"You must speak to her, Emmeline, I dare not; for I feel too angry and disappointed to argue calmly. She has deceived us; all your cares appear to have been of no avail; all the watchful tenderness with which she had been treated thus returned! I could have forgiven it, I would not have said another word, if she had conducted herself towards him with propriety; but to give him encouragement, such as all who have seen them together must have remarked; to attract him by every winning art, to chain him to her side, and then reject him with scorn. What could have caused her conduct, but the wish to display her power, her triumph over one so superior? Well might he say she had sunk in his estimation. Why did we not question her, instead of thus fondly trusting in her integrity? Emmeline, we have trusted our child too confidently, and thus our reliance is rewarded." Seldom, if ever, had Mrs. Hamilton seen her husband so disturbed; for some little time she remained with him, and succeeded partly in soothing his natural displeasure. She then left him to compose her own troubled and disappointed feelings ere she desired the presence of her child. Meanwhile, as the happy Emmeline went to prepare her little packet for her dear old nurse, the thought suddenly arose that St. Eval had sent his remembrances and adieus to Ellen only, he had not mentioned Caroline; and unsophisticated as she was, this struck her as something very strange, and she was not long in connecting this circumstance with his sudden departure. Wild, sportive, and innocent as Emmeline was, she yet possessed a depth of reflection and clearness of perception, which those who only knew her casually might not have expected. She had marked with extreme pleasure that which she believed the mutual attachment of St. Eval and her sister; and with her ready fancy ever at work, had indulged very often in airy visions, in which she beheld Caroline Countess St. Eval, and mistress of that beautiful estate in Cornwall, which she had heard Mrs. Hamilton say had been presented by the Marquis of Malvern to his son on his twenty-first birthday. Emmeline had indulged these fancies, and noticed the conduct of Caroline and St. Eval till she really believed their union would take place. She had been so delighted at the receipt of Mary's letter, that she had no time to remember the young Earl's departure; but when she was alone, that truth suddenly flashed across her mind, and another strange incident, though at the time she had not remarked it, when she had said as her brother she would remember him, he had repeated, with startling emphasis, "as her _friend_." "What could it all mean?" she thought. "Caroline cannot have rejected him? No, that is quite impossible. My sister would surely not be such a practised coquette. I must seek her and have the mystery solved. Surely she will be sorry St. Eval leaves us so soon."