, that Lady
Westhaven rejoined her Lord and Mr. and Mrs. Stafford, full of uneasy
conjectures; and Emmeline, with a still more heavy heart, soon after
followed her.

The pressing and earnest invitation of Mrs. Stafford, induced her guests
to promise her their company for some days. But Lady Westhaven was so
astonished at her brother's desertion of Emmeline, and so desirous of
accounting for it without finding occasion to impute cruelty and caprice
to him, or imprudence and levity to Emmeline, that she took the earliest
opportunity of asking Mrs. Stafford, with whom she knew Miss Mowbray had
no secrets, to explain to her the cause of an event so contrary to her
expectations.

Mrs. Stafford had heard from Emmeline the embarrassment into which the
questions of Lady Westhaven had thrown her; and with great difficulty at
length persuaded her, that she owed it to her own character and her own
peace to suffer her Ladyship to be acquainted with the truth: that she
could run no risk in telling her what, for the sake of her Lord (whose
happiness might be disturbed, and whose life hazarded by it's knowledge)
she certainly would not reveal. Besides which motives to secresy, the
gentleness and humanity of Lady Westhaven would, Mrs. Stafford said, be
alone sufficient to secure Lady Adelina from any possible ill
consequences by her being made acquainted with the unhappy story.

These arguments wrung from Emmeline a reluctant acquiescence: and Mrs.
Stafford related to Lady Westhaven those events which had been followed
by Delamere's jealousy and their separation.

The love and regard, which on her first knowledge of Emmeline Lady
Westhaven had conceived for her, and which her admirable qualities had
ever since encreased, was now raised to enthusiasm. She knew not (for
Mrs. Stafford and Emmeline were themselves ignorant) of the artful
misrepresentations with which the Crofts' had poisoned the mind of her
brother; and was therefore astonished at his suspicions and grieved at
his rashness. She immediately proposed writing to him; but this design
both her friends besought her for the present to relinquish. Emmeline
assured her that she had so long considered the affair as totally at an
end, that she could not now regret it; or if she felt any regret, it was
merely in resigning the hope of being received into a family of which
Lady Westhaven was a part. Her Ladyship could not however believe that
Emmeline was really indifferent to her brother; and accounted for her
present coldness by supposing her piqued and offended at his behaviour,
for which she had so much reason.

Anxious therefore to reconcile them, she still
