"You are a bad comforter, Evelyn. My mother, my father, will preach a very different doctrine. I am foolish, indeed, to be so sad in obtaining the very object I have sought! Poor Doltimore! he little knows the nature, the feelings of her whom he thinks he has made the happiest of her sex; he little knows--" Caroline paused, turned pale as death, and then went rapidly on, "but you, Evelyn, _you_ will meet the same fate; we shall bear it together." "No! no! do not think so! Where I give my hand, there shall I give my heart." At this time Maltravers half rose, and sighed audibly. "Hush!" said Caroline, in alarm. At the same moment, the whist-table broke up, and Cleveland approached Maltravers. "I am at your service," said he; "I know you will not stay the supper. You will find me in the next room; I am just going to speak to Lord Saxingham." The gallant old gentleman then paid a compliment to the young ladies, and walked away. "So you too are a deserter from the ballroom!" said Miss Merton to Maltravers as she rose. "I am not very well; but do not let me frighten you away." "Oh, no! I hear the music; it is the last quadrille before supper: and here is my fortunate partner looking for me." "I have been everywhere in search of you," said Lord Doltimore, in an accent of tender reproach: "come, we are almost too late now." Caroline put her arm into Lord Doltimore's, who hurried her into the ballroom. Miss Cameron looked irresolute whether or not to follow, when Maltravers seated himself beside her; and the paleness of his brow, and something that bespoke pain in the compressed lip, went at once to her heart. In her childlike tenderness, she would have given worlds for the sister's privilege of sympathy and soothing. The room was now deserted; they were alone. The words that he had overheard from Evelyn's lips, "Where I shall give my hand, there shall I give my heart," Maltravers interpreted but in one sense,--"she loved her betrothed;" and strange as it may seem, at that thought, which put the last seal upon his fate, selfish anguish was less felt than deep compassion. So young, so courted, so tempted as she must be--and with such a protector!--the cold, the unsympathizing, the heartless Vargrave! She, too, whose feelings, so warm, ever trembled on her lip and eye. Oh! when she awoke from her dream, and knew whom she had loved, what might be her destiny, what her danger!