Had he loved her, would he not, even with the conscious proof before him of her perfidious conduct, have at least mourned over a knowledge of her baseness? As it was, he thought not of her, save in reference to his own erring conduct. "Oh Adeline, Adeline!" he exclaimed in bitterness of heart, "is it for such a one as this that I have lost you, and deprived myself for ever, not only of your affection, but your esteem? Yet, though to retrieve the past is impossible, and to become what I once was in your eyes is as impossible as it is to recover mine own consciousness of desert, still I will live for you and you alone." The virtuous principle which had thus been restored to its rightful place in Lord Albert's breast gave him power to struggle with sorrow successfully in this his hour of need: and though at intervals he sunk into that despondency which, lost as he was to all his best affections and brightest hopes, could not but flow back upon him with an overwhelming tide, still the sense of returning virtue bore him up again, and fixed him on a rock from whence no tide of circumstances could hurl him. In this situation he thought, for a time, that he stood alone in the world, without one sympathising friend; yet, perhaps, there was one who still remained--Lord Glenmore. Should he open his heart to him? Should he seek succour and counsel from him? No. Counsel he needed not, for his mind was made up _how_ to act; and consolation could not, at the present moment, flow from any earthly source. As involuntarily he read over and over again Lady Hamlet Vernon's letter, a still renewing sense of the baseness of the writer flashed upon him. In every turn and phrase he thought he traced some clue to each individual circumstance which had occurred to poison his mind, and give birth to the unworthy suspicions he had entertained of his Adeline: every one of them, in turn, seemed to rise up, as it were, in judgment against him; and again he wondered how the artifices with which he had been deceived had not before been detected by him. The whole of his intimacy with Lady Hamlet Vernon, from its commencement, was next reviewed. His mind went back to the first evening in which he met her; her praises of his Adeline; the seductive grace with which she expressed her hope, when he spoke of foreign intimacies, that he would find some objects worthy also of his regard and friendship in his native land. He saw, as if at the moment, her downcast looks, and felt over again the surprise which her tone and manner caused him. He recalled their interview at the church at Restormel; her subsequent conversation, relative to Lady Adeline, before he left that place for London; and in all these, and in every other incident connected with his growing intimacy, he now beheld the wily stratagem of a preconceived plan to win away his heart and affection from one to whom this Circean destroyer of his peace was as widely opposed as darkness to light.