'I do not know how we shall get him to England, or what will be done with him when he is there.'
'He will do well, my Lord. Doubt it not.'
'Upon my honour I do doubt it! It is to me astonishing that a young man so volatile, so high-spirited as Delamere, should be capable of an attachment at once so violent and so steady.'
'Steady!—Has your Lordship forgotten Miss Otley?'
'His wavering then was, you well know, owing to some evil impressions he had received of you; which, tho' he refuses to tell me the particulars, he assures me were conveyed and confirmed with so much art, that a more dispassionate and cooler lover would have believed them without enquiry. How then can you wonder at his petulant and eager spirit seizing on probable circumstances, which his jealousy and apprehension immediately converted into conviction? As soon as he knew these suspicions were groundless, did he not fly to implore your pardon; and hasten, even at the hazard of his life, to find and appease you? Such is the present situation of his mind and of his health, that I very seriously assure you I doubt whether he will survive your total rejection.'
Emmeline, unable to answer this speech gravely, without betraying the very great concern it gave her, assumed a levity she did not feel.
'Your Lordship,' said she, 'is disposed to think thus, from the warm and vehement manner in which Lord Delamere is accustomed to express himself. If he is really unhappy, I am very sorry; but I am persuaded time, and the more fortunate alliance which he is solicited to form, will effect a cure. Don't think me unfeeling if I answer your melancholy prophecy in the words of Rosalind—
'Men have died from time to time, and worms have eat them—but not for love.'
She then ran away, and losing all her forced spirits the moment she was alone, gave way to tears. She fancied they flowed entirely for the unhappiness of poor Delamere, and for her uncertain situation. But tho' the former uneasiness deeply affected her sensible heart, many of the tears she shed were because Godolphin was gone, and she knew not when she should again see him.
Godolphin, repining and wretched, pursued his way to Paris. He thought that Emmeline's coldness and reserve were meant to put an end to any hopes he might have entertained; and that her reconciliation and marriage with Lord Delamere must inevitably take place as soon as she had, by her dissimulated cruelty, punished him for his rashness and his errors. His daily observation confirmed him in this opinion: he saw, that in place of her candid and ingenuous manners, a studied conduct was adopted, which concealed her real sentiments—sentiments which he concluded to be all in favour of Delamere. And finding that he could not divest himself of his passion for her, he thought that it was a weakness, if not a crime, to indulge it in her presence, while it imposed on himself an insupportable torment; and that, by quitting her, he should at least conceal his hopeless attachment, and save himself the misery of seeing her actually married to Lord Delamere. He determined, therefore, to tear himself away; and to punish himself for the premature expectations with which he had begun his journey to St. Alpin, by shutting himself up at East Cliff (his house in the Isle of Wight) and refusing himself the sight of her, of whom it would be sufficient misery to think, when she had given herself to her favoured and fortunate lover.