The more he reflected the more he thought the intricacy of the case required this delicacy on his part. She may not, he thought, be herself aware of the nature of the attachment she feels for me; compliance with her parent's wishes, habit, duty, the kindly affection of a sister's love, may be all that she has felt towards myself; and now, for the first time, she may experience the overpowering nature of love. This must be what Lady Hamlet Vernon alluded to; and if it is really so, I should mar her happiness as well as my own, by leading her to fulfil such a joyless engagement. Oh, if indeed Lady Hamlet Vernon has saved me from the wretchedness which a marriage, under these circumstances, with Adeline, must have produced, what do I not owe her--gratitude--friendship--He hesitated even in thought--he hesitated to pronounce the word love; but a glow of feverish rapture passed through his heart as he recalled Lady Hamlet Vernon's beauty, her fascination, her evident partiality for himself. Yes, I must sift this matter to the utmost; I must have irrefragable proofs of Adeline's unshaken truth; nay more, of my being the decided and sole chosen object of her truest affections: and in the interim I will see her frequently--see her in the world as well as in retirement--and not allow myself to be blinded by the specious veil which hitherto habit, perhaps, has rendered equally deceptive to both. Could Lord Albert have known this to be the self-same decision that Lady Adeline and Lady Dunmelraise had come to in regard to himself, it would have gone far to have settled his determination at once, and to have hastened a declaration which must have confirmed his union with Lady Adeline. The fatal security however of thinking that, under all circumstances, Lady Adeline would keep her engagement with him, whatever he might ultimately decide upon, made him the more apprehensive of owing her possession to any motive save that of pure attachment; and it may be also (for the heart is deceitful above all things) that, resting on this very security, he had allowed his feelings to betray him imperceptibly into an aberration from their natural channel, till at length he could not distinguish truth from falsehood, and would too certainly deplore his error when the remedy was past his power. Under the false but specious reasoning, then, in which he now indulged, he strengthened himself in his determination to pursue the plan he had laid down, namely, of watching the feelings and conduct of Lady Adeline in silence, and of endeavouring to elicit from Lady Hamlet Vernon, in whose friendship and interest he placed a fatal but implicit confidence, some of the grounds upon which her mysterious words rested. With this decision he prepared to go to South Audley Street. CHAPTER VII. TRUE NOBILITY.