, 'allow me I beg to pay my
respects to this lady, with whom I have the honour of being
acquainted--Miss Mowbray, permit me----'

He would have taken the hand which was disengaged; but Emmeline shrunk
from him, and stepped quickly into the chaise.

Elkerton still advanced, and leaning almost into it, he said--'Your long
journey, I hope, has not too much fatigued you.'

'By heaven!' exclaimed Delamere, 'this is too much! Sir, you are the
most troublesome, insolent fool, I ever met with!'

So saying, he seized Elkerton by the collar, and twisting him suddenly
round, threw him with great violence against one of the pillars of the
piazza.

He then got into the chaise; and taking out of his pocket two or three
cards, on which his address was written, he tossed them out of the
window; saying, with a voice that struck terror into the overthrown
knight on the ground--'You know where to hear of me if you have any
thing to say.'

The chaise now drove quickly away; while Delamere tried to reassure
Emmeline, who was so much terrified by the suddenness of this scuffle,
that she had hardly breath to reproach him for his impetuosity. He
answered, that he had kept his temper too long with the meddling ideot,
and that to have overlooked such impertinence without resentment was not
in his nature. He tried to laugh off her apprehensions; and flattered by
the anxiety she felt for his safety, all his gaiety and good humour
seemed to return.

But Emmeline, extremely hurt to find that Elkerton was informed of the
journey she had taken, and vexed that Delamere had engaged in a quarrel,
the event of which, if not personally dangerous to him, could not fail
of being prejudicial to her, continued very low and uneasy the rest of
their journey, reflecting on nothing with pleasure but on her
approaching interview with Mrs. Stafford.

But this hoped-for happiness was soon converted into the most poignant
uneasiness. On their arrival at Woodfield, Emmeline had the pain of
hearing that Mrs. Stafford, who had two days before been delivered of a
daughter, had continued dangerously ill ever since. The physicians who
attended her had that day given them hopes that her illness might end
favourably; but she was still in a situation so precarious that her
attendants were in great alarm.

As she had anxiously expected Emmeline, and expressed much astonishment
at not having heard from her the week before, which was that on which
