should remove it!"--"Madam," he exclaimed, "her misfortunes are but added chains that bind me to her."--"Well," replied Lady Edgarmond, with an impetuosity to which she would not have given way had not her own child been thus deprived of a suitable husband, "well, render yourself wretched, then! she will be so too: she hates this country, and never will comply with its manners: this is no theatre for the versatile talents you so prize, and which render her so fastidious. She will carry you back to Italy: you will forswear your friends and native land, for a lovely foreigner, I confess, but for one who could forget you, if you wished it. Those flighty brains are ever changeful: deep griefs were made for the women you deem so common-place, those who live but for their homes and families." This was, perhaps, the first time in her life that Lady Edgarmond had spoken on impulse: it shook her weakened nerves; and, as she ceased, she sank back, half fainting. Oswald rang loudly for help. Lucy ran in alarmed, hastened to revive her parent, and cast on Nevil an uneasy look, that seemed to say: "Is it you who have made mamma so ill?" He felt this deeply, and strove to atone by attentions to Lady Edgarmond; but she repulsed him coldly, blushing to think that she had seemed to pride but little in her girl, by betraying this anxiety to secure her a reluctant bridegroom. She bade Lucy leave them, and said calmly: "My Lord, at all events, I beg that you will consider yourself free. My daughter is so young, that she is no way concerned in the project formed by your father and myself; but that being changed, it would be an indecorum for me to receive you until she is married." Nevil bowed.--"I will content myself, then," he said, "with writing to you on the fate of a person whom I can never desert."--"You are the master of that fate," concluded Lady Edgarmond, in a smothered voice; and Oswald departed. In riding down the avenue, he perceived, at a distance, the elegant figure of young Lucy. He checked his horse to look on her once more, and it appeared that she took the same direction with himself. The high road passed before a summer-house, at the end of the park; he saw her enter it, and went by with some reluctance, unable to discern her: he frequently turned his head, and, at a point from which the road was best commanded, observed a slight movement among the trees. He stopped; it ceased: uncertain whether he had guessed correctly, he proceeded, then abruptly rode back with the speed of lightning, as if he had dropped something by the way; there, indeed, he saw her, on the edge of the bank, and bowed respectfully: she drew down her veil, and hastily concealed herself in the thicket, forgetting that she thus tacitly avowed the motive which had brought her there. The poor child had never felt so guilty in her life; and far from thinking of simply returning his salute, she feared that she must have lost his good opinion by having been so forward.