“Now,” continued her ladyship, “men are such unaccountable creatures, one never can understand them. Do you know, my dear Miss Turnbull, I had, till his lordship explained himself unequivocally to me, a notion that he was in love with you.” “Really!” said our heroine, forcing a laugh. “Did your friend Mrs. Vickars never tell you so?” “Yes, she did--frequently.” “Both of us mistaken, you see, my dear. Mortifying! to find one’s judgment so fallible. I tell the marquis, he might absolutely have been privately married to Gabriella without my finding him out--it is so easy now, the easiest thing in the world, to impose upon me. Well, I must bid you adieu for the present, my dear Miss Turnbull--you may imagine I have a world of business on my hands.” With the utmost appearance of cordiality Lady Pierrepoint shook our heroine’s receding hand; and, without seeming to notice the painful emotions visible in Almeria’s countenance, departed smiling, and perfectly composed. The moment that her ladyship had left the room, our heroine retired to her own apartment, and hastily bolted the door to prevent the intrusion of Mrs. Vickars, whose curiosity and condolence, whether real or affected, she was not in a humour to endure. She walked up and down the room in great agitation, by turns angry with Lady Pierrepoint, with the marquis, with Lady Gabriella, with Mrs. Vickars, and with herself. After her anger had spent itself, the sorrowful certainty that it was unavailing remained; the disappointment was irremediable, and her mortification was the more poignant, because she had no human being to sympathize in her feelings, no one to whom she could complain. “So this is fashionable friendship!” said she to herself. “This is the end of all Lady Pierrepoint’s and Lady Gabriella’s professions of regard for me!--Fool that I have been, to become their dupe!--With my eyes open I saw nothing that was going forward, though now I can recollect a thousand and a thousand circumstances, by which I might have been undeceived. But I trusted implicitly--idiot that I was!--to the friendship of this treacherous, unfeeling courtier. Once I had a friend, to whom I might trust implicitly--I never, never, shall find her equal.”