 to him at Lough Carryl, might influence him to
say or do something that might discover to Lady Clancarryl the unhappy
story of her sister; and he thought it better to delay the explanation
'till he could follow Delamere to Dublin, which he determined to do in a
few days after he left Lough Carryl.

This interval gave him time to feel all the pain of the sacrifice he was
about to make. Nor could all his strength of mind, and firmness of
honour, prevent his reluctance or cure his anguish.

He was about to restore to the arms of his rival, the only woman he had
ever really loved; and whom he adored with the most ardent passion, at
the very moment that his honour compelled him to remove the impediments
to her marriage with another.

Sometimes he thought that he might at least indulge himself in the
melancholy pleasure of relating to her in a letter, what he had done, as
soon as the explanation should be made: but even this gratification he
at length determined to refuse himself.

'If she loves Delamere,' said he, 'she will perhaps rejoice in the
effect and forget the cause. If she has, as I have sometimes dared to
hope, some friendship and esteem for the less fortunate Godolphin, why
should I wound a heart so full of sensibility by relating the conflicts
of my soul and the passion I have vainly indulged?'

A latent hope, however, almost unknown, at least unacknowledged,
lingered in his heart. It _was_ possible that Emmeline, resenting the
injurious suspicions and rash accusations of Delamere, might refuse to
fulfil her engagement. But whenever this feeble hope in spite of himself
arose, he remembered her soft and forgiving temper, her strict adherence
to her word on other occasions, and it faded in a conviction that she
would pardon her repentant lover when he threw himself on her mercy; and
not evade a promise so solemnly given, which he learned from Delamere
himself had never been cancelled.

Delamere now returned to Dublin; and in a few days Godolphin followed
him: but on enquiring at his lodgings, he heard that he was gone out of
town for some days with some of his friends on a party of pleasure.
Godolphin left a letter for him desiring to see him immediately on his
return; and then again resigned himself to the painful delight of
thinking of Emmeline, and to the conscious satisfaction of becoming the
vindicator and protector of her honour even unknown to herself.

Emmeline, in the mean time, unhappy in the unhappiness of those she
loved, and by no means flattered by the prospect of dependance thro
