"Indeed!" said Lady Adeline, her eyes sparkling with pleasure.
"Yes; and I had, but for something which detained me, been on my road there long before your letter arrived."
"That would indeed have been unfortunate," said Lady Dunmelraise; "to have missed you after so long hoping to have seen you there in vain, would have doubled our regret;" she spoke with a tone of something like reproach, at least so Lord Albert took it; and she added, with a melancholy smile, "It is a bad omen that a letter from Adeline should have prevented you from coming to us."
Lord Albert felt embarrassed; there was something relative to the delay of his coming which he knew he could not explain, and this consciousness made him feel as if he were acting a double part. At this moment Lady Adeline perceived the letters lying on the table, and taking them up, she glanced her eye over them as she turned them round one by one, saying, "this is for you, mamma—and this—and this—and this, as she handed them to Lady Dunmelraise—but this one is for myself." Lord Albert's attention had from the first moment of her taking up the letters been riveted upon her, and now with ill-concealed anxiety he watched every turn of her countenance, while she broke the seal and perused the letter. She read it, he conceived, with great interest; and said, when she had concluded, addressing Lady Dunmelraise—
"It is a kind word of inquiry for you, my dear mamma, from George Foley." Lord Albert changed colour as this name was pronounced; but neither she nor Lady Dunmelraise observed the circumstance, and this gave him leisure and power to recover from the confusion he experienced. Lady Adeline again resumed, after a short pause, "You must have met Mr. Foley at Restormel, Albert; what do you think of him?"
"I had little opportunity of judging of him," replied Lord Albert, hesitating as he spoke; "but he was only at Restormel for a part of the time I was there. He had, however, a strong recommendation to my favourable opinion, from the warm terms of praise and admiration in which he mentioned you, Adeline." She smiled, and without any alteration of manner went on to say:
"I am afraid then he has too favourable an opinion of me; and if he has raised your expectations so high of my improvement since last we met, I shall have reason to lament your having become acquainted with him; but he is such an adorateur of mamma's, that he thinks every thing that belongs to her is perfection!"
Notwithstanding Lady Adeline's seeming calmness while speaking of Mr. Foley—notwithstanding the natural and ingenuous expression of her words and countenance, Lord Albert could not divest himself of the idea that Mr. Foley had some undue power over her affections. It is easy, perhaps, to shut the door against evil thoughts; but when once they are admitted, they obtain a footing and a consequence which it was never intended that they should have. Beware, all ye who love, of admitting one spark of jealousy into your breasts, without immediately quenching the same by open and free discussion with the object of your affections! But there lies the difficulty—we are ashamed of harbouring an injurious thought of those we love; or rather, we are ashamed of confessing that we do so; and we go on in the danger of concealment, rather than by humbling our pride, and laying open our error, obtain the probable chance of having it exposed, and removed. While monosyllables of indifferent import dropped from Lord Albert's lips, he was in his heart cherishing the false notion that had the letter, which gave him so much uneasiness, been entirely of the import which Lady Adeline represented it to be, it would have been more natural to have addressed it to Lady Dunmelraise herself.
He did not, indeed, dare to impugn Lady Adeline's truth: but he conceived that no other man should presume to have an interest in her—in her who belonged to himself (every man will understand this), which could entitle him to hold a correspondence with her. He consequently became abstracted, and there was a sort of restraint upon the ease of his manner and conversation, of which Lady Dunmelraise's penetration soon made her aware, and to which even the young and unsuspecting Adeline could not remain wholly blind.