The mystery, then, was solved. She was engaged to Alfred Wild; but that engagement, I well knew, could only have been brought about by some foul deceit; and I resolved, that, if I lived at least, it should never be executed. Indignation was now my best friend, for it kept me from feeling any thing else; and notwithstanding Mr. Somers's injunction to the contrary, I instantly, I instantly ordered a coach and proceeded to Portland Place. Mr. Somers, I found, had just gone out; and, without asking any further questions, I walked straight up stairs to the drawing-room, passing the servant who opened the door, and in whose demeanour I observed a degree of lazy carelessness very different from the smart activity which had reigned throughout the household during my mother's life. In the great drawing-room there was no one; but, pushing open the folding-doors, I entered the little drawing-room, and was at once in the presence of Emily Somers. She was sitting gazing on an unfolded letter--it was the one I had sent her father in the morning--and the tears were still rolling rapidly down her cheeks. At the sound of my step she started up, gazed at me wildly for a moment, as if she hardly knew me--and well she might doubt whether it was the same person who had left her--and then at once cast herself into my arms and wept aloud. It is scarcely possible to tell all that passed, but I found that her father, after showing her my letter, had gone out in a state of terrible agitation to the father of Alfred Wild, what to do she did not fully explain; but in her whole account there was a confusion and a wildness, which showed me that there was much, very much, that I did not comprehend; and I should have been naturally led to investigate all the facts in the first place, had not her reiterated exclamations of "Then you do love me still, James? You have not forgotten me? You have not acted as they said?" induced me first to vindicate myself. I told her all that had happened. I related the duel, my sickness, the conduct of my servant, and, with imprecations on the head of Alfred Wild, I told her that I believed, from the first, the man Essex had been bribed to furnish matter against me. She turned very pale at the language which I used towards my enemy, and certainly it was violent and improper; but, interrupting what she was about to say upon it, I eagerly entreated her to explain how she had been entrapped into an engagement with a man she neither loved nor esteemed, and to promise me solemnly to consider that engagement as nothing when compared with her troth plighted to myself. "What could I do, James? What can I do?" she exclaimed, "when my own father besought, entreated, almost went on his knees to his own child--when they persuaded me that you loved me no longer, and that you were living with the wife of another man!"