With these, and many such contradictory reasonings as these, did Lord Albert continue to pace the room along and across, and every now and then stop and fix his eyes on the offending letter; when again a sound attracted him to the window, and though it was dusk, and objects were indistinctly seen at a distance, he recognized the well-known equipage. The next moment he was in the street; and the next it drove up to the door. He heard Lady Adeline's soft voice cry out, "There's Albert!" as she half turned to her mother, and kept kissing her hand to himself. The carriage door was opened, and she sprang out, receiving the pressure of his hand with an answering expression of fondness. "Dear Albert, how do you do? have you not thought we were an age on the road? But I hope you received my note." Ere he could reply, Lady Dunmelraise's extended hand was cordially presented to him, and as affectionately taken; and while each rested on his arm on entering the house, he felt in the kindly pressure of both that he was as welcome to them as ever. When he had assisted Lady Dunmelraise, who moved feebly, to the drawing-room, and placed her pillows on the couch, even in this moment of joyous re-union, he could not fail to observe what ravages sickness had made in her frame since they last met; and as he expressed, though in modified terms, in order not to alarm her, the regret he felt at seeing her so unwell, he observed the eyes of Lady Adeline fixed upon him, in order to read his real opinion on the first sight he had of her mother; and before he could regulate his own feelings on the subject, those of Lady Adeline's overshadowed her countenance with an expression of sadness she was not prepared to command, while the tears rushed to her eyes. Again holding out her hand to Lord Albert, while a smile of mingled joy and sorrow beamed over her features, and partly dispersed the cloud, she said, "All will be well _now_; my dearest mamma will soon be better--joy and happiness will once again be our's." Lord Albert thanked her with his eloquent eyes; and as he impressed a kiss on her offered hand, he replied: "How fortunate that I received your letter when I did, for in another hour I should have been on my way to Dunmelraise." "Indeed!" said Lady Adeline, her eyes sparkling with pleasure. "Yes; and I had, but for something which detained me, been on my road there long before your letter arrived." "That would indeed have been unfortunate," said Lady Dunmelraise; "to have missed you after so long hoping to have seen you there in vain, would have doubled our regret;" she spoke with a tone of something like reproach, at least so Lord Albert took it; and she added, with a melancholy smile, "It is a bad omen that a letter from _Adeline_ should have _prevented_ you from coming to us."