'Surely I shall consider it as an honour to receive, and as happiness to obey, any command of Miss Mowbray's.'

'Promise me then to observe the same silence in regard to your sister as I asked of you last night. Trust me with her safety, and believe it will not be neglected. But you must neither speak of her to others, or question me about her.'

'Good God! from whence can arise the necessity for these precautions! What dreadful obscurity surrounds her! What am I to fear? What am I to suppose?'

'You will not, then,' said Emmeline, gravely—'you will not oblige me, by desisting from all questions 'till this trifling restraint can be taken off?'

'I will, I do promise to be guided wholly by you; and to bear, however difficult it may be, the suspense, the frightful suspense in which I must remain. Tell me, however, that Adelina is not in immediate danger. But, but' added he, as if recollecting himself, 'may I not apply for information on that head to her physician?'

'Not for the world!' answered Emmeline, with unguarded quickness—'not for the world!'

'Not for the world!'—repeated Godolphin, with an accent of astonishment. 'Heaven and earth! But I have promised to ask nothing—I must obey—and will now release you, Madam.'

Godolphin then took his leave; and Emmeline, whose heart had throbbed violently throughout this dialogue, sat down alone to compose and recollect herself. She saw, that to keep Godolphin many days ignorant of the truth would be impossible: and from the eager anxiety of his questions, she feared that all the horrors Lady Adelina's troubled imagination had represented would be realized—apprehensions, which seemed armed with new terror since she had seen and conversed with this William Godolphin, of whose excellent heart and noble spirit she had before heard so much both from Lady Adelina and Fitz-Edward, and whose appearance seemed to confirm the favourable impression those accounts had given her.

Godolphin, who was now about five and twenty, had passed the greatest part of his life at sea. The various climates he had visited had deprived his complexion of much of it's English freshness; but his face was animated by dark eyes full of intelligence and spirit; his hair, generally carelessly dressed, was remarkably fine, and his person tall, light, and graceful, yet so commanding, that whoever saw him immediately and involuntarily felt their admiration mingled with respect. His whole figure was such as brought to the mind ideas of the race of heroes from which he was descended; his voice was particularly grateful to the ear, and his address appeared to Emmeline to be a fortunate compound of the insinuating softness of Fitz-Edward with the fire and vivacity of Delamere. Of this, however, she could inadequately judge, as he was now under such depression of spirits: and however pleasing he appeared, Emmeline, who conceived herself absolutely engaged to Delamere, thought of him only as the brother of Lady Adelina; yet insensibly she felt herself more than ever interested for the event of his hearing how little Fitz-Edward had deserved the warm friendship he had felt for him. And her thoughts dwelling perpetually on that subject, magnified the painful circumstances of the approaching éclaircissemen; while her fears for Lady Adelina's life, who continued to languish in a low fever with frequent delirium, so harrassed and oppressed her, that her own health was visibly affected. But without attending to it, she passed all her hours in anxiously watching the turns of Lady Adelina's disorder; or, when she could for a moment escape, in giving vent to her full heart by weeping over the little infant, whose birth, so similar to her own, seemed to render it to her a more interesting and affecting object. She lamented the evils to which it might be exposed; tho' of a sex which would prevent it's encountering the same species of sorrow as that which had embittered her own life. Of her friendless and desolate situation, she was never more sensible than now. She felt herself more unhappy than she had ever yet been; and would probably have sunk under her extreme uneasiness, had not the arrival of Mrs. Stafford, at the end of three days, relieved her from many of her fears and apprehensions.