In the present case, Lord Albert's disappointment brought back a livelier sense of the attachment he really felt for Lady Adeline, and awoke all those tender fears and reminiscences which cherish love, but which a too great security of possession had for the present blunted, or at least laid in abeyance. He now wondered how he could have suffered so much time to elapse without writing to her. He wondered, too, that he had not heard from her; she had not then missed the blank in his part of the correspondence; and it was evident some other interest had supplied that one in her heart.—He looked at her picture, as if he could read in that image an answer to these various surmises; but it was placid, and serene—it smiled as was her wont, and he felt displeased at the senseless portrait, for an expression which he could not have borne her to wear, had she really known what his fears and feelings were. He shut the case and pushed it from him;—he felt angry—and then ashamed—for conscience goaded him with its sting, and in turn questioned him, as to his right of indulging one such sensation against her, whom in fact he knew he had neglected: but all this process of mental analization was salutary, and as he came by degrees to know himself better, he was enabled to form a truer estimation, not only of the amiable person to whom he was bound by every tie of honour, but of the true nature of real worth.
At length, on the fourth morning from that on which he met Lord Glenmore, he found in North Audley Street a note from Lady Adeline. "A note only!" he said, hastily breaking the seal. It was written from an inn on the road; it informed him that Lady Dunmelraise had borne the journey very ill, which had occasioned them to stop frequently; but that they would reach town she hoped on the following evening. Lord Albert turned quickly to the date, and found that it was of the preceding day, so that he might expect their arrival that very evening. A gleam of delightful anticipation now shed joy over his heart. We easily gloss over our own faults; and Lord Albert found all his self-reproaches for neglect and temporary coldness merged in the fondness he actually felt at that moment, and his present determination to abide by, and act upon this feeling, silenced all self-accusation. With a beating pulse, and an emotion he did not wish to quell, he determined on not leaving the house till he should once more have seen his Adeline.
He seated himself, therefore, in the drawing-room, and gave a loose to those pleasurable sensations which now flowed in upon him. The apartment had been prepared for Lady Dunmelraise, and all the usual objects in her own and her daughter's occupations were set in their wonted places. He recognized with transport a thousand trifling circumstances connected with them, which brought his love, his own love, more vividly before his eyes. As he carefully enumerated and dwelt upon these, his eyes rested on a vacant space in the wall near the piano-forte, where a drawing of himself had hung; and the enchanting thought that it had been her companion in the country, came in aid of all the rest to soften and gladden every sensation of his heart. As his eyes wandered over the apartment in quest of fresh food for delight, they rested on a parcel of papers, and letters, lying on the writing table. He turned them over, hardly knowing why he did so, when a frank from Restormel, directed to Lady Adeline Seymour, gave him an unpleasant shock, and he dropped it with a sudden revulsion of sensation that was any thing but gentle.
He again resumed the letter, turned it round and round, looked at the seal—it was a coat of arms, but the motto, "for life," was a peculiar one. He wondered to what family it belonged; he thought of consulting some heraldic work in order to discover, when the sound of a heavy laden carriage passing in the street, drew off his attention. He flew to the window—it was a family coach, but one glance told him it was not that of Lady Dunmelraise. Back he came to the letter table; again the letter was before his eyes—the letter, for amongst many he saw but one.
"It is surprising," he said to himself, "that Adeline should have a correspondent at Restormel, and I not know of it; but shortly, very shortly, this mystery shall be solved. I will ask her at once—but carelessly, naturally, who is her unknown friend at Restormel? Ask her? no, she will of course tell me, if she has formed any new acquaintance with whom she is sufficiently intimate to correspond, and if she does not of herself tell me, I shall never inquire into the matter—indeed why should I? No, there is nothing renders a man so silly as jealousy, or throws him so much in a woman's power as letting her see he is jealous."
With these, and many such contradictory reasonings as these, did Lord Albert continue to pace the room along and across, and every now and then stop and fix his eyes on the offending letter; when again a sound attracted him to the window, and though it was dusk, and objects were indistinctly seen at a distance, he recognized the well-known equipage. The next moment he was in the street; and the next it drove up to the door. He heard Lady Adeline's soft voice cry out, "There's Albert!" as she half turned to her mother, and kept kissing her hand to himself. The carriage door was opened, and she sprang out, receiving the pressure of his hand with an answering expression of fondness.
"Dear Albert, how do you do? have you not thought we were an age on the road? But I hope you received my note." Ere he could reply, Lady Dunmelraise's extended hand was cordially presented to him, and as affectionately taken; and while each rested on his arm on entering the house, he felt in the kindly pressure of both that he was as welcome to them as ever.
When he had assisted Lady Dunmelraise, who moved feebly, to the drawing-room, and placed her pillows on the couch, even in this moment of joyous re-union, he could not fail to observe what ravages sickness had made in her frame since they last met; and as he expressed, though in modified terms, in order not to alarm her, the regret he felt at seeing her so unwell, he observed the eyes of Lady Adeline fixed upon him, in order to read his real opinion on the first sight he had of her mother; and before he could regulate his own feelings on the subject, those of Lady Adeline's overshadowed her countenance with an expression of sadness she was not prepared to command, while the tears rushed to her eyes. Again holding out her hand to Lord Albert, while a smile of mingled joy and sorrow beamed over her features, and partly dispersed the cloud, she said,
"All will be well now; my dearest mamma will soon be better—joy and happiness will once again be our's." Lord Albert thanked her with his eloquent eyes; and as he impressed a kiss on her offered hand, he replied:
"How fortunate that I received your letter when I did, for in another hour I should have been on my way to Dunmelraise."