Sometimes he thought that he might at least indulge himself in the melancholy pleasure of relating to her in a letter, what he had done, as soon as the explanation should be made: but even this gratification he at length determined to refuse himself. 'If she loves Delamere,' said he, 'she will perhaps rejoice in the effect and forget the cause. If she has, as I have sometimes dared to hope, some friendship and esteem for the less fortunate Godolphin, why should I wound a heart so full of sensibility by relating the conflicts of my soul and the passion I have vainly indulged?' A latent hope, however, almost unknown, at least unacknowledged, lingered in his heart. It _was_ possible that Emmeline, resenting the injurious suspicions and rash accusations of Delamere, might refuse to fulfil her engagement. But whenever this feeble hope in spite of himself arose, he remembered her soft and forgiving temper, her strict adherence to her word on other occasions, and it faded in a conviction that she would pardon her repentant lover when he threw himself on her mercy; and not evade a promise so solemnly given, which he learned from Delamere himself had never been cancelled. Delamere now returned to Dublin; and in a few days Godolphin followed him: but on enquiring at his lodgings, he heard that he was gone out of town for some days with some of his friends on a party of pleasure. Godolphin left a letter for him desiring to see him immediately on his return; and then again resigned himself to the painful delight of thinking of Emmeline, and to the conscious satisfaction of becoming the vindicator and protector of her honour even unknown to herself. Emmeline, in the mean time, unhappy in the unhappiness of those she loved, and by no means flattered by the prospect of dependance thro' life, of which Lord Montreville now made her see all the dreariness and desolation, by the careless and irregular manner in which even her small quarterly stipend was remitted to her, yet exerted all her fortitude to support the spirits of Mrs. Stafford. Calm in the possession of conscious innocence, and rich in native integrity and nobleness of nature, she was, tho' far from happy herself, enabled to mitigate the sorrows of others. Nor was her residence, (otherwise disagreeable and forlorn enough,) entirely without it's advantages: it afforded her time and opportunity to render herself perfectly mistress of the language of the country; of which she had before only a slight knowledge. To the study of languages, her mind so successfully applied itself, that she very soon spoke and wrote French with the correctness not only of a native, but of a native well educated.