There was but one answer to this question, and I had at last the courage to make it: and yet the Callonbys had marked me out for their attentions, and had gone unusually out of their way to inflict injury upon me, if all were meant to end in nothing. If I only could bring myself to think that this was a systematic game adopted by them, to lead to the subsequent arrangement with my cousin!--if I could but satisfy my doubts on this head----What threats of vengeance I muttered, I cannot remember, for I was summoned at that critical moment to attend the party to the palace. The state of excitement I was in, was an ill preparative for the rigid etiquette of a court dinner. All passed off, however, happily, and the king, by a most good-natured allusion to the blunder of the night before, set me perfectly at ease on that head. I was placed next to Lady Jane at dinner; and half from wounded pride, half from the momentarily increasing conviction that all was lost, chatted away gaily, without any evidence of a stronger feeling than the mere vicinity of a pretty person is sure to inspire. What success this game was attended with I know not; but the suffering it cost me, I shall never cease to remember. One satisfaction I certainly did experience --she was manifestly piqued, and several times turned towards the person on the other side of her, to avoid the tone of indifference in which I discussed matters that were actually wringing my own heart at the moment. Yet such was the bitterness of my spirit, that I set down this conduct on her part as coquetry; and quite convinced myself that any slight encouragement she might ever have given my attentions, was only meant to indulge a spirit of vanity, by adding another to the list of her conquests. As the feeling grew upon me, I suppose my manner to her became more palpably cutting, for it ended at last in our discontinuing to speak, and when we retired from the palace, I accompanied her to the carriage in silence, and wished her a cold and distant good night, without any advance to touch her hand at parting--and yet that parting, I had destined for our last.