probability was, that he should be as fortunate as others—the second, that if the worst should happen, he should at least make a paragraph worth some hazard: and that whether he killed Delamere, or fell himself, an affair of honour with a young man of his rank would extremely contribute to his fame.

Neither of these reflections however had force enough to prevent his heartily wishing there was no necessity to employ them; and he contrived to make such a bustle with his servant about his pistols, and sent forth so many enquiries for an able surgeon, that it was known immediately at the inn where he was, that the gentleman was come to fight young Squire Delamere.

In a country town, such intelligence soon gained ground; and before Jackman's return, every shop in it had settled the place and manner of the combat.

One of Mr. Stafford's servants was at the inn, which was also the post house; where the landlady failed not to tell him what a bloody-minded man was in the next room. The servant, who like all people of his station delighted in the wonderful and the terrible, collected all the particulars; which he retailed on his arrival at home, with every exaggeration his invention would lend him.

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CHAPTER IX

The maid who waited on Emmeline had no sooner heard these particulars, than conceiving her to be more interested in the fate of Delamere than any other person, she ran up to tell her of it; and tho' she had not retained the name of Elkerton perfectly, Emmeline, who instantly recollected the adventure at Staines, saw the truth at once; and was terrified at the impending event to a degree that made her for a moment incapable of reflection.

To be, however remotely, or however innocently, the cause of any man's hazarding his life, was shocking to all her feelings. But to suppose that Lord Montreville might be made by her means the most wretched of human beings, by the loss of an only and beloved son, was an idea which froze her blood.

Her regard for Delamere, which was the affection of a sister somewhat heightened perhaps by his persevering preference of herself, her friendship for Augusta, and her anxiety for the peace of his whole family, added to her general tenderness of heart, all co-operated to distress her on this occasion. As soon as she could recollect what was best to be done, she sought Mr. Stafford, to whom she related what she had heard, which the servant who had brought the intelligence repeated before him.

Mr. Stafford, at Emmeline's earnest request, set out for the house of Delamere, who had not that day been at Woodfield because he expected Fitz-Edward. Mr. Stafford delivered to him a pressing entreaty from Emmeline that he would forbear to meet Elkerton, or at least delay it 'till she could speak to him; but Delamere shewing Stafford the letter he had received, desired him to go back and make Emmeline easy as well as he could, since to comply with her request was entirely out of his power. To the necessity of his meeting Elkerton, Stafford assented; and returned home to relate the little success of his embassy, while the terror and alarm of Emmeline were only encreased by his visit.

Such was her anxiety, that she would have gone herself to Tylehurst, if Mrs. Stafford had not represented to her that it would be certainly improper, and probably ineffectual.

She passed a sleepless night, tormenting herself with a thousand imaginary modes of misery which might arise from the meeting of the next day. But while she continued to form and reject projects for preventing it, seven o'clock passed, and the rencontre ended without bloodshed; the cautious valour of Elkerton having been so loud, that a magistrate who lived in the town, and who was well known to Lord Montreville, had heard of it, and, with a party of constables, had followed Elkerton at some distance. They concealed themselves, by the justice's order, in a gravel-pit near the place of combat, and there saw the ground already possessed by Delamere and Fitz-Edward.

The trembling challenger, with a face as pale as if Delamere's pistol had already done it's worst, followed by Jackman, on whose undaunted countenance he cast a rueful and imploring look, then rode slowly up, punctual to the time.

The usual ceremonies passed, Elkerton's blood seemed to be all gone to his heart, to encourage it to be stout; and his knees, which trembled most piteously, appeared to resent the desertion. He cast round the heath a hopeless look—no succour approached! The ground was measured; each took their post; and his trembling encreased so violently, that Delamere apprehended very little from a pistol in so unsteady a hand. But had he apprehended more, he was of a temper to receive it, unshrinkingly. The moment to fire now arrived; and Elkerton, while cocking his pistol, saw the possÉ rise out of the gravel-pit; but he was too far gone to be sensible of the seasonable relief; therefore, without knowing what he was about, he fired his pistol before they could seize his arm, and then stood like a statue, nearly insensible of the happiness of his deliverance.

The justice advancing himself on horseback, now put both the gentlemen under arrest: and Elkerton seeing himself at length safe for the present, thought he might venture to insist on standing Mr. Delamere's fire. The more the worthy justice opposed it, the more vehement he grew: but Delamere, who despised him too much to be really angry with him, went off the field, telling Elkerton that any other time, when there were fewer witnesses, he would give him what further satisfaction he might require. He gave his honour to the justice that he would trouble himself no farther about the affair; and Elkerton having given Jackman's bail for his present pacific intentions, was suffered to go also.

He returned to the house of his East Indian friend, exulting secretly in his escape, and openly in his valour, to which latter Jackman did not bear testimony so warmly as he thought friendship required. Determined, however, to lose no part of the glory which he thought he had dearly purchased by being frightened out of his wits, he wrote, in the form of a letter, a most tremendous account of the duel to the daily papers, in which he described all it's imaginary horrors, and ended with asserting very roundly, that 'Mr. Elkerton had the misfortune dangerously to wound the Hon. Frederic Delamere; and, when this account came away, there were no hopes of his recovery.'

Having secured himself a fame, at least, for two or three days, he set out for London to enjoy it; never reflecting on any other consequences than those most flattering to his ridiculous vanity. He knew he should be talked of; and by representing what had not happened, have a fair opportunity of telling what had, in his own way.

When Emmeline, who had never ceased walking about and listening, saw Delamere and Fitz-Edward riding quietly across the lawn which led to the house, she ran eagerly down to meet them: but the idea that Elkerton might possibly be killed checked her joy; and when they came up to her, breathless agitation prevented her asking what she wanted to know. Delamere, who saw her so pale and terrified, threw himself instantly off his horse and caught her in his arms.

'Has no harm happened, Mr. Delamere?'

'None in the world, my Emmeline. Nobody is hurt so much as you are; tho' poor Elkerton was almost as much frightened. Come, pray compose yourself—you have not yet the glory to boast of having a life lost about you.'

'Heaven forbid that I ever should!' answered she—'I am grateful that there has been no mischief!—Oh! if I could describe what I have suffered, surely you would never terrify me so again.'

She could not restrain her tears. Delamere led her into the house; where, while Mrs. Stafford gave her hartshorn and water, Delamere, at her request, related exactly what had happened: and having given Emmeline his honour that he would think no more of the affair if Elkerton did not, the tranquillity of the house seemed to be restored, and Delamere and Fitz-Edward were invited to dinner; where great alteration in the looks of the latter, was remarked by both the ladies. Nor was it in looks only that Fitz-Edward was extremely changed.—His chearfulness was quite gone; he appeared to be ineffectually struggling with some unconquerable uneasiness; and tho' his soft and insinuating manners were the same, he no longer sought, by a thousand agreeable sallies and lively anecdotes, to entertain; or whatever attempt he made was so evidently forced, that it lost it's success. Remarkable for his temperance at table, for which he had often endured the ridicule of his companions, he now seemed to fly to the bottle, against his inclination, as if in hopes to procure himself a temporary supply of spirits.

Every day after that on which Emmeline and Mrs. Stafford made this remark, it's justice was more evident.

While Delamere was in the fields, Fitz-Edward would sit whole mornings with Mrs. Stafford and Emmeline, leaning on their work-table, or looking over Emmeline, busied with her pencil. Had his marked attention to Mrs. Stafford continued, she would have seen his behaviour with great alarm; but he no longer paid her those oblique yet expressive compliments of which he used to be so lavish. It seemed, as if occupied by some other object, he still admired and revered her, and wished to make her the confidant of the sorrow that oppressed him. If they were accidentally alone, he appeared on the point of telling her; then suddenly checking himself, he changed the discourse, or abruptly left her; and as he was a man whom it was impossible to know without receiving some impressions in his favour, she felt, as well as Emmeline, a pity for him, which they wished to be justified in feeling, by hearing that whatever was the cause of his unhappiness, he had not brought it on himself by any crime that would make their regard for him blameable.—For Emmeline, tho' she knew that it was with no good design he had contributed to Delamere's getting her off, yet could not persuade herself to hate him for it, when he not only humbly solicited her forgiveness, but protested that he was truly rejoiced, as well as astonished at her steadiness and good conduct; and would be so far from encouraging any such attempt for the future, that he would be the first to call Delamere to an account, could he suppose he harboured intentions which he now considered as ungenerous and criminal.

These declarations had made his peace both with Emmeline and her friend; and his languid and sentimental conversation, tho' it made him less entertaining, did not make him less interesting to either of them.

Mr. Stafford, ever in pursuit of some wild scheme, was now gone for a few days into another county, to make himself acquainted with the process of manuring land with old wigs—a mode of agriculture on which Mr. Headly had lately written a treatise so convincing, that Mr. Stafford was determined to adopt it on his own farm as soon as a sufficient number of wigs could be procured for the purpose.

During this absence, and on the fourth day after Elkerton's exploit, a stormy morning had driven Delamere from the fields; who went into Mrs. Stafford's dressing-room, where he found Fitz-Edward reading Cecilia to Mrs. Stafford and Miss Mowbray while they sat at work.

Mrs. Stafford had her two little boys at her feet; and when Delamere appeared, she desired him to take a chair quietly, and not disturb so sober a party. But he had not been seated five minutes, before the children, who were extremely fond of him, crept to him, and he began to play with them and to make such a noise, that Mrs. Stafford laughingly threatened to send all the riotous boys into the nursery together—when at that moment Millefleur, who had some time before come down to attend his master, entered the room with a letter which he said came express from Berkley-Square.

Delamere saw that his father's hand had almost illegibly directed it. He opened it in fearful haste, and read these words—

'Before this meets you, your mother will probably be no more. A paragraph in the newspaper, in which you are said to have been killed in a duel, threw her into convulsions. I satisfied myself of your safety by seeing the man with whom you fought, but your mother is incapable of hearing it. Unhappy boy! if you would see her alive, come away instantly.

Montreville.'

Berkley-Square, Feb. 29.

It is impossible to say whether the consternation of Emmeline or that of Delamere was the greatest. By the dreadful idea of having occasioned his mother's death, every other was for a moment absorbed. He flew without speaking down stairs, and into the stable where he had left his horse; but the groom had carried the horse to his own stables, supposing his master would stay 'till night. Without recollecting that he might take one of Mr. Stafford's, he ran back into the room where Emmeline was weeping in the arms of her friend, and clasping her wildly to his bosom, he exclaimed—'Farewell, Emmeline! Farewell, perhaps, for ever! If I lose my mother I shall never forgive myself; and shall be a wretch unworthy of you. Dearest Mrs. Stafford! take care I beseech you of her, whatever becomes of me.'

Having said this, he ran away again without his hat, and darted across the lawn towards his own house, meaning to go thither on foot; but Fitz-Edward, with more presence of mind, was directing two of Mr. Stafford's horses to be saddled, with which he soon overtook Delamere; and proceeding together to the town, they got into a post-chaise, and went as expeditiously as four horses could take them, towards London.

Equally impetuous in all his feelings, his grief at the supposed misfortune was as violent as it could have been had he been sure that the worst had already happened. He now remembered, with infinite self-reproach, how much uneasiness and distress he had occasioned to Lady Montreville since he left her in November at Audley-Hall without taking leave—and recollecting all her tenderness and affection for him from the earliest dawn of his memory; her solicitude in his sickness, when she had attended him herself and given up her rest and health to contribute to his; her partial fondness, which saw merit even in his errors; her perpetual and ardent anxiety for what she believed would secure his happiness—he set in opposition to it his own neglect, impatience, and disobedience; and called himself an unnatural and ungrateful monster.

Fitz-Edward could hardly restrain his extravagant ravings during the journey; which having performed as expeditiously as possible, they arrived in Berkley-Square; where, when the porter opened the door to them, Delamere had not courage to ask how his mother did; but on Fitz-Edward's enquiry, the porter told them she was alive, and not worse.

Relieved by this account, Delamere sent to his father to know if he might wait upon him.

His Lordship answered—"That he would only see Colonel Fitz-Edward; but that Delamere might come in, to wait 'till his mother's physicians arrived.'

Lord Montreville was indeed so irritated against Delamere by all the trouble and anxiety he had suffered on his account, that he determined to shew his resentment; and in this resolution he was encouraged by Sir Richard Crofts, who represented to him that his mother's danger, and his father's displeasure, might together work upon his mind, and induce him to renounce an attachment which occasioned to them both so much unhappiness.

It was in this hope that his Lordship refused to see his son; and while Fitz-Edward went to him, Delamere was shewn into another room, where his youngest sister immediately came to him.

She received him with rapture mingled with tears; and related to him the nature of his mother's illness, which had seized her two days before, on her unfortunately taking up a newspaper from the breakfast-table, where it was very confidently said that he was mortally wounded in a duel with a person named Elkerton, of Portland-Place. That Lord Montreville had luckily had a letter from Fitz-Edward the day before, (whom he had forgiven the part he took in regard to Emmeline on no other condition than that he should go down to him, and give his Lordship an account of his conduct) and that therefore he was less alarmed, tho' very much hurried by the paragraph.

He had, however, gone to Elkerton's house, where he found him very composedly receiving the enquiries of his friends, and where he insisted on hearing exactly what had happened.

His Lordship immediately returned to his wife; but the convulsions had arisen to so alarming an height, that she was no longer capable of hearing him; and she had ever since continued to have, at very short intervals, such dreadful fits, as had entirely contracted her left side, and left very little hope of her recovery.

Delamere was extremely shocked at this account; and after waiting some time, Fitz-Edward came to him, and told him that his father was extremely angry, and absolutely refused to see him or hear his apology, unless he would first give his honour that if Lady Montreville should survive the illness his indiscreet rashness had brought upon her, he would, as soon as she was out of danger, go abroad, and remain there till he should obtain forgiveness for his past errors and leave to return.

The heart of Delamere was accessible only by the avenues of affection and kindness; compulsion and threats only made him more resolutely persist in any favourite project. Sir Richard Crofts therefore, who had advised this measure, shewed but little knowledge of his temper, and never was more mistaken in his politics.

Delamere no sooner heard the message, than he knew with whom it originated; and full of indignation at finding his father governed by a man for whom he felt only aversion and contempt, he answered, with great asperity—'That he came thither not to solicit any favour, but to see his mother. That he would not be dictated to by the Crofts; but would remain in town 'till he knew whether his mother desired to see him; and be ready to wait on his father when he would vouchsafe to treat him as his son.'

He then shook hands with Fitz-Edward, kissed his sister, and walked out of the house, in spite of their united endeavours to detain him. All they could obtain of him was his consent to go to Fitz-Edward's lodgings, as he had none of his own ready; from whence he sent constantly every hour to enquire after Lady Montreville.

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CHAPTER X

Emmeline, in the mean time, remained in great uneasiness at Woodfield. Delamere, on his first arrival in town, wrote a short and confused note; by which she only learned that Lady Montreville was alive. After some days she received the following letter from Augusta Delamere.

'I will now try, my dearest Emmeline, to give you an account of what has passed here since my brother's arrival.

'My mother is happily better; knows every body, and speaks more distinctly; her fits return less frequently; and upon the whole, the physicians give us hopes of her recovery, but very little that she will ever be restored to the use of the arm which is contracted.

'On Friday, in an interval of her fits, Sir Hugh Cathcart and Dr. Gardner, her physicians, proposed that she should see my brother, of whose being living nothing we could any of us say could convince her. She repeated to Dr. Gardner, who staid with her after the other went, that she was deceived.

'He assured her that she was deceived in nothing but in her sudden and unhappy prepossession; for that Mr. Delamere had never been in the least danger, and was actually in perfect health.

'"He is alive!" cried my mother, mournfully—"I thank God he is alive; but he knows my illness, and I do not see him—Ah! it is too certain I have lost my son!"

'"You have not been able to see him, my dear madam; but he came up as soon as he heard of your situation, and now waits your commands at Colonel Fitz-Edward's lodgings.—Do you wish to see him?"

'"I do! I do wish to see him! Oh! let him come!"

'The agitation of her mind, however, brought on almost instantly a return of the disorder; and before my brother's arrival, she was insensible.

'Her distorted features; her hands contracted, her eyes glazed and fixed, her livid complexion, and the agonizing expression of her countenance, were at their height when Delamere was desired to go into the room: my father believed that the sight of his mother in such a situation could not but affect the feelings of her son.

'It did indeed affect him! He stood a moment looking at her in silent terror; then, as if suddenly recollecting that he had been the cause of this dreadful alteration, he turned away, clasped his hands together, and burst into tears.

'My mother neither saw him or heard his loud sobs. My sister looked at him reproachfully; and apparently to escape from her, he came to me, and taking my hand, kissed it, and asked how long this melancholy scene would last?

'The physician, who heard the question, said the fit was going off. It did so in a few minutes. She sighed deeply; and seeing the doctor still sitting by her, she asked if he would still perform his promise, and let her see her son?

'At these words, Delamere stepped forward, and threw himself on his knees by the bed side. He wept aloud; and eagerly kissed his mother's hands, which he bathed in tears.

'She looked at him with an expression to which no description can do justice; but unable to speak, she seemed struggling to explain herself; and the physician, fearful of such agitation, said—"There, madam, is Mr. Delamere; not only alive, but willing, I am persuaded, to give you, in regard to his future conduct, any assurances that you require to tranquillise your mind."

'"No!" said she, sighing—"that Delamere is living, I thank heaven!—but for the rest—I have no hopes."

'"For the rest," resumed the doctor, "he will promise any thing if you will only make yourself easy."

'At this moment my Lord entered—"You see, Sir," said he sternly to Delamere, whom he had not seen since his arrival in London—"you see to what extremity your madness has reduced your mother."

'Delamere, still on his knees, looked sorrowfully up, as if to enquire what reparation he could make?

'My father, appearing to understand the question, said—"If you would not be indeed a parricide, shew Lady Montreville that you have a sense of your errors, and will give her no farther uneasiness."

'"Do, Frederic," cried my sister.

'"In what way, Sir?" said my brother, very mournfully.

'"Tell her you will consent to fulfil all her wishes."

'"Sir," said Delamere firmly, "if to sacrifice my own life would restore my mother's, I would not hesitate; but if what your Lordship means relates to Miss Otley, it is absolutely out of my power."

'"He is already married, I doubt not," sighed my mother.

'"Upon my soul I am not."

'"Come, come," cried Dr. Gardner, "this is going a great deal too far; your Ladyship is but just convinced your son is living, and my Lord here is already talking of other matters. Tell me, madam—what do you wish Mr. Delamere to say?"

'"That he will not marry," eagerly interrupted my father, "but with his mother's consent and mine."

'"I will not, my Lord," said Delamere, sighing.

'"That as soon as Lady Montreville is well enough to allow you to leave her, you will go abroad for a twelvemonth or longer if I shall judge it expedient."

'"I will promise that, if your Lordship makes a point of it—if my mother insists upon it. But, my Lord, if at the end of that time Emmeline Mowbray is still single—— my Lord, you do not expect unconditional submission—I shall then in my turn hope that you and my mother will make no farther opposition to my wishes."

'My father, who expected no concession from Delamere, had at first asked of him more than he intended to insist on, and now appeared eager to close with the first terms he could obtain. Accepting therefore a delay, instead of a renunciation, he said—"Well, Delamere, if at the end of a twelvemonth you still insist on marrying Miss Mowbray, I will not oppose it. Lady Montreville, you hear what your son engages for; do you agree to the terms?"

'My mother said, very faintly—"Yes."

'The promise was repeated on both sides before the physician and Fitz-Edward, who came in at the latter part of this scene. My mother seemed reluctantly to accede; complained of extreme faintness; and the scene beginning to grow fatiguing to her, my brother offered to retire. She gave him her hand, which he kissed, and at her desire consented to return to the apartments here which he used to occupy. My mother had that evening another attack; tho' it was much less severe. But as the contraction does not give way to any remedies yet used, the physicians propose sending her to Bath as soon as she is able to bear the journey.

'Thus, my dearest Emmeline, I have punctually related all you appear so anxious to know, on which I leave you to reflect. My mother now sees my brother every day; but he has desired that nothing may be said of the past; and their conversations are short and melancholy. Fitz-Edward has left London; and Frederic told me, last night, that as soon as the physicians pronounce my mother entirely out of danger, he shall go down to you. Ah! my lovely friend! what a trial will his be! But I know you will encourage and support him in the task, however painful, of fulfilling the promise he has given; and my father, who praises you incessantly, says he is sure of it.

Adieu! my dear Miss Mowbray!
your affectionate and attached,
Augusta Delamere.'

Berkley-Square, March 3.

A few days after the receipt of this letter, Delamere went down to Tylehurst. Dejection was visibly marked in his air and countenance; and all that Emmeline could say to strengthen his resolution, served only to make him feel greater reluctance. To quit her for twelve months, to leave her exposed to the solicitation of rivals who would not fail to surround her, and to hazard losing her for ever, seemed so terrible to his imagination, that the nearer the period of his promised departure grew, the more impossible he thought it to depart.

His ardent imagination seemed to be employed only in figuring the variety of circumstances which might in that interval arise to separate them for ever; and he magnified these possibilities, till he persuaded himself that nothing but a private marriage could secure her. As he saw how anxious she was that he should strictly adhere to the promises he had given his father, he thought that he might induce her to consent to this expedient, as the only one by which he could reconcile his duty and his love. He therefore took an opportunity, when he had by the bitterness of his complaints softened her into tears, to entreat, to implore her to consent to marry him before he went. He urged, that as Lord and Lady Montreville had both consented to their union at the end of the year, if he remained in the same mind, it made in fact no difference to them; because he was very sure that his inclinations would not change, and no doubt could arise but from herself. If therefore she determined then to be his, she might as well consent to become so immediately as to hazard the difficulties which might arise to their marriage hereafter.

Emmeline, tho' extremely affected by his sorrow, had still resolution enough to treat this argument as feeble sophistry, unworthy of him and of herself; and positively to refuse her consent to an engagement which militated against all her assurances to Lord Montreville.

This decisive rejection of a plan, to which, from the tender pity she testified, he believed he should persuade her to assent, threw him into one of those transports of agonizing passion which he could neither conceal or contend with. He wept; he raved like a madman. He swore he would return to his father and revoke his promise; and the endeavours of Mrs. Stafford and Emmeline to calm his mind seemed only to encrease the emotions with which it was torn.

After having exhausted every mode of persuasion in vain, he was obliged to relinquish the hope of a secret marriage, and to attempt to obtain another concession, in which he at length succeeded. He told Emmeline, that if she had no wish to quit him entirely, but really meant to reward his long and ardent affection, she could not object to bind herself to become his wife immediately on his return to England.

Emmeline made every objection she could to this request. But she only objected; for she saw him so hurt, that she had not the resolution to wound him anew by a positive refusal. Mrs. Stafford too, moved by his grief and despair, no longer supported her in her reserve; and as their steadiness seemed to give way his eagerness and importunity encreased, till they allowed him to draw up a promise in these words—'At the end of the term prescribed by Lord Montreville, Emmeline Mowbray hereby promises to become the wife of Frederic Delamere.'

This, Emmeline signed with a reluctant and trembling hand; for tho' she had an habitual friendship and affection for Delamere, and preferred him to all the men she had yet seen, she thought this not strictly right; and felt a pain and repugnance to it's performance, which made her more unhappy the longer she reflected on it.

On Delamere, however, it had a contrary effect. Tho' he still continued greatly depressed at the thoughts of their approaching separation, he yet assumed some degree of courage to bear it: and when the day arrived, he bid her adieu without relapsing into those agonies he had suffered before at the mere idea of it.

He carried with him a miniature picture of her, and entreated her to answer his letters; which, on the footing they now were, she could not refuse to promise. He then tore himself from her, and went to take leave of his mother, who still continued ill at Bath; and from thence to London, to bid farewel to his father; after which, Fitz-Edward accompanied him as far as Harwich, where he embarked for Holland.

As he had before been the usual tour of France and Italy, he purposed passing the summer in visiting Germany, and the winter at Vienna; and early in the spring to set out thro' France on his way home, where he purposed being on the 20th of March, when the year which he had promised his father to pass abroad would expire.

Lord Montreville, by obtaining this delay thought there was every probability that his attachment to Emmeline would be conquered. And his Lordship, as well as Lady Montreville, determined to try in the interval to procure for Emmeline some unexceptionable marriage which it would not be possible for her to refuse. They imagined, therefore, that their uneasiness on this head was over: and Lady Montreville, whose mind was greatly relieved by the persuasion, was long since out of all danger from the fits which had so severely attacked her; but the contraction of her joints which they had occasioned, was still so painful and obstinate, that the physicians seemed to apprehend it might be necessary to send her Ladyship to the waters of Barege.

In the mean time, Lord Montreville had obtained a post in administration which encreased his income and his power. Sir Richard Crofts possessed a lucrative employment in the same department; and his eldest son was become extremely necessary, from his assiduity and attention to business, and more than ever a favourite with all Lord Montreville's family, with whom he almost entirely lived.

A lurking penchant for Fitz-Edward, which had grown up from her earliest recollection almost insensibly in the bosom of Miss Delamere, had been long chilled by his evident neglect and indifference: she now fancied she hated him, and really preferred Crofts, every way inferior as he was.

While the want of high birth and a title, which she had been taught to consider as absolutely requisite to happiness, made her repress every tendency to a serious engagement, she was extremely gratified by his flattery; and when among other young women (from whom he affected not to be able to stifle his unhappy passion,) she was frequently told how much he was in love with her, she was accustomed to answer—'Ah! poor fellow; so he is, and I heartily pity him.'

But while Lord and Lady Montreville thought Crofts's attendance on their daughters quite without consequence, he and his father insinuated an intended connection between him and one of them, with so much art, that tho' it never reached the ears of the family it was universally believed in the world.

A young nobleman who had passed the greater part of his life in the army, where he had lately signalized himself by his bravery and conduct, now returned to England on being promoted to a regiment; and having some business to transact with Lord Montreville in his official capacity, he was invited to the house, and greatly admired both the Miss Delameres, whose parties he now joined at Bath.

Crofts soon afterwards obtaining a short respite from his political engagement, went thither also; and tho' Miss Delamere really thought Lord Westhaven quite unexceptionable, she had been so habituated to behave particularly to Crofts, that she could not now alter it, or perhaps was not conscious of the familiar footing on which she allowed him to be with her.

Lord Westhaven, who had at first hesitated between the sprightly dignity of the elder sister, and the soft and more bewitching graces of the younger, no sooner saw the conduct of Miss Delamere towards Crofts, than his doubts were at an end. Her faults of temper had been hitherto concealed from him, and he believed her heart as good as her sister's; indeed, according to the sentimental turn her discourse frequently took, he might have supposed it more refined and sublime. But when he observed her behaviour to Crofts, he thought that she must either be secretly engaged to him, or be a decided coquet. Turning therefore all his attention to Augusta, he soon found that her temper was as truly good as her person was interesting, and that the too great timidity of her manner was solely owing to her being continually checked by her mother's partiality to her sister.

A very short study of her character convinced him she was exactly the woman calculated to make him happy. He told her so; and found her by no means averse to his making the same declaration to her father and mother.

Lord Montreville received it with pleasure; and preliminaries were soon settled. In about six weeks, Lord Westhaven and Miss Augusta Delamere were married at Bath, to the infinite satisfaction of all parties except Miss Delamere; who could not be very well pleased with the preference shewn her younger sister by a man whose morals, person, and fortune, were all superior to what even her own high spirit had taught her to expect in a husband.

Crofts, tho' he saw all apprehensions of having Lord Westhaven for a rival were at an end, could not help fearing that so advantageous a match for the younger, might make the elder more unwilling to accept a simple commoner with a fortune greatly inferior.

The removal, however, of Lady Westhaven gave him more frequent opportunities to urge his passion. Lady Montreville was now going to Barege, Bath having been found less serviceable than was at first hoped for; and Delamere was written to to meet her Ladyship and her eldest daughter at Paris, in order to accompany them thither.

Peace having been in the interim established, Lord Westhaven found he should return no more to his regiment, and purposed with his wife to attend Lady Montreville part of the way, and then to go into Switzerland, where his mother's family resided, who had been of that country.

Lady Westhaven was extremely gratified by this scheme; not only because she was delighted to wait on her mother, but because she hoped it would help to dissipate a lurking uneasiness which hung over the spirits of her Lord, and which he told her was owing to the uncertain and distressing situation of a beloved sister. But whenever the subject was mentioned, he expressed so much unhappiness, that his wife had not yet had resolution to enquire into the nature of her misfortunes, and only knew in general that she was unfortunately married.

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CHAPTER XI

Emmeline had now lost her lover, at least for some time; and one of her friends too was gone where she could seldom hear of her. These deprivations attached her more closely than ever to Mrs. Stafford. Mr. Stafford was gone to town; and except now and then a short and melancholy visit from Fitz-Edward, to whom Delamere had lent his house at Tylehurst, they saw nobody; for all the neighbouring families were in London. They found not only society but happiness together enough to compensate for almost every other; and passed their time in a way particularly adapted to the taste of both.

Adjoining to the estate where Mrs. Stafford resided, a tract of forest land, formerly a chase and now the property of a collegiate body, deeply indents the arable ground beyond it, and fringes the feet of the green downs which rise above it. This part of the country is called Woodbury Forest; and the deep shade of the beech trees with which it is covered, is broken by wild and uncultured glens; where, among the broom, hawthorn and birch of the waste, a few scattered cottages have been built upon sufferance by the poor for the convenience of fewel, so amply afforded by the surrounding woods. These humble and obscure cabbins are known only to the sportsman and the woodcutter; for no road whatever leads through the forest: and only such romantic wanderers as Mrs. Stafford and Emmeline, were conscious of the beautiful walks which might be found among these natural shrubberies and solitary shades. The two friends were enjoying the softness of a beautiful April morning in these woods, when, in passing near one of the cottages, they saw, at a low casement half obscured by the pendant trees, a person sitting, whose dress and air seemed very unlike those of the usual inhabitants of such a place. She was intent on a paper, over which she leaned in a melancholy posture; but on seeing the two ladies approach, she started up and immediately disappeared.

Tho' the distance at which they saw her, and the obscurity of the window, prevented their distinguishing the features of the stranger, they saw that she was young, and they fancied she was beautiful. The same idea instantly occurred to Mrs. Stafford and Emmeline; that it was some unfortunate young woman, whom Mr. Stafford had met with and had concealed there. Something of the same sort had happened once before, and Mrs. Stafford's anxiety and curiosity were both awakened by this incident. Tho' the latter was a passion she never indulged where it's object was the business of others, she could not repress it where it was excited by suspicion of a circumstance which so nearly concerned herself.

Nor could she conceal from Emmeline her fears on this occasion; and Emmeline, tho' unwilling to encrease them, yet knew enough of her husband's conduct to believe they were too well founded.

Mrs. Stafford had been accustomed to buy poultry of the woman who lived at this cottage, and therefore went in, in hopes of finding some vestige of the person they had seen, which might lead to an enquiry. But they found nothing but the usual humble furniture and few conveniences of such an house; and Mrs. Stafford forbore to enquire, lest the person she had seen might be alarmed and take more effectual means of concealment. But unable to rest, and growing every moment more desirous to know the truth, and to know it before her husband, whom she expected in a few days, returned, she arose very early the next morning, and, accompanied by Emmeline, went to the cottage in the forest.

The man who inhabited it was already gone out to his work, and the woman to a neighbouring town to buy necessaries for her family. The door was open; and the ladies received this intelligence from three little children who were playing before it.

They entered the low, smoky room, usually inhabited by the family. And Mrs. Stafford, with a beating heart, determining to be satisfied, opened a door which led from it, into that, at the window of which she knew the stranger had appeared; and which the people of the house dignified with the appellation of their parlour.

In this room, on the brick floor, and surrounded by bare walls, stood a bed, which seemed to have been brought thither for the accommodation of some person who had not been accustomed to such an apartment.

Mrs. Stafford saw, sleeping in it, a very young woman, pale, but extremely beautiful; and her hand, of uncommon delicacy, lay on the white quilt—A sight, which gave her pain for herself, and pity for the unfortunate person before her, affected her so much, that having stood a moment in astonishment, she stepped back to the place where Emmeline sat, and burst into tears.

The noise, however trifling, brought from above stairs a person evidently a lady's maid, of very creditable appearance, who came down hastily into the room where Mrs. Stafford and Emmeline were, saying, as she descended the stairs—'I am coming immediately, my Lady.' But at the sight of two strangers, she stopped in great confusion; and at the same moment her mistress called to her.

She hastened, without speaking, to attend the summons; and shut the door after her. After remaining a few moments, she came out again, and asked Mrs. Stafford if she wanted the woman of the house?

To which Mrs. Stafford, determined whatever it cost her to know the truth, said—'No—my business is with your lady.'

The woman now appeared more confused than before; and said, hesitatingly—'I—I—my lady—I fancy you are mistaken, madam.'

'Go in, however, and let your mistress know that Mrs. Stafford desires to speak to her.'

The maid reluctantly and hesitatingly went in, and after staying some time, came back.

'My mistress, Madam, says she has not the pleasure of knowing you; and being ill, and in bed, she hopes you will excuse her if she desires you will acquaint her with your business by me.'

'No,' replied Mrs. Stafford, 'I must see her myself. Tell her my business is of consequence to us both, and that I will wait till it is convenient to her to speak to me.'

With this message the maid went back, with looks of great consternation, to her mistress. They fancied they heard somebody sigh and weep extremely. The maid came out once or twice and carried back water and hartshorn.

At length, after waiting near half an hour, the door opened, and the stranger appeared, leaning on the arm of her woman. She wore a long, white muslin morning gown, and a large muslin cap almost concealed her face; her dark hair seemed to escape from under it, to form a decided contrast to the extreme whiteness of her skin; and her long eye lashes hid her eyes, which were cast down, and which bore the marks of recent tears. If it were possible to personify languor and dejection, it could not be done more expressively than by representing her form, her air, her complexion, and the mournful cast of her very beautiful countenance.

She slowly approached Mrs. Stafford, lifted up her melancholy eyes to Emmeline, and attempted to speak.

'I am at a loss to know, ladies,' said she, 'what can be your'—— But unable to finish the sentence, she sat down, and seemed ready to faint. The maid held her smelling bottle to her.

'I waited on you, Madam,' said Mrs. Stafford, 'supposing you were acquainted—too well acquainted—with my name and business.'

'No, upon my honour,' said the young person, 'I cannot even guess.'

'You are very young,' said Mrs. Stafford, 'and, I fear, very unfortunate. Be assured I wish not either to reproach or insult you; but only to try if you cannot be prevailed upon to quit a manner of life, which surely, to a person of your appearance, must be dreadful.'

'It is indeed dreadful!' sighed the young woman—'nor is it the least dreadful part of it that I am exposed to this.'

She now fell into an agony of tears; which affected both Mrs. Stafford and Emmeline so much, that forgetting their fears and suspicions, they both endeavoured tenderly to console her. Having in some measure succeeded, and Mrs. Stafford having summoned resolution to tell her what were her apprehensions, the stranger saw that to give her a simple detail of her real situation was the only method she had to satisfy her doubts, and to secure her compassion and secresy; for which reason she determined to do it; and Mrs. Stafford, whose countenance was all ingenuousness as well as her heart, assured her she should never repent her confidence; while Emmeline, whose looks and voice were equally soothing and engaging to the unhappy, expressed the tenderest interest in the fate of a young creature who seemed but little older than herself, and to have been thrown from a very different sphere into her present obscure and uncomfortable manner of life.

The stranger would have attempted to relate her history to them immediately; but her maid, a steady woman of three or four and thirty, told her that she was certainly unable then, and begged the ladies not to insist upon it till the evening, or the next day; adding—'My Lady has been very poorly indeed all this week, and is continually fainting away; and you see, ladies, how much she has been frightened this morning, and I am sure she will not be able to go through it.'

To the probability of this observation, the two friends assented; and the young lady naming the next morning to gratify their curiosity, they left her, Mrs. Stafford first offering her any thing her house afforded. To which she replied, that at present she was tolerably well supplied, and only conjured them to observe the strictest secresy, without which, she said, she was undone.

At the appointed time they returned; equally eager to hear, and, if possible, to relieve, the sorrows of this young person, for whom they could not help being interested, tho' they yet knew not how far she deserved their pity.

She had prepared her own little room as well as it would admit of to receive them, and sat waiting their arrival with some degree of composure. They contemplated with concern the ruins of eminent beauty even in early youth, and saw an expression of helpless sorrow and incurable unhappiness, which had greatly injured the original lustre and beauty of her eyes and countenance. A heavy languor hung on her whole frame. She tried to smile; but it was a smile of anguish; and their looks seemed to distress and pain her. Mrs. Stafford and Emmeline, to relieve her, took out their work; and when they were seated at it, she hesitated—then sighed and hesitated again—and at length seemed to enter on her story with desperate and painful resolution, as if to get quickly and at once thro' a task which, however necessary, was extremely distressing. She began in a low and plaintive voice; and frequently stopped to summon courage to continue, while she wiped away the tears that slowly fell from her eyes.

---

'I cannot believe I shall ever repent the confidence I am about to place in you. My heart assures me I shall not. Perhaps I may find that pity I dare no longer solicit from my own family; perhaps—but I must hasten to tell you my melancholy story, before its recollection again overwhelms me. Yet my fate has nothing in it very singular; numbers have been victims of the same calamity, but some have been more easily forgiven than I shall be.—Some are better able to bear infamy, and be reconciled to disgrace.

'My father, the late Earl of Westhaven, during the life of my grandfather, married, while he was making the tour of Europe, a very beautiful and amiable woman, the daughter of a man of rank in Switzerland; who having lost his life in the French service, had left a family without any provision, except for the eldest son. My grandfather, extremely disobliged by this marriage, made a will by which he gave to his only daughter every part of his extensive property, except what was entailed, and which went with the title; with this reserve, that his grandson should claim and inherit the whole, whenever he became Lord Westhaven. By this will, he disinherited my father for his life; and tho' he survived my father's marriage five years, and knew he had three children, the two younger of whom must be inevitably impoverished by such a disposition, he obstinately refused to alter the will he made under the first impulse of resentment, and died before his son could prevail upon him, by means of their general friends, to withdraw the maledictions with which he had loaded him.

'His death, not only hurt my father in his feelings, but irreparably in his fortune. His sister, who was married to a Scottish nobleman, took possession of estates to the amount of fifteen thousand a year; and all that remained to my father, to support his rank and his encreasing family, was little more than three thousand; and even that income he had considerably diminished, by taking up money, which he was obliged to do while my grandfather lived, for the actual maintenance of his family.

'These unhappy circumstances, while they injured the health and spirits of my father, diminished not his tenderness for his wife, whom he loved with unabated passion.

'To retrench as much as possible, he retired with her and his three children to an estate, which being attached to the title, belonged to him in Cumberland; in hopes of being able to live on the income he had left, and to clear off the burden with which he had been compelled to load his paternal estates. But a slow fever, the effect of sorrow, had seized on my mother, then far advanced in her pregnancy with me; my father, solicitous to save her in whom all his happiness was centered, sent to London for the best advice to attend her. But their assistance was vain; the fever encreased upon her, and she died three weeks after my birth, leaving my father deprived of every thing that could make life valuable in his estimation. He gave himself up to a despair equal to the violence of his love, and would probably have fallen a victim to it, had not the servants sent to Mr. Thirston, who had been his tutor, and for whom he had the greatest friendship and respect. This excellent man represented to him that it was his duty to live for the children of his deplored Adelina; and he consented to try to live.

'It was long before he could bear to see any of us; particularly me, whom he beheld with a mixture of tenderness and regret. The gloomy solitude in which he lived, where every object reminded him of her whose smiles had rendered it a paradise, was ill calculated to meliorate his affliction; but he could not be persuaded, for some months, to leave it, or could he be diverted from going every evening to visit the spot where lay the relicts of his Adelina.

'At length Mr. Thirston prevailed on him to go abroad. But he could not determine to leave my elder brother, then about five years old, of whom he was passionately fond. They embarked for Naples; and he remained abroad five years; while my sister, my brother William, and myself, were left at Kensington, under the care of a female relation, and received such instruction as our ages admitted.

'My father returned to England only to place his eldest son at Eton. Finding no relief from the sorrow which perpetually preyed on him, but in continual change of place, he soon afterwards went again abroad, and wandered over Europe for almost seven years longer, returning once or twice to England in that interval to satisfy himself of our health and the progress of our education.

'When he last returned, my elder brother, then near eighteen, desired to be allowed to go into the army. My father reluctantly consented; and the regiment into which he purchased was soon after ordered abroad. The grief the departure of his son gave him, was somewhat relieved by seeing his elder daughter advantageously disposed of in marriage to the eldest son of an Irish peer. The beauty of Lady Camilla was so conspicuous, and her manners so charming, that though entirely without fortune, the family of her husband could not object to the marriage. She went to Ireland with her Lord; and it was long before I saw her again.

'My brother William, who had always been designed for the navy, left me also for a three years station in the Mediterranean; and I was now always alone with my governess and my old relation, whose temper, soured by disappointment and not naturally chearful, made her a very unpleasant companion for a girl of fourteen. I learned, from masters who attended me from London, all the usual accomplishments; but of the world I knew nothing, and impatiently waited for the time when I should be sixteen; for then the Dutchess of B——, who had kindly undertaken to introduce my sister into company, had promised that she would afford me also her countenance. I remember she smiled, and told me that as I was not less pretty than Lady Camilla, I might probably have as good fortune, if I was but as accomplished. To be accomplished, therefore, I endeavoured with all my power; but the time seemed insupportably long, before this essay was to be made. It was relieved, tho' mournfully, by frequent visits from my father; who was accustomed to sit whole hours looking at me, while his tears bore witness to the great resemblance I had to my mother. My voice too, particularly when we conversed in French, frequently made him start, as if he again heard that which he had never ceased to remember and to regret. He would then fondly press me to his heart, and call me his poor orphan girl, the image of his lost Adelina!

'Tho' my mother had been now dead above fifteen years, his passion for her memory seemed not at all abated. He had, by a long residence abroad, paid off the debts with which he had incumbered his income, but could do no more; and the expences necessary for young men of my brothers' rank pressed hardly upon him. Ever since his return to England, his friends had entreated him to attempt, by marrying a woman of fortune, to repair the deficiency of his own; representing to him, that to provide for the children of his Adelina, would be a better proof of his affection to her memory than indulging a vain and useless regret.

'He had however long escaped from their importunity by objecting, on some pretence or other, to all the great fortunes which were pointed out to him—his heart rejected with abhorrence every idea of a second marriage. But my brothers every day required a larger supply of money to support them as their birth demanded; and to their interest my father at length determined to sacrifice the remainder of a life, which had on his own account no longer any value. The heiress of a rich grocer in the city was soon discovered by his assiduous friends, who was reputed to be possessed of two hundred thousand pounds. On closer enquiry, the sum was found to be very little if at all exaggerated by fame. Miss Jobson, with a tall, meagre person, a countenance bordering on the horrible, and armed with two round black eyes which she fancied beautiful, had seen her fortieth year pass, while she attended on her papa, in Leadenhall-Street, or was dragged by two sleek coach horses to and from Hornsey. Rich as her father was, he would not part with any thing while he lived; and, by the assistance of two maiden sisters, had so guarded his daughter from the dangerous attacks of Irishmen and younger brothers, that she had reached that mature period without hearing the soothing voice of flattery, to which she was extremely disposed to listen. My father, yet in middle age, and with a person remarkably fine, would have been greatly to her taste if he could have gratified, with a better grace, her love of admiration. But his friends undertook to court her for him; and his title still more successfully pleaded in his favour. She made some objection to his having a family; but as I alone remained at home, she at length agreed to undertake to be at once a mother-in-law and a Countess. While this treaty was going on, and settlements and jewels preparing, I was taken several times to wait on Miss Jobson: but it was easy to see I had not the good fortune to please her.

'I was but just turned of fifteen, was full of gaiety and vivacity, and possessed those personal advantages, which, if she ever had any share of them, were long since faded. She seemed conscious that the splendour of her first appearance would be eclipsed by the unadorned simplicity of mine; and she hated me because it was not in my power to be old and ugly. Giddy as I then was, nothing but respect for my father prevented my repaying with ridicule, the supercilious style in which she usually treated me. Her vulgar manners, and awkward attempts to imitate those of people of fashion, excited my perpetual mirth; and as her dislike of me daily encreased, I am afraid I did not always conceal the contempt I felt in return. Miss Jobson chose to pass some time at Tunbridge previous to her marriage. Thither my father followed her; and I went with him, eager to make my first appearance in public, and to see whether the prophecies of the Duchess would be fulfilled.

'This experiment was made in a party from Tunbridge to Lewes Races, where I had the delight of dancing for the first time in public, and of seeing the high and old fashioned little head of Miss Jobson, who affected to do something which she thought was dancing also, almost at the end of the set, while I, as an Earl's daughter, was nearly at the top. Had I been ever accustomed to appear in public, these distinctions would have been too familiar to have given me any pleasure; but now they were enchanting; and, added to the universal admiration I excited, intoxicated me with vanity. My partner, who had been introduced to me by a man of high rank the moment I entered the room, was a gentleman from the West of England, who was just of age, and entered into the possession of a fortune of eight thousand a year.

'Mr. Trelawny (for that was his name) followed us to Tunbridge, and frequently danced with me afterwards. Educated in obscurity, and without any prospect of the fortune to which he succeeded by a series of improbable events, this young man had suddenly emerged into life. He was tolerably handsome; but had a heavy, unmeaning countenance, and was quite unformed. Several men of fashion, however, were kind enough to undertake to initiate him into a good style of living; and for every thing that bore the name of fashion and ton, he seemed to have a violent attachment. To that, I owed his unfortunate prepossession in my favour.—I was admired and followed by men whom he had been taught to consider as the arbiters of elegance, and supreme judges of beauty and fashion; but they could only admire—they could not afford to marry an indigent woman of quality; and they told Trelawny that they envied him the power of pleasing himself.—So Trelawny was talked to about me, till he believed he was in love. In this persuasion he procured a statement of his fortune to be shewn to my father, by one of his friends, and made an offer to lay it at my feet; an offer which, tho' my father would have been extremely glad to have me accept, he answered by referring Mr. Trelawny to me.

'I suspected no such thing; but with the thoughtless inattention of sixteen, remembered little of the fine things which were said to me by Trelawny at the last ball. While I was busied in inventing a new chapeau for the next, at which I intended to do more than usual execution, my father introduced Mr. Trelawny, and left the room. I concluded he was come to engage me for the evening, and felt disposed to refuse him out of pure coquetry; when, with an infinite number of blushes, and after several efforts, he made me in due form an offer of his heart and fortune. I had never thought of any thing so serious as matrimony; and indeed was but just out of the nursery, where I had never been told it was necessary to think at all. I did not very well know what to say to my admirer; and after the first speech, which I believe he had learned by heart, he knew almost as little what to say to me; and he was not sorry when I, in a great fright, referred him to my father, merely because I knew not myself what answer to give him. Our conversation ended, and he went to find my father, while I, for the first time in my life, began to reflect on my prospects, and to consider whether I preferred marrying Mr. Trelawny to living with Miss Jobson. To Miss Jobson, I had a decided aversion; for Mr. Trelawny, I felt neither love or hatred. My mind was not made up on the subject, when my father came to me: he had seen Trelawny, and expressed himself greatly pleased with the prudence and propriety of my answer.

'"My Adelina knows," continued he, "that the happiness of my children is the only wish I have on earth; and I may tell her, too, that my solicitude for her exceeds all my other cares—solicitude, which will be at an end if I can see her in the protection of a man of honour and fortune. If therefore, my love, you really do not disapprove this young man, whose fortune is splendid, and of whose character I have received the most favourable accounts, I shall have a weight removed from my mind, and enjoy all the tranquillity I can hope for on this side the grave.

'"You know how soon I am to marry Miss Jobson. A mother-in-law is seldom beloved. I may die, and leave you unprovided for; for you know, Adelina, the circumstances into which your grandfather's will has thrown me. Our dear Charles, whenever he inherits my title, will repossess the fortune of my ancestors, and will, I am sure, act generously by you and William; but such a dependance, if not precarious, is painful; and by accepting the proposal of Mr. Trelawny, all my apprehensions will be at an end, and my Adelina secure of that affluence to which her merit as well as her birth entitles her. But powerful as these considerations are, let them not influence you if you feel any reluctance to the match. Were they infinitely stronger, I will never again name them, if in doing so I hazard persuading my daughter to a step which may render her for every unhappy."

'Tho' I was very far from feeling for Mr. Trelawny that decided preference which would in other circumstances have induced me to accept his hand, yet I found my father so desirous of my being settled, that as I had no aversion to the man, I could not resolve to disappoint him. Perhaps the prospect of escaping from the power of my mother-in-law, and of being mistress of an affluent fortune instead of living in mortifying dependance on her, might have too much influence on my heart. My father, however, obtained without any difficulty my consent to close with Mr. Trelawny's proposals. We all went to London, where Lord Westhaven married Miss Jobson, and the settlements were preparing by which Mr. Trelawny secured to me a jointure as great as I could have expected if my fortune had been equal to my rank.

'As the new Lady Westhaven was so soon to be relieved from the presence of a daughter she did not love, she behaved to me with tolerable civility. Occupied with her rank, she seemed to have infinite delight in displaying it to her city acquaintance. Her Ladyship thought a coronet so delightful an ornament, that the meanest utensils in her house were adorned with it; and she wore it woven or worked on all her cloaths, in the vain hope perhaps of counteracting the repelling effect of an hideous countenance, a discordant voice, and a manner more vulgar than either. I saw with concern that my father was not consoled by the possession of her great fortune, for the mortification of having given the name and place of his adored Adelina to a woman so unlike her in mind and person. He was seldom well; seldomer at home; and seemed to have no other delight than in hearing from his two sons and from his eldest daughter; and when we were alone, he told me that to see me married would also give him pleasure; but he appeared, I thought, less anxious for the match than when it was first proposed. The preparations, however, went on, and in six weeks were compleated.

'In that interval, I had seen Trelawny almost every day. He always seemed very good humoured, and was certainly very thoughtless. He loved me, or fancied he loved me, extremely; but I sometimes suspected that it was rather in compliance with the taste of others than his own; and that a favourite hunter or a famous pointer were very likely to rival me. My father sometimes laughed at his boyish fondness for such things, and the importance he annexed to them; and sometimes I thought he looked grave and hurt at observing it.

'For my own part, I saw his follies; but none that I did not equally perceive in the conduct of other young men. Tho' I had no absolute partiality to him, I was totally indifferent to every other man. I married him, therefore; and gave away my person before I knew I had an heart.

'We went immediately into Cornwall, to an old fashioned but magnificent family seat; where I was received by Mr. Trelawny's sister, a woman some years older than he was, and who had brought him up. The coarse conversation of this woman, which consisted entirely in details of family oeconomy; and the stupidity of her husband and a booby son of fourteen, were but ill calculated to render my retirement pleasing. Having laughed and wondered once at the uncouth figures and obsolete notions of Mr. Trelawny's Cornish cousins, who hastened, in their best cloaths, to congratulate him, from places whose barbarous names I could not pronounce—and having twice entertained the voters of two boroughs which belonged to the family; I had exhausted all the delights of Cornwall, and prevailed on him to return to a country where I could see a few beings like myself.

'When I came back into the world, I was surrounded by a croud of idle people, whose admiration flattered the vanity of Trelawny more than it did mine; for I became accustomed to adulation, and it lost it's charms with it's novelty. Trelawny was continually with young men of fashion, who called themselves his friends; and who besides doing him the kindness to advise and instruct him in the disposal of his fortune, would have relieved him from the affections of his wife, if he had ever possessed them. They made love to me, with as little scruple as they borrowed money of him; and told me that neglect on the part of my husband, well deserved to be repaid with infidelity on mine: but I felt for these shallow libertines only disgust and contempt; and received their professions with so much coldness, that they left me, in search of some other giddy creature, who might not, by ill-timed prudery, belie the promise of early coquetry. It was yet however very much the fashion to admire me; and my husband seemed still to take some delight in hearing and reading in the daily papers that Lady Adelina Trelawny was the most elegant figure at Court, or that every beauty at the Opera was eclipsed on her entrance. The eagerness and avidity with which I had entered, from the confinement of the nursery, to a life of continual dissipation, was now considerably abated. I continued it from habit, and because I knew not how to employ my time otherwise; but I felt a dreary vacuity in my heart; and amid splendor and admiration was unhappy.

'The return of my elder brother from his first campaign in America, was the only real pleasure I had long felt. He is perhaps one of the most elegant and accomplished young men of his time; but to be elegant and accomplished is his least praise—His solid understanding, and his excellent heart, are an honour to his country and to human nature. That quick sense of honour, and that strictness of principle, which now make my greatest terror, give a peculiar lustre and dignity to his character. My father received him with that delight a father only can feel; and saw and gloried with all a father's pride, in a successor worthy of his ancestors.

'My brother, who had always loved me extremely, tho' we had been very little together, took up his abode at my house while he staid in England. Trelawny seemed to feel a sort of awe before him, which made him endeavour to hide his vices if not his weakness, while he remained with us. He was more attentive to me than he had long been. My brother hoped I was happy; and tho' Trelawny was a man whose conversation afforded him no pleasure, he behaved to him with every appearance of friendship and regard. He was soon however to return to his regiment; and my father, who had been in a declining state of health ever since his second marriage, appeared to grow worse as the period of separation approached. He seemed to have waited only for this beloved son to close his eyes; for a few days before he was again to take leave, my father found his end very rapidly approaching.

'Perfectly conscious of it, he settled all his affairs; and made a provision for me and my brother William out of the money of the present Lady Westhaven, which the marriage articles gave him a right to dispose of after her Ladyship's death if he left no children by her; and recommended us both to his eldest son.

'"You will act nobly by our dear William," said he; "I have no doubt of it; but above all, remember my poor Adelina. Camilla is happily married. Tell her I die blessing her, and her children! But Adelina—my unfortunate Adelina is herself but a child, and her husband is very young and thoughtless. Watch over her honour and her repose, for the sake of your father and that dear woman she so much resembles, your sainted mother."

'I was in the room, in an agony of sorrow. He called me to him. "My daughter," said he, in a feeble voice, "remember that the honour of your family—of your brothers—is in your hands—and remember it is sacred.—Endeavour to deserve the happiness of being sister to such brothers, and daughter to such a mother as yours was!"

'I was unable to answer. I could only kiss his convulsed hands; which I eagerly did, as if to tell him that I promised all he expected of me. My own heart, which then made the vow, now perpetually reproaches me with having kept it so ill!

'A few hours afterwards, my father died. My brother, unable to announce to me the melancholy tidings, took my hand in silence, and led me out of the house, which was now Lady Westhaven's. He had only a few days to stay in England, which he employed in paying the last mournful duties to his father; and then embarked again for America, leaving his affairs to be settled by my sister's husband, Lord Clancarryl, to whom he wrote to come over from Ireland; for my brother William was now stationed in the West Indies, where he obtained the command of a man of war; and my brother Westhaven knew, that to leave any material business to Trelawny, was to leave it to ignorance and imbecility.

'In my husband, I had neither a friend or a companion—I had not even a protector; for except when he was under the restraint of my brother's presence, he was hardly ever at home. Sometimes he was gone on tours to distant counties to attend races or hunts, to which he belonged; and sometimes to France, where he was embarked in gaming associations with Englishmen who lived only to disgrace their name. Left to pass my life as the wife of such a man as Trelawny, I felt my brother's departure as the deprivation of all I loved. But the arrival of my sister and her husband relieved me. I had not seen them for some years; and was delighted to meet my sister happy with a man so worthy and respectable as Lord Clancarryl.

'He took possession on behalf of my brother of the estate my aunt was now obliged to resign; and as my sister was impatient to return to Ireland, where she had left her children, they pressed me extremely to go thither with them. Trelawny was gone out on one of his rambles; but I wrote to him and obtained his consent—indeed he long since ceased to trouble himself about me.

'I attended my sister therefore to Lough Carryl; on the beautiful banks of which her Lord had built an house, which possessing as much magnificence as was proper to their rank, was yet contrived with an attention to all the comforts of domestic retirement. Here Lady Clancarryl chose to reside the whole year; and my Lord never left it but to attend the business of Parliament at Dublin.

'His tender attention to his wife; his ardent, yet regulated fondness for his children; the peace and order which reigned in his house; the delightful and easy society he sometimes collected in it, and the chearful confidence we enjoyed in quiet family parties when without company; made me feel with bitterness and regret the difference between my sister's lot and mine. Her husband made it the whole business of his life to fulfill every duty of his rank, mine seemed only solicitous to degrade himself below his. One was improving his fortune by well regulated oeconomy; the other dissipating his among gamesters and pick-pockets. The conversation of Lord Clancarryl was sensible, refined, and improving; Trelawny's consisted either in tiresome details of adventures among jockies, pedigrees of horses, or scandalous and silly anecdotes about persons of whom nobody wished to hear; or he sunk into sullen silence, yawned, and shewed how very little relish he had for any other discourse.

'When I married him, I knew not to what I had condemned myself. As his character gradually discovered itself, my reason also encreased; and now, when I had an opportunity of comparing him to such a man as Lord Clancarryl, I felt all the horrors of my destiny! and beheld, with a dread from which my feeble heart recoiled, a long, long prospect of life before me—without attachment, without friendship, without love.

'I remained two months in Ireland; and heard nothing of Trelawny, 'till a match having been made on the Curragh of Kildare, on which he had a large bet depending, he came over to be present at it; and I heard with regret that I was to return with him. While he remained in Ireland, his disgusting manners, and continual intoxication, extremely displeased Lord Clancarryl; and I lived in perpetual uneasiness. A few days before we were to embark for England, George Fitz-Edward, his Lordship's younger brother, came from the north of Ireland, where he had been with his regiment, to Lough Carryl; but it was only a passing visit to his family—he was going to England, and we were to sail in the same pacquet.'

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At the mention of George Fitz-Edward, Lady Adelina grew more distressed than she had yet been in the course of her narrative. Mrs. Stafford and Emmeline testified signs of surprize. She observed it; and asked if they knew him? Mrs. Stafford answered, they had some acquaintance with him; and Emmeline remarked that she either never heard or had forgotten that his father's second title was Clancarryl.

His very name seemed to affect Lady Adelina so much, and she appeared so exhausted by having spoken so long, that tho' she told them she had but little to add to her mournful story, they insisted upon her permitting them to release her till the evening, when they would attend her again.

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CHAPTER XII

They found Lady Adelina in better spirits in the evening than they had hoped for—She seemed to have been arguing herself into the composure necessary to go on with her story.

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'As you have some acquaintance with George Fitz-Edward, I need not describe his person or his manner; nor how decided a contrast they must form with those of such a man as him to whom I was unhappily united. This contrast, in spite of all my endeavours, was perpetually before my eyes—I thought Fitz-Edward, who was agreeable as his brother, had a heart as good; and my heart involuntarily made the comparison between what I was, and what I might have been, if my fate had reserved me for Fitz-Edward.

'We embarked—It was about the autumnal equinox; and before we had sailed two leagues, the wind suddenly changing, blew from the opposite quarter, and then from every quarter by turns. As I was always subject to sickness in the cabin, I had lain down on the deck, on a piece of sail-cloth, and wrapped in my pelisse; and Fitz-Edward sat by me. But when the wind grew so violent that it was necessary every moment to shift the sails, I, who was totally insensible, was in the way of the sailors. Fitz-Edward carried me down in his arms; and having often heard me express an abhorrence to the close beds in the cabin, by the help of my own maid he accommodated me with one on the floor; where he continued to watch over me, without attending to his own danger, tho' he heard the master of the pacquet express his apprehensions that we should be driven back on the bar, and beat to pieces.

'Trelawny, in whom self-preservation was generally alive, whatever became of his other feelings, had passed so jovial an evening before he departed, that he was perfectly unconscious of his own danger. After struggling some hours to return into the bay, it was with difficulty accomplished about five in the morning. Fitz-Edward, with the tenderest solicitude, saw me safe on shore, whither Trelawny was also brought. But far from being rejoiced at our narrow escape, he cursed his ill luck, which he said had raised this confounded storm only to prevent his returning in time to see Clytemnestra got into proper order for the October meeting.

'I was so ill the next day, thro' the fear and fatigue I had undergone, that I was absolutely unable to go on board. But nothing that related to me could detain Trelawny, who embarked again as soon as the pacquet was refitted, and after some grumbling at my being too ill to go, left me to follow him by the next conveyance, and recommended me with great coolness to the care of Fitz-Edward.

'We staid only two days after him. Fitz-Edward, as well during the passage as on our journey to London, behaved to me with the tenderness of a brother; and I fancied my partiality concealed from him, because I tried to conceal it. If he saw it, he shewed no disposition to take advantage of it, and I therefore thought I might fearlessly indulge it.

'When I arrived at my house in town, I found that Trelawny was absent, and had left a letter for me desiring me to go down to a house he had not long before purchased in Hampshire, as a hunting seat. Without enquiring his reasons, I obeyed him. I took a melancholy leave of Fitz-Edward, and went into Hampshire; where, as Trelawny was not there, I betook myself to my books, and I fear to thinking too much of Fitz-Edward.

'After I had been there about a fortnight, I was surprized by a visit from the object of my indiscreet contemplations. He looked distressed and unhappy; and his first conversation seemed to be preparing me for some ill news. I was dreadfully alarmed, and enquired eagerly for my sister?—her husband?—her children?—

'"I hope, and believe they are well," answered he. "I have letters of a very late date from my brother."

'"Oh God!" cried I, in an agony (for his countenance still assured me something very bad had happened) "Lord Westhaven—my brother, my dear brother!"—

'"Is well too, I hope—at least I assure you I know nothing to the contrary."

'"Is it news from Jamaica then? Has there been an engagement. There has, I know, and my brother William is killed."

'"No, upon my honour," replied Fitz-Edward, "had Godolphin been killed, I, who love him better than any man breathing, could not have brought the intelligence—But my dear Lady Adelina, are there then no other misfortunes but those which arise from the death of friends?"

'"None," answered I, "but what I could very well bear. Tell me, therefore, I conjure you tell me, and keep me no longer in suspence—I can hear any thing since I have nothing to apprehend for the lives of those I love."

'"Well then," answered he, "I will tell you.—I fear things are very bad with Mr. Trelawny. It is said that all the estate not entailed, is already gone; and that he has even sold his life interest in the rest. All his effects at the town house are seized; and I am afraid the same thing will in a few hours happen here. I came therefore, lovely Lady Adelina, to intreat you to put yourself under my protection, and to quit this house, where it will soon be so improper for you to remain."

'I enquired after the unhappy Trelawny? He told me he had left him intoxicated at a gaming house in St. James's street; that he had told him he was coming down to me, to which he had consented, tho' Fitz-Edward said he much doubted whether he knew what he was saying.

'Fitz-Edward then advised me to pack up every thing I wished to preserve, and immediately to depart; for he feared that persons were already on the road to seize the furniture and effects in execution.

'"Gracious heaven!" cried I, "what can I do?—Whither can I go!"

'"Trust yourself with me," cried Fitz-Edward—"dear, injured Lady Adelina."

'"Let me rather," answered I, "go down to Trelawny Park."

'"Alas!" said he, "the same ruin will there overtake you. Be assured Mr. Trelawny's creditors will equally attach his property there. You know too, that by the sale of his boroughs he has lost his seat in parliament, and that therefore his person will not be safe. He must himself go abroad."

'Doubting, and uncertain what I ought to do, I could determine on nothing. Fitz-Edward proposed my going to Mr. Percival's, who had married one of his sisters. They are at Bath, said he; but the house and servants are at my disposal, and it is only five and twenty miles from hence. Hardly knowing what I did, I consented to this proposal; and taking my jewels and some valuable plate with me, I set out in a post chaise with Fitz-Edward, leaving my maid to follow me the next day, and give me an account whether our fears were verified.

'They were but too well founded. Four hours after I had left the house, the sheriff's officers entered it—Information which encreased my uneasiness for the fate of the unfortunate Trelawny; in hopes of alleviating whose miseries I would myself have gone to London, but Fitz-Edward would not suffer me. He said it was more than probable that my husband was already in France; that if he was yet in England, he had no house in which to receive me, and would feel more embarrassed than relieved by my presence. But as I continued to express great uneasiness to know what was become of him, he offered to go to London and bring me some certain intelligence.

'At the end of a week, which appeared insupportably long, he returned, and told me that with some difficulty he had discovered my unhappy husband at the house of one of his friends, where he was concealed, and where he had lost at picquet more than half the ready money he could command. That with some difficulty he had convinced him of the danger as well as folly of remaining in such a place; and had accompanied him to Dover, whence he had seen him sail for France.

'I told Fitz-Edward that I would instantly give up as much of my settlement as would enable Trelawny to live in affluence, till his affairs could be arranged; but he protested that he would not suffer me to take any measure of that sort, till I had the advice of his brother: or, till one of my own returned to England.

'"Do you know," said he, at the end of this conversation—"Do you know, Lady Adelina, that I envy Trelawny his misfortunes, since they excite such generous pity.—Good God! of what tenderness, of what affection would not such a heart be capable, if"——

'Fitz-Edward had seldom hazarded an observation of this sort, tho' his eyes had told me a thousand times that he internally made them. He could convey into half a sentence more than others could express by the most elaborate speeches. Alas! I listened to him with too much pleasure; for my treacherous heart had already said more than his insidious eloquence.

'I wrote to Lord Clancarryl, entreating him to come over. He assured me he would do so, the moment he could leave my sister, who was very near her time; but that in the interim his brother George would obey all my commands, and render me every service he could himself do if present.

'Thrown, therefore, wholly into the power of Fitz-Edward; loving him but too well; and seeing him every hour busied in serving me—I will not accuse him of art; I had myself too little to hide from him the fatal secret of my heart; I could not summon resolution to fly from him, till my error was irretrievable—till I found myself made compleatly miserable by the consciousness of guilt.

'After remaining there about a fortnight, I left the house of Mr. Percival, and took a small lodging in the neighbourhood of Cavendish-square. Fitz-Edward saw me every day.—I met him indeed with tears and confusion; but if any accident prevented his coming, or if he even absented himself at my own request, the anguish I felt till I again saw him convinced me that it was no longer in my power to live without him.

'Trelawny had given me no directions for my conduct; nor had he even written to me, 'till he had occasion for money. He then desired me to send him five hundred guineas—a sum I had no immediate means of raising, but by selling some of my jewels. This I would immediately have done; but Fitz-Edward, who would not hear of it, brought me the money in a few hours, and undertook to remit it, together with a letter from me, to the unfortunate man for whom it was designed.

'He tried too—ah, how vainly!—to persuade me, that in acting thus I had done more than my duty to such an husband. His sophistry, aided by my own wishes to believe him, could not quiet the incessant reproaches with which my conscience pursued me—I remembered my father's dying injunctions, I remembered the inflexible notions of honour inherited by both my brothers, and I trembled at the severe account to which I might be called. I could now no longer flatter myself that my error would be concealed, since of its consequences I could not doubt; and while I suffered all the terrors of remorse and apprehension, Lord Clancarryl came over.

'In order to take measures towards settling Trelawny's affairs, it was necessary to send for his sister, who had a bond for five thousand pounds, which claim was prior to every other. This woman, whom it was extremely disagreeable to me to meet, lamented with vulgar clamour her brother's misfortunes; which she said could never have happened if he had not been so unlucky as to get quality notions into his head. I know not what at first raised her suspicions; but I saw that she very narrowly observed Fitz-Edward; and sneeringly said that it was very lucky indeed for me to have such a friend, and quite kind in the colonel to take so much trouble. She made herself thoroughly acquainted with all that related to her brother, from the time of our parting in Ireland; and I found that she had attempted to bribe my servant to give her an account of my conduct; in which tho' she had failed of success, she had found that Fitz-Edward had been constantly with me. His attendance was indeed less remarkable when Lord Clancarryl, his brother, was also present; but Mrs. Bancraft, determined to believe ill of me, suffered not this circumstance to have any weight, and hinted her suspicions of our attachment in terms so little guarded, that it was with the utmost difficulty I could prevail on Fitz-Edward not to resent her impertinence.

'Lord Clancarryl despised this vulgar and disgusting woman too much to attend to the inuendos he heard; and far from suspecting my unhappy weakness, he continued to lay me under new obligations to Fitz-Edward by employing him almost incessantly in the arrangement of Trelawny's affairs.

'On looking over the will of that relation, who had bequeathed to Mr. Trelawny the great fortune he had possessed, I discovered the reason of Mrs. Bancraft's attentive curiosity in regard to me—if he died without heirs, above six thousand a year was to descend to her son, who was to take the name. He had been now married above two years, and his bloated and unhealthy appearance (the effect of excessive drinking) indicated short life; and had made her for some time look forward to the succession of the entailed estate as an event almost certain for her son. This sufficiently explained her conduct, and encreased all my apprehensions; for I found that avarice would stimulate malice into that continued watchfulness which I could not now undergo without the loss of my fame and my peace.

'All things being settled by Lord Clancarryl in the best manner he could dispose them for Mr. Trelawny, his Lordship pressed me to go with him to Ireland; but conscious that I should carry only disgrace and sorrow into the happy and respectable family of my sister, I refused, under pretence of waiting to hear again from Trelawny before I took any resolution as to my future residence.

'His Lordship therefore left me, having obtained my promise to go over to Lough Carryl in the spring. Fitz-Edward continued to see me almost every day, attempting by the tenderest assiduity to soothe and tranquillize my mind. But time, which alleviates all other evils, only encreased mine; and they were now become almost insupportable. After long deliberation, I saw no way to escape the disgrace which was about to overwhelm me, but hiding myself from my own family and from all the world. I determined to keep my retreat secret, even from Fitz-Edward himself; and to punish myself for my fatal attachment by tearing myself for ever from it's object. Could I have supported the contempt of the world, to which it was evidently the interest of Mrs. Bancraft to expose me, I could not bear the most distant idea of the danger to which the life of Fitz-Edward would be liable from the resentment of my brothers. That he might perish by the hand of Lord Westhaven or Captain Godolphin, or that one of those dear brothers might fall by his, was a suggestion so horrid, and yet so probable, that it was for ever before me; and I hastened to fly into obscurity, in the hope, that if my error is concealed till I am myself in the grave, my brothers may forgive me, and not attempt to wash out the offence in the blood of the surviving offender.

'To remain, and to die here unknown, is all I now dare to wish for. My servant having formerly known the woman who inhabits this cottage, contrived to have a few necessaries sent hither without observation; I have made it worth the while of the people to be secret; and as they know not my name, I had little apprehension of being discovered.

'I took no leave of Fitz-Edward; nor have I written to him since. I lament the pain my sudden absence must give him; but am determined to see him no more. Should my child live—— '

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Lady Adelina was now altogether unable to proceed, and fell into an agony of distress which greatly affected her auditors. Mrs. Stafford and Emmeline said every thing they could think of to console her, and soften the horror she seemed to feel for her unhappy indiscretion. But she listened in listless despondence to their discourse, and answered, that to be reconciled to guilt, and habituated to disgrace, was to be sunk in the last abyss of infamy.

They left her not, however, till they saw her rather more tranquil; and till Mrs. Stafford had prevailed upon her to accept of some books, which she hoped might amuse her mind, and detach it awhile from the sad subject of it's mournful contemplations. These she promised to convey to the cottage in a way that could create no suspicion. And relieved of her own apprehensions, yet full of concern for the fair unhappy mourner (to whom neither she or Emmeline had given the least intimation of Fitz-Edward's frequent residence in that country,) they returned to Woodfield, impressed with the most earnest solicitude to soften the calamities they had just heard related, tho' to cure them was impossible.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME

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