'All happiness attend you, Sir! Remind Lady Adelina of my hopes of soon hearing from her.'
Mrs. Stafford being then seated, and the servant who had been hired to attend the infant following her, the coach drove from the door. Godolphin pursued it with his eyes to the end of the street; and then, as if deprived of all that made life desirable, he gave himself up to languor and despondence, afraid of examining his own heart, least his reason should condemn an inclination, which, however hopeless, he could not resolve to conquer.
But while he found charms in the indulgence of his unhappy love, he determined never to disturb the peace of it's object. But rather to suffer in silence, than to give pain to a heart so generous and sensible as her's, merely for the melancholy pleasure of knowing that she pitied him.
As soon as Lady Adelina could bear the journey, they departed together to his house in the Isle of Wight; where he left her, and went in search of Mrs. Bancraft, the sister of Trelawny, of whom he enquired where Trelawny himself might be found.
This woman, apprehensive that he meditated a reconciliation between her brother and his wife, which it was so much her interest to prevent, refused for some time to give him the information he desired. Having however at length convinced her that he had no wish to renew a union which had been productive only of misery to his sister, she told him that Mr. Trelawny was returned to England, and lived at a house hired in the name of her husband, a few miles from London.
There Godolphin sought him; and found the unhappy man sunk into a state of perpetual and unconscious intoxication; in which Bancraft, the husband of his sister, encouraged him, foreseeing that it must soon end in his son's being possessed of an income, to which the meanness of his own origin, and former condition, made him look forward with anxious avidity.
It was difficult to make Trelawny, sinking into idiotism, comprehend either who Godolphin was, or the purport of his business. But Bancraft, more alive to his own interest, presently understood, that on condition of his entering into bonds of separation, Lady Adelina would relinquish the greater part of her claim on the Trelawny estate; and he undertook to have the deeds signed as soon as they could be drawn up. In a few days therefore Godolphin saw Trelawny's part of them compleated; and returned to Lady Adelina, satisfied in having released her from an engagement, which, since he had seen Trelawny, had rendered her in his eyes an object of tenderer pity; and in having acquitted himself according to his strict sense of honour, by causing her to relinquish all the advantages Trelawny's fortune offered, except those to which she had an absolute right.
This affair being adjusted, he again resigned himself to the mournful but pleasing contemplations which had occupied him ever since he had heard of Emmeline's engagement. While Lady Adelina, whose intellects were now restored, but who was lost in profound melancholy, saw too evidently the state of her brother's heart; and could not but lament that his tenderness for her had been the means of involving him in a passion, which the great merit of it's object, and his own sensibility, convinced her must be incurable.
The letters of Emmeline were the only consolation she was capable of receiving. They gave her favourable accounts of her child, and of the continued affection of her inestimable friends. Whenever one of these letters was brought, Godolphin eagerly watched her while she was reading it; and then, faultering and impatient, asked if all were well; and if Mr. Delamere was yet returned? She sometimes gave him the letters to peruse; after which he generally fell into long absence, broken only by deep drawn and involuntary sighs—symptoms which Lady Adelina knew too well to doubt of the cause.