'Probably I may. It is above three years since I was in England, and much longer since I have been here. But undoubtedly some one or other will know me.'
'Then do indulge me in one request. See as few people as you can; and if you accidentally meet any of your friends, do not say that Lady Adelina is here.'
'Not meet any one if I can avoid it!—and if I do, not speak of my sister! And why is all this?—why this concealment, this mystery?—why—'
Emmeline, absolutely overcome, sat down without speaking. Godolphin, seeing her uneasiness, said—
'But I will not distress you, Madam, by farther questions. Your commands shall be sufficient. I will stifle my anxiety and obey you.' Then bowing respectfully, he added—'To-morrow, at as early an hour as I dare hope for admittance, I shall be at the door. Heaven bless and reward the fair and gentle Miss Mowbray—and may it have mercy on my poor Adelina!'—He sighed deeply, and left the house.
Lady Adelina, tho' not so entirely insensible, was yet but little amended. But as what alteration there was, was for the better, Emmeline endeavoured to recall her own agitated and dissipated spirits. The extraordinary scene which had just passed, was still present to her imagination; the last words of Godolphin, still vibrated in her ears. 'Fair and gentle Miss Mowbray!' repeated she. 'He knows my name; yet seems ignorant of every thing that relates to his sister!'
Her astonishment at this circumstance was succeeded by reflecting on the unpleasant task she must have if Mr. Godolphin should again enquire into her first acquaintance with his sister. To relate to him the melancholy story she had heard, would, she found, be an undertaking to which she was wholly unequal; and she was equally averse to the invention of a plausible falsehood. From this painful apprehension she meditated how to extricate herself; but the longer she thought of it, the more she despaired of it. The terrors of such a conversation hourly augmented; and wholly and for ever to escape from it, she sometimes determined to write. But from executing that design, was withheld by considering that if Godolphin was of a fiery and impetuous temper, he would probably, without reflection or delay, fly to vengeance, and precipitate every evil which Lady Adelina dreaded.
After having exhausted every idea on the subject, she could think of nothing on which her imagination could rest, but to send to Mrs. Stafford, acquaint her with the danger of Lady Adelina, and conjure her if possible to come to her. This she knew she would do unless some singular circumstance in her own family prevented her attention to her friends.
Resolved to embrace therefore this hope, she dispatched an hasty billet by an express to Woodfield; and then betook herself to a bed on the floor, which she had ordered to be placed by the side of that where Lady Adelina, in happy tho' dangerous insensibility, still seemed to repose almost in the arms of death.
Emmeline could not, however, obtain even a momentary forgetfulness. Tho' she could not repent her attention to the unhappy Lady Adelina, she was yet sensible of her indiscretion in having put herself into the situation she was now in; the cruel, unfeeling world would, she feared, condemn her; and of it's reflections she could not think without pain. But her heart, her generous sympathizing heart, more than acquitted—it repaid her.