"Hold, I beseech you in my turn; I have already told you that I cannot fully impart all I know--I may not, must not be explicit. But this much I will reveal to you, providing you swear to keep the secret, and never to probe me further." "Oh yes, I swear I will never betray so generous a friend; I will never search further into what you wish that I should not know." "Well, then," Lady Hamlet Vernon replied, after a pause, and trembling with excessive emotion, "for the sake of the great, the deep interest I feel for you, and have felt since I first knew you, receive this pledge and earnest of my friendship;" saying which, she placed a ring in his hand, and added at the same time in a low distinct voice, "you can never be happy with Lady Adeline Seymour." There are blows and shocks which strike at the very vitality of existence--who has not felt these before he has numbered many years? and such was the power of these words on Lord Albert, that he remained for some minutes motionless; their sound vibrated in his ear long after the sound itself had ceased; for strange it is, though true, that we can sometimes endure to think what we scarcely can bear to hear uttered. In the one case the thought seems not to be embodied in reality; in the latter it has received existence, and appears actually stamped with the seal of certainty. At length, however, he had summoned his reason to his aid, and was about to speak further to Lady Hamlet Vernon, when, interrupted by the quick succeeding questions of many of the company who were passing the room in which they sat to go to supper, Lord Albert offered his arm mechanically to Lady Hamlet Vernon, and they followed in the train of others. The noise and gaiety and brilliancy of the scene could not for a moment take Lord Albert out of himself; one idea, one image engrossed him, and all the surrounding persons and circumstances glanced before his eye or came to his ear, with the glitter and the buzz of undistinguishable lights and sounds. He went through the forms of the place and scene with the precision of an automaton, and when the supper ended he followed Lady Hamlet Vernon about like her shadow, sometimes absorbed in the deepest concentration of thought, sometimes endeavouring to revert to their former conversation, which had been so abruptly, and to him so unopportunely broken off; eager to renew its discussion, as well as to elicit a disclosure (regardless of his solemn promise) of that part of the subject on which she refused all explanation.