 the innocent, ingenuous Emmeline, she and
Mrs. Stafford were meditating how to be useful to the unhappy Lady
Adelina. They became every day more interested and more apprehensive for
the fate of that devoted young woman, whose health seemed to be such as
made it very improbable she should survive the birth of her child. Her
spirits, too, were so depressed, that they could not prevail on her to
think of her own safety, or to allow them to make any overtures to her
family; but, in calm and hopeless languor, she seemed resigned to the
horrors of her destiny, and determined to die unlamented and unknown.

Her elder brother, Lord Westhaven, had returned from abroad almost
immediately after her concealment. His enquiries on his first arrival in
England had only informed him of the embarrassment of Trelawny's
affairs, and the inconvenience to which his sister had consequently been
exposed; and that after staying some time in England, to settle things
as well as she could, she had disappeared, and every body believed was
gone to her husband. His Lordship's acquaintance and marriage with
Augusta Delamere, almost immediately succeeded; but while it was
depending, he was astonished to hear from Lord and Lady Clancarryl that
Lady Adelina had never written to them before her departure. He went in
search of Fitz-Edward; but could never meet him at home or obtain from
his servants any direction where to find him. Fitz-Edward, indeed,
purposely avoided him, and had left no address at his lodgings in town,
or at Tylehurst.

Lord Westhaven then wrote to Trelawny, but obtained no answer; and
growing daily more alarmed at the uncertainty he was in about Lady
Adelina, he determined to go, as soon as he was married, to Switzerland;
being persuaded that tho' some accident had prevented his receiving her
letters, she had found an asylum there, amongst his mother's relations.

Fitz-Edward, with anxiety even more poignant, had sought her with as
little success. After the morning when she discharged her lodgings, and
left them in an hackney coach with her maid, he could never, with all
his unwearied researches, discover any traces of her.

He knew she was not gone to Trelawny; and dreading every thing from her
determined sorrow, he passed his whole time between painful and
fruitless conjectures, and the tormenting apprehension of hearing of
some fatal event. Incessantly reproaching himself for being the betrayer
of his trust, and the ruin of a lovely and amiable woman, he gave
himself up to regret and despondence. The gay Fitz-Edward,
