Lady Hamlet Vernon's object was advancing rapidly, and her victim nearly sacrificed. London was now almost empty. The only individuals of note remaining in it were some official persons, who were looking forward with anxiety to the moment of their departure. Lady Glenmore's arrangements for her visit to the continent had been finally adjusted; and she had at length quitted town with a heart divided between regret at leaving her husband, and that kind of anticipated pleasure which attends a first visit to a foreign country.
Whether any regret mingled with these sentiments, as she journeyed with Lady Tenderden to the point of embarkation, at the idea of being likely to lose in her absence the society of Mr. Leslie Winyard, it is difficult to say; and equally so whether the result of this absence would break through that intimacy with the latter, which her soi-disant friends considered to be of such perilous tendency. Mr. Leslie Winyard certainly did not leave town immediately on her departure.
In the midst of these final removals for the season, Lady Hamlet Vernon found it difficult to arrange her passing the approaching autumn in the society of Lord Albert. To propose to himself directly any project of the kind was, she thought, hazardous; and though feeling the importance of securing to herself his presence, she was obliged to trust to chance, and to the habitual influence which she knew she had obtained over him, in order to ensure his following her wherever she went.
"Where do you mean to pass your autumn, Lord Albert?" she said one day to him, speaking as if in an unpremeditated manner, and announcing at the same time her intention of going to Tunbridge. "Perhaps you will be induced, if you have no other plan in view, to pay me a visit there?"
"Yes," he replied, sighing, "I shall like it exceedingly. Where can I go but where you are? Nobody else in the wide world, save yourself, cares for me;"—and a tender glance from Lady Hamlet Vernon gave back a confirmation of the latter part of this querulous speech.
Many days more did not elapse, when Lord Albert, although pressed by Lord Glenmore in the most friendly manner to accompany him to his country seat during the recess, misled by the unfortunate and false conviction that no one participated in his feelings save her who had in reality caused their bitterness, blindly yielded to the delusion of this hollow attachment, and found himself loitering round Lady Hamlet Vernon's footsteps on the furze-clad hills of Tunbridge.