"It is then as I thought," exclaimed Lord Albert. "Faithless, treacherous, cold-hearted Adeline! why did I ever love you? Why place my happiness on so frail, so unworthy a tenure? But it is well; it is better thus. Since I have now no cause to mourn your loss, I will not suffer grief for such an object to master me. It is well that you are lost to me. Lost!"—he started at the sound, as he repeated, "Yes, lost to me for ever!" and his lip trembled, while a sense of suffocation oppressed and overpowered him, and tears, burning tears, burst from his eyes. Not softly, not refreshingly, did they flow, but like the lava's flood, which scathes the path down which it courses. For two days and two nights Lord Albert remained in the most pitiable state of mind. He would see no one, for to whom could he unburthen his griefs? and not to speak of them was impossible: to whom would he deign to show his lacerated heart? yet to what other subject than that by which it was torn could he give utterance?
The necessity of replying to Lady Dunmelraise's letter was the first thing that aroused him from this lethargy of sorrow; but when he essayed the task, he found it one of no easy nature. He read and re-read the letter; he endeavoured to extract from it some gleam of hope, some opening of possible change; but it was so calm, so cuttingly and despairingly reasonable, so dignified yet so decided in its tone, so meek yet so authoritative, that he felt it pronounced a verdict which admitted of no appeal.
"Be it so," he said, with the composure of despair; "but, at least, I too will speak my mind. Yet how? In a brief answer embody a world of thought? How can words convey the sense of a broken heart? No! language cannot do that. And if it could paint my feelings, why should I humble myself before those who have thus sported with and spurned them? why lay bare the weakness of my heart to those who have proved themselves incapable of compassion? What can I expect to gain by so doing? Nothing."
Blinded by this false reasoning, he felt, at that moment, that he would have rejected Lady Adeline's hand, could he have gained it; convinced, as he was, that her affections were no longer his own. Besides, who ever reclaimed or regained a heart by reproaches? And then again relapsing into tenderness, he mourned over the defalcation of that purity and truth which he had worshipped even more than her charms. All these, and more than these, were the thoughts which checked the flow of Lord Albert's pen as he wrote copy after copy in answer to the letter, and tore each, in despair of ever writing one which could in any degree comprise or convey his mixed and agonized feelings.
But again the necessity of some answer pressed upon him; and, although with the conviction that none which he could write at that moment would be adequate to express what he felt, or prove a faithful interpreter of the thousand tortures that possessed him, he finally traced and folded up a few brief sentences, sealing the envelope immediately, as if to preclude the possibility of further delay. Yet once more he hesitated, once more a wish arose to write altogether in a different tone and strain; but then he rapidly recalled to his aid all his late reasonings and feelings on the subject, and finally despatched the following letter:
"Dear Lady Dunmelraise,
"It would be doing injustice to my own feelings, if I did not state that they alone have prevented my answering your letter sooner; the purpose and tenor of which made me too plainly feel, that any development of the sufferings called forth by its contents would be equally misplaced and obtrusive to you, as well as to Lady Adeline.
"To say that any emotion of surprise has mingled with my sorrow would be contrary to truth, because I had felt the sudden and unexpected departure of your ladyship from London (not even communicated to me till your present letter) announced some decided change in your opinion and determinations in regard to myself. There is one point, however, for which, in the midst of all my sufferings, I must feel grateful: it is, that the letter which announces to me the forfeiture of that happiness which for years I have been taught to cherish and consider as my own, leaves me no doubt that the future welfare of Lady Adeline now centres in some other object, in the attainment of which it will be more surely realized, than had it continued to rest on me. That that welfare may be realized in every sense of the word will ever be the prayer of,
"Dear Lady Dunmelraise,
"Your faithful and affectionate servant,
"D'Esterre."
"P. S. I shall of course communicate your letter, accompanied by my answer, to my father, Lord Tresyllian."
No sooner was this letter beyond the power of Lord Albert's recall, and actually on the way to Dunmelraise, than he would have given every thing he possessed could he have changed its tenor: but this was only one of those fluctuations of passion, of which he had of late been so cruelly the sport; and the impulse of the moment, had its object been attained, would as readily have given place to some other of a quite different tendency. When the mind is once suffered to float about without a guiding principle of action, it is a mercy and a miracle if the being thus actuated does not become the prey of destruction.
As Lord Albert perused over and over again the copy of his answer, he imagined he read in it sufficient ground to call forth an explanation, on the part of Lady Dunmelraise, of the causes which had led to her sudden abandonment of Lady Adeline's engagement with himself. But then he speculated upon objects which like a blind man he could not see; for never admitting, nor indeed feeling conscious, that it was his own errors which had wrought the change in Lady Adeline, he never could rightly apprehend the line of conduct which of necessity she must pursue. If he had done so, had he taken the beam from his own eye, then would he clearly have seen to take the mote from hers; and it would not have required a second perusal of his answer to Lady Dunmelraise to have acknowledged that it afforded no opening whatever, whether from its tone or its contents, to induce herself or Lady Adeline to swerve from the course they had adopted, or lead them to any other determination than that which they had already avowed.
He however endeavoured to make himself think otherwise, and in some degree he succeeded in this object; for what distortion will the imagination not assume when warped by passion? In this delusive hope he continued for some days, vainly expecting every post to bring him some communication from Dunmelraise. How little he knew Lady Dunmelraise's feelings! how falsely he judged of his own! As soon as she perused his letter, she did not for a moment think of replying to it. She had indeed not doubted, for weeks past, that Lord Albert's heart and affections were totally alienated from her child; but the degree of cold indifference with which, in her reading of his answer, he seemed to cast her off, exceeded what she could have thought possible. It may be that, in her interpretation of the letter, Lady Dunmelraise yielded in some degree to her previously-formed prejudices; and, as is ever the case when we yield to prejudice, saw through them as through a glass darkly, and pronounced the being who could thus coldly renounce such a treasure as Adeline wholly unworthy of further thought. Far from feeling, therefore, that Lord Albert's reply required any further notice, or that it contained any thing which could raise an after-regret if passed by in silence, or reanimate a dying spark of hope in Lady Adeline's breast, she considered it final and definitive, and without hesitation placed the letter in her daughter's hands.