'Commands, my dear friend,' very gravely, and with an air of chagrin, said her Ladyship, 'are neither for me to give or for you to receive. Certainly if you are so determined against going with me, I must submit. But I did not indeed think that Emmeline, however the brother may have offended her, would thus have resented it to the sister.'
'I should be a monster, Lady Westhaven,' (hardly was she able to restrain her tears as she spoke,)—'was I a moment capable of forgetting all I owe you. But do you really think I ought again to put myself in the way of Lord Delamere—again to renew all the family contention which his very unfortunate partiality for me has already occasioned; and again to hazard being repulsed with contempt by the Marquis, and still more probably by the Marchioness of Montreville. My lot has hitherto been humble: I have learned to submit to it, if not without regret, at least with calmness and resignation; yet pardon me if I say, that however unhappy my fortune, there is still something due to myself; and if I again make myself liable to the humiliation of being refused, I shall feel that I am degraded in mind, as much as I have been in circumstances, and lost to that proper pride to which innocence and rectitude has in the lowest indigence a right, and which cannot be relinquished but with the loss of virtue.'
The spirit which Emmeline thought herself obliged to exert, was immediately lost in softness and in sorrow when she beheld Lady Westhaven in tears; who, sobbing, said—'Go then, Miss Mowbray!—Go, my dear Emmeline! (for dear you must ever be to me) leave me to be unhappy and poor Frederic to die.'
'Hear me, my dear Madam!' answered she with quickness—'If to you I can be of the least use, I will hesitate no longer; but let it then be understood that I go with you, and by no means to Lord Delamere.'
'It shall be so understood—be assured, my love, it shall! You will not, then, leave me?—You will see my poor brother?'
'My best, my dearest friend,' replied Emmeline, collecting all her fortitude, 'hear me without resentment explain to you at once the real situation of my heart in regard to Lord Delamere. I feel for him the truest concern; I feel it for him even to a painful excess; and I have an affection for him, a sisterly affection for him, which I really believe is little inferior to your own. But I will not deceive you; nor, since I am to meet him, will I suffer him to entertain hopes that it is impossible for me to fulfil. To be considered as the friend, as the sister of Lord Delamere, is one of the first wishes my heart now forms—against ever being his wife, I am resolutely determined.'
'Impossible!—Surely you cannot have made such a resolution?'
'I have indeed!—Nor will any consideration on earth induce me from that determination to recede.'
'And is it anger and resentment only have raised in your heart this decided enmity to my poor brother? Or is it, that any other——'
Emmeline, whose colourless cheeks were suffused with a deep blush at this speech, hastily interrupted it.—