'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.