"Every thing you have said has been in allusion to my approaching union with Lady Adeline Seymour, an engagement you cannot be ignorant of, as it has been well known to the world in general for some years past. Tell me, I adjure you tell me, to what principles, to what habits do you allude? There is enough in your words to startle and confound me; but there lurks yet an unpronounced sentence in your mind, which I now implore you to declare. If, indeed, the least regard for my happiness ever swayed your breast, be explicit now, for my destiny perhaps hangs on your open sincerity." Lord Albert's thoughts were one chaos of uneasiness and pain; jealousy had fired the train, which set his whole being in a state of anarchy, and he lost all command over himself—all presence of mind, or capability of sifting truth from falsehood. Poor human reason, how weak is it even in the strongest minds! when the passions are roused, who dares to answer for himself, unless a higher power assist him in his hour of need?
"Be composed, be calm," said Lady Hamlet Vernon, "do nothing in haste; suffer me now to drop this subject, and we may resume it at a more favourable opportunity, when you have considered fully the opinions I have now expressed. All I wish you to remember is, that when a man chooses a companion for life, the chief thing to be considered is, not her amiable qualities, but whether they are of a kind which will assimilate with his. The mere obedience which proceeds from duty, will never satisfy a noble nature: no, it is the devotion of a glowing heart which beats in unison—a mind capable of sharing in the plans and pursuits of an aspiring nature, unwarped by prejudice, unobscured by fanaticism; above all, a heart that is wholly and undividedly its own."
Lord Albert, in listening to these words, unconsciously compared the happiness of being united to such a woman as the one he now heard and beheld, to that of the pure but infantine mind of Adeline Seymour. "Besides," he thought, "is she so pure? has no preference for another, usurped the allegiance which she owes wholly to me? Has George Foley not become more necessary to her than myself?" And while these imaginations, and such as these passed rapidly to and fro in his mind, his eyes were rivetted on Lady Hamlet Vernon, whose exceeding beauty heightened by the expression of an interest for himself which he never before had seen so visibly betrayed, made him say, in a tone and manner not devoid of a similar feeling,
"Oh! Lady Hamlet Vernon, you who can paint happiness so well—you who know to distinguish, with such enchanting delicacy, those shades of felicity which my warm imagination has figured to be the charm of married life, do not with a pertinacity unlike yourself, withhold from me the secret on which my fate depends, and either be my guardian-angel or—"
"Hold, I beseech you in my turn; I have already told you that I cannot fully impart all I know—I may not, must not be explicit. But this much I will reveal to you, providing you swear to keep the secret, and never to probe me further."
"Oh yes, I swear I will never betray so generous a friend; I will never search further into what you wish that I should not know."
"Well, then," Lady Hamlet Vernon replied, after a pause, and trembling with excessive emotion, "for the sake of the great, the deep interest I feel for you, and have felt since I first knew you, receive this pledge and earnest of my friendship;" saying which, she placed a ring in his hand, and added at the same time in a low distinct voice, "you can never be happy with Lady Adeline Seymour."
There are blows and shocks which strike at the very vitality of existence—who has not felt these before he has numbered many years? and such was the power of these words on Lord Albert, that he remained for some minutes motionless; their sound vibrated in his ear long after the sound itself had ceased; for strange it is, though true, that we can sometimes endure to think what we scarcely can bear to hear uttered. In the one case the thought seems not to be embodied in reality; in the latter it has received existence, and appears actually stamped with the seal of certainty.
At length, however, he had summoned his reason to his aid, and was about to speak further to Lady Hamlet Vernon, when, interrupted by the quick succeeding questions of many of the company who were passing the room in which they sat to go to supper, Lord Albert offered his arm mechanically to Lady Hamlet Vernon, and they followed in the train of others. The noise and gaiety and brilliancy of the scene could not for a moment take Lord Albert out of himself; one idea, one image engrossed him, and all the surrounding persons and circumstances glanced before his eye or came to his ear, with the glitter and the buzz of undistinguishable lights and sounds. He went through the forms of the place and scene with the precision of an automaton, and when the supper ended he followed Lady Hamlet Vernon about like her shadow, sometimes absorbed in the deepest concentration of thought, sometimes endeavouring to revert to their former conversation, which had been so abruptly, and to him so unopportunely broken off; eager to renew its discussion, as well as to elicit a disclosure (regardless of his solemn promise) of that part of the subject on which she refused all explanation.