"If I understand you right, Georgina, by the gesture which this moment escaped you, your heart is not engaged in this affair. But how, then, I ask, could you for a moment suffer any one to assume an intimacy with you such as these notes testify? Surely it could not be vacancy of affection, and in default of any object of attachment; for was I not myself, a few short months before, the husband of your free choice? Or is it that you are changed indeed?" he added, with a look of inquiring anxiety.
Again Lady Glenmore shook her head in bitterness of sorrow.
"Tell me, then; how long has this kind of familiarity existed between you and the writer of these notes? and tell me, is any one aware of this degrading intimacy?"
"I will tell you all, Glenmore," she exclaimed; "all—all!" Lord Glenmore shuddered to think how his happiness rested on the awful revelation of what that all might be. "I will tell you every thing," she repeated; and endeavouring to still the sobs that burst from her heaving bosom, she began.—"That you, Glenmore, should think my heart engaged to any one but yourself is the deepest pang I feel; and if I have been guilty, in appearance, of any imprudence or indiscretion, it is only in appearance. In judging me I hope you will be merciful, though perhaps I cannot ask this at your hands. But if you see fit to cast me off, and if what I shall say avail me nothing in restoring me to your affection, still my heart will be yours till it ceases to beat; and as no one has ever shared it for an instant, so shall no one ever, to my dying hour. I give my heart or my affections to such a one as Mr. Leslie Winyard?—impossible! I could not if I would. You, you alone, can ever possess it. But to evince the tenderness which I feel for you in public, I was told was wrong, was ridiculous; and I was taught to think that you yourself would cease to love me if I troubled you with demonstrations of this fondness. I was told, also, that another than you ought to be my attendant in the world; and the example of those around me confirmed in this idea." Lord Glenmore sighed heavily as he felt the truth of what last fell from Lady Glenmore.
"Who could have told you this?" he uttered involuntarily.
"Glenmore, did you not yourself tell me that I must look to the conduct of those with whom I lived as the best guide for my own? did you not tell me that Lady Tenderden would be my best model? And if I have displeased you in my late conduct, think how much I have been led into the error by your own directions?"
"Georgina, your heart must tell you, that I could never intend, by any suggestions on my part, that you should form an intimacy with such a person as Mr. Leslie Winyard, at least such an intimacy as you seem to have done by these notes. It is true I might have bid you lay aside the foolish expectation that I should be ever at your side in public; but I could never judge so ill of your understanding, as to suppose that such expressions, on my part, could be interpreted to the extent of endangering your honour and my happiness. But proceed. You have not yet told me how this intimacy has grown, or what encouragement you have given to justify such insolent presumption."
"Indeed, indeed, Glenmore, I can hardly tell you how. But first, whenever I was in public, you were always absent; or, if not absent, at least occupied with others and not with myself. I sat alone, ennuyé, and with a feeling of desertion. At the écarté parties, especially, I felt desolate. To them, you know, no young, unmarried ladies were admitted; and the persons who composed the society were either engaged in play, or else those who sat out were so engaged, two and two, in conversation at distant parts of the room, that I felt awkward in attempting to join them. Oh! how I have sat, night after night, in those fine rooms, thinking how little they afforded happiness, and wishing myself any where else! The first person who paid me any attention was Mr. Leslie Winyard. I found him agreeable and entertaining; and neither saw nor heard, in his manner or conversation, any thing that the whole world might not have seen or heard with me. If others spoke to me, it was a matter of form, or only a passing word, without seeming to care whether I answered or not; while he, on the contrary, always listened to what I had to say with apparent interest,—always seemed impressed with a wish to please me whenever we met; and thus our intimacy commenced. Deprived of you, Glenmore, I thought there was no harm in amusing myself in public during the time that I was there; instead of being quite délaissée. You know how unwilling I was to enter on a life of dissipation." Lord Glenmore again sighed, as if in assent to the truth of these words; and blamed himself inwardly that he had ever suffered Lady Glenmore to mingle, unprotected by himself, in society which now, for the first time, appeared to him, in its full force, to be of such dangerous tendency, that he felt he ought to have known better.
"But your greater intimacy abroad," he went on to ask, "Georgina? for it was abroad that these notes seem to have been written. Did you receive none such before your departure?"
"None, on my sacred word," she replied.