In this dark spirit of jealous indignation, he turned away, and sank into gloomy silence. Could he have known what was passing in Lady Adeline's breast, he would have acknowledged the justice of her feelings; he would have seen that all which seemed coldness and indifference was only the result of a proper sense of what she owed herself; and that under that assumed demeanour lay hid the truest, warmest love. Strange as it may appear on a slight review of the matter (although it is the common infirmity of human nature never to see its own defects), he was not aware of the effect which his constant intercourse with Lady Hamlet Vernon produced on the minds of all those who witnessed his intimacy with her; and, perhaps, as matters now stood, even if he had been at one time inclined to own himself in the wrong, the still greater dereliction from all truth and delicacy, which he thought he discovered both in Lady Adeline and Lady Dunmelraise, respecting their behaviour to him, completely exonerated him in his opinion, and he lost all sense of the evil of his own conduct in blaming theirs. Little did Lord Albert dream (indeed, in the excitement of greater things, he had totally forgotten it) that the sprig of myrtle which Lady Adeline had given him that morning, and which had been apparently the medium of so much mutual tenderness, had been seen by her in Lady Hamlet Vernon's hand, when their carriages were entangled in coming from the drawing-room. It was this circumstance, combined with Lord Albert's being again in assiduous attendance on one whom she was now compelled to consider in the light of a rival, that had made Lady Adeline draw up the glass at the moment Lord Albert was about to speak to her, in order to escape witnessing so painful a truth. As she threw herself back in the carriage, and reflected on the unworthiness of his conduct, she became the victim of the most agonizing feelings; for what is so painful as the conviction of unworthiness in the object of our love? and it was this conviction which had effected the alteration in her manner towards him, which he could not but observe from the first moment of his entering the room.