“Perhaps so,” replied Pelham. “But you are not like those others whom you imitate and follow. I am sure that all this dissipation cannot satisfy _your_ mind, cannot make _you_ happy.” “_Perhaps_ not,” said Emmeline, her forced smile fading from her lips; for _happiness_ was a word which always grated on her heart, and sounded harsh in her ears. “But what can I do?—_il faut hurler_ _avec les loups_,” added she, again endeavouring to resume her gaiety. “This assumed levity cannot take me in,” continued Pelham. “I am certain it is impossible but that all this frivolity and fatigue must wear out both your mind and body. How different you were at Arlingford! how little you then seemed to anticipate pleasure from what you now enter into so warmly!” These were all home truths, which Emmeline could not answer, and she merely stammered out, that she had now no choice. “Indeed!” replied Pelham, warmly. “You wrong your friends when you say that.” “My friends?” repeated Emmeline, sadly, “I have no friends to——” and she stopped short, her own words, rousing from the bottom of her heart painful feelings, which she in vain endeavoured to smother by dissipation; and which, by hiding them from others, she hoped to forget herself. She averted her head from Pelham, and fixed her tearful eyes on the ground. Apparently fearful of going too far, Pelham was also silent; he looked at her with melancholy interest; he could not help observing how greatly she was altered, how much she had lost of the graceful roundness of her form, and how evidently “Concealment, like a worm in the bud, Fed on her damask cheek.” At that minute, Fitzhenry suddenly entered the room, and, hastily coming up to Pelham, “I have been looking for you this half hour,” said he; “I want to speak to you for a minute.” Fitzhenry had spoken these words so quick that it was not till he ended, that the preoccupied look of his auditor seemed to strike him; his eyes glanced from him to Emmeline, and there remained fixed. His sudden entrance had brought the blood into her face, but could not dispel from it the traces of emotion which were very evident; and there was a contrast between the expression of her countenance, the listless neglect of her whole person, and the glittering trappings in which she was attired, that must have struck and interested any one; and which arrested her husband’s attention so forcibly, that Emmeline blushed still deeper beneath his gaze. This seemed to rouse him from the sort of dream in which he appeared to be lost; and suddenly turning to Pelham, “I stopped at your house, and there learnt you were here; I had no idea you ever honoured such places with your presence when you could possibly help it.” “Sometimes, when the spirit moves me,” answered Pelham, carelessly. “But what is it you have to say to me?”