 attention, she is thrown destitute and
friendless among strangers, and will perish in indigence and obscurity.
Unused to encounter the slightest hardship, her delicate frame, and
still more sensible mind, will sink under those to which her situation
will expose her--perhaps I shall be doubly a murderer!'

He stopped, from inability to proceed--Emmeline, in tears, continued
silent.

Struggling to conquer his emotion and recover his voice, Fitz-Edward at
length continued--

'While I was suffering all the misery which my apprehension for her fate
inflicted, her younger brother, William Godolphin, returned from the
West Indies, where he has been three years stationed. I was the first
person he visited in town; but I was not at my lodgings there. Before I
returned from Tylehurst, he had informed himself of all the
circumstances of Trelawny's embarrassments, and his sister's absence. He
found letters from Lord Westhaven, and from my brother, Lord Clancarryl;
who knowing he would about that time return to England, conjured him to
assist in the attempt of discovering Lady Adelina; of whose motives for
concealing herself from her family they were entirely ignorant, while it
filled them with uneasiness and astonishment. As soon as I went back to
London, Godolphin, of whose arrival I was ignorant, came to me. He
embraced me, and thanked me for my friendship and attention to his
unfortunate Adelina--I think if he had held his sword to my heart it
would have hurt me less!

'He implored me to help his search after his lost sister, and again said
how greatly he was obliged to me--while I, conscious how little I
deserved his gratitude, felt like a coward and an assassin, and shrunk
from the manly confidence of my friend.

'Since our first meeting, I have seen him several times, and ever with
new anguish. I have loved Godolphin from my earliest remembrance; and
have known him from a boy to have the best heart and the noblest spirit
under heaven. Equally incapable of deserving or bearing dishonour,
Godolphin will behold me with contempt; which tho' I deserve, I cannot
endure. He must call me to an account; and the hope of perishing by his
hand is the only one I now cherish. Yet unable to shock him by divulging
the fatal secret, I have hitherto concealed it, and my concealment he
must impute to motives base, infamous, and pusillanimous. I can bear
such reflections no longer--I will go to town to-morrow, explain his
sister's
