In saying all this, Crofts rather attended to what his Lordship wished to hear, than to what was really the truth. He knew that a meeting between Delamere and Emmeline would probably at once explain all the unworthy artifices which had been used to divide them, and render those artifices abortive. He therefore told Lord Montreville, that to prevent all probability of a relapse, it would be advisable to remove Emmeline to some place where Delamere could not meet her: and his Lordship, forgetting at once all the obligations he owed her, thought only of following this advice. Embarrassed, however, himself with public business, he was unable to give to these domestic politics all the attention which they demanded. He threw himself more than ever into the power of the Crofts', to whose policy he left it to contrive the means, between the months of November and March, of raising an invincible barrier between his son and his niece. Tho' Delamere's being of age encreased the difficulties of this undertaking, Crofts having no scruples about the methods he was to pursue, had no doubt of accomplishing his end: and to stimulate his endeavours, he needed only the particular advantages which would accrue to himself from the pardon and reception which he hoped to obtain from Lord Montreville and his family. Every engine therefore that ambition, avarice, malice and cunning could employ, was now put in motion against the character and the peace of the unprotected and unsuspicious Emmeline. In conscious innocence and unsullied purity, she dreamed not that she had an enemy on earth; for of Mrs. Ashwood, now Mrs. James Crofts, she only remembered that she had once been obliged to her. The little, malicious envy which had given her some pain at the time it was shewn, she now no longer recollected; and tho' she always continued to dislike James Crofts, yet his impertinence she had forgiven, and had written in the usual form to congratulate them both on their marriage. Of Delamere, she heard nothing; but imputing his silence to his frequent change of place, she conceived no anger against him on that account; and still felt herself bound to keep from her mind, as much as possible, the intrusive image of Godolphin. CHAPTER VII