Delamere's countenance changed.--Crofts, as if looking for some other news in his letter, hesitated, then smiled, and went on.-- 'The gossip Fame has made a match for me with Mrs. Ashwood. I wish she may be right. In some other of her stories I really think her wrong, so I will not be the means of their circulation.' 'The rest,' said Crofts, putting up the letter, 'is only about my father's new purchases and other family affairs.' Delamere, who, in spite of his suspicions of Crofts' treachery, could not hear this corroboration of his anonymous letter without a renewal of all his fears, left the room in doubt, suspence and wretchedness. The seeds of jealousy and mistrust thus skilfully sown, could hardly fail of taking root in an heart so full of sensibility, and a temper so irritable as his. Again he read over his anonymous letter, and compared it with the intelligence which seemed accidentally communicated by Crofts; and with a fearful kind of enquiry compared the date and circumstances. He dared hardly trust his mind with the import of this investigation; and found nothing on which to rest his hope, but that it might be a concerted plan between his mother and Crofts. His heart alternately swelling between the indignation such a supposition created and shrinking with horror from the idea of perfidy on the part of Emmeline, kept him in such a state of mind that he could hardly be said to possess his reason. But when he remembered how often his extreme vivacity had betrayed him into error, and hazarded his losing for ever all he held valuable on earth, he tried to subdue the acuteness of his feelings, and to support at least without betraying it, the anguish which oppressed him, till the next pacquet from England, when it was possible a letter from Emmeline herself might dissipate his doubts. Resolutely however resolving to call Crofts to a serious account, if he found him accessory to a calumny so dark and diabolical. When the next post from England arrived, he saw, among the letters which were delivered to him, one directed by the hand of Emmeline. He flew to his own room, and with trembling hands broke the seal. It was short, and he fancied unusually cold. Towards it's close, she mentioned that she was going to Bath for a few weeks with a friend, and as she did not know where she should lodge, thought he had better not write till she was again fixed at Woodfield. That she should go to Bath in July, with a nameless friend, and quit so abruptly her beloved Mrs. Stafford--that she should apparently wish to evade his letters, and make her actual residence a secret--were a cloud of circumstances calculated to persuade him that some mystery involved her conduct; a mystery which the fatal letter served too evidently to explain.