 followed, in spite of all their endeavours to avoid it.

Mrs. Stafford, however, persuaded Emmeline to be less uneasy at it, as
she assured her she would never leave her; and that there could be no
misrepresentation of her conduct while they were together.

Every day they expected some consequence from Mrs. Stafford's letter to
Lord Montreville; but for ten days, though they had heard nothing, they
satisfied themselves with conjectures.

Ten days more insensibly passed by; and they began to think it very
extraordinary that his Lordship should give no attention to an affair,
which only a few months before seemed to have occasioned him so much
serious alarm.

In this interval, Delamere saw Emmeline every day; and Fitz-Edward, on
behalf of his friend's views, attached himself to Mrs. Stafford with an
attention as marked and as warm as that of Delamere towards Miss
Mowbray.

He was well aware of the power a woman of her understanding must have
over an heart like Emmeline's; so new to the world, so ingenuous, and so
much inclined to indulge all the delicious enthusiasm of early
friendship.

He had had a slight acquaintance with Mrs. Stafford when she was first
married; and knew enough of her husband to be informed of the source of
that dejection, which, through all her endeavours to conceal it,
frequently appeared; and having lived always among those who consider
attachments to married women as allowable gallantries, and having had
but too much success among them, Fitz-Edward thought he could take
advantage of Mrs. Stafford's situation, to entangle her in a connection
which would make her more indulgent to the weakness of her friend for
Delamere.

But such was the awful, yet simple dignity of her manner, and so sacred
the purity of unaffected virtue, that he dared not hazard offending her;
while aware of the tendency of his flattering and incessant assiduity,
she was always watchful to prevent any diminution of the respect she had
a right to exact; and without affecting to shun his society, which was
extremely agreeable, she never suffered him to assume, in his
conversation with her, those freedoms which often made him admired by
others; nor allowed him to avow that libertinism of principle which she
lamented that he possessed.

Fitz-Edward, who had at first undertaken to entertain her merely with a
view of favouring Delamere's conversation with Emmeline, almost
imperceptibly found that it had charms on his own account. He could not
be insensible of the graces of a mind so highly cultivated; and he felt
his admiration mingled with a reverence
