Under these circumstances, Lucy resumed her intention of opening Lord Montreville’s letters, and of acting according to the best of her judgment. Several were most uninteresting and unimportant communications, which required neither comment nor answer; some were letters of correspondence, which she laid aside as soon as she found they did not contain the papers of which she was in search. At length she came to one written in a delicate female hand, beginning, “Dearest Montreville,” and signed “Your Alicia Mowbray.” “Alicia Mowbray!” she thought; “I never heard of her,” and her eye glanced upon words which filled her with astonishment and horror: “cruel absence,” and “consuming grief,” “counting the moments,” and “happy meeting,” and “sad parting,” and “distress for money,” and “necessary expenses,” winding up with an urgent request for a fresh supply of a hundred pounds. Could this be intended for Lord Montreville! She looked again at the direction at the beginning of the letter. There could be no mistake: it was most assuredly addressed to her husband,—to the husband whom in health she had so dutifully studied to please,—whom in sickness she had nursed with such unwearied attention,—from whom, though exposed to all the fascinations and allurements of a London life, she had never for one moment allowed her thoughts to wander! That he, whom she had always looked upon as the appointed guardian of her honour and her morals, should have been habitually, deliberately breaking his nuptial vow, preferring to her pure and true affection the hired caresses of a mistress,—and, above all, exposing her to the eyes of the world as the neglected wife of an old profligate, old enough to be her father! The letter fell from her hand; her brain went round with the multitudinous thoughts that rushed almost simultaneously through it; but rage, indignation, and disgust superseded, for some moments, all more tender emotions. Then came pity for herself, who had thus wasted the bloom of her early feelings, and she wept bitter tears over her blighted youth, her worthless beauty; for at this moment she suddenly became aware that she was one of the most lovely and most admired of women,—admired by all around her, except her husband,—lovely in all eyes but his! Lucy had married almost from the school-room. Lord Montreville had drawn a veil over his own former career; he had studiously avoided initiating her into the frailties of fashionable life; he had wished to preserve the purity he found; so that she still retained that freshness of mind which refuses itself to the conviction of the existence of vice, but which, when once unwillingly convinced, sees it in all its natural deformity.