Notwithstanding Lady Adeline's seeming calmness while speaking of Mr. Foley--notwithstanding the natural and ingenuous expression of her words and countenance, Lord Albert could not divest himself of the idea that Mr. Foley had some undue power over her affections. It is easy, perhaps, to shut the door against evil thoughts; but when once they are admitted, they obtain a footing and a consequence which it was never intended that they should have. Beware, all ye who love, of admitting one spark of jealousy into your breasts, without immediately quenching the same by open and free discussion with the object of your affections! But there lies the difficulty--we are ashamed of harbouring an injurious thought of those we love; or rather, we are ashamed of _confessing_ that we do so; and we go on in the danger of concealment, rather than by humbling our pride, and laying open our error, obtain the probable chance of having it exposed, and removed. While monosyllables of indifferent import dropped from Lord Albert's lips, he was in his heart cherishing the false notion that had the letter, which gave him so much uneasiness, been entirely of the import which Lady Adeline represented it to be, it would have been more natural to have addressed it to Lady Dunmelraise herself. He did not, indeed, dare to impugn Lady Adeline's truth: but he conceived that no other man should presume to have an interest in her--in her who _belonged to himself_ (every man will understand this), which could entitle him to hold a correspondence with her. He consequently became abstracted, and there was a sort of restraint upon the ease of his manner and conversation, of which Lady Dunmelraise's penetration soon made her aware, and to which even the young and unsuspecting Adeline could not remain wholly blind. In order to replace things on the footing which they had been formerly, and which on their first meeting they still appeared to be, Lady Adeline turned the discourse to her pursuits in the country, and spoke in detail of her drawing, her music, her flower-garden, and the families of the poor in their neighbourhood whom she and Lord Albert had so often visited together.