While he stood thus lost in thought, like one bereft of sense, the workings of his soul were not unheeded by her who leant on his arm the while. She felt that this very instant was the critical point of all her hopes, and she almost unconsciously pressed the arm on which she rested closer to her breast. Her respiration was broken; her eyes wandered in quick succession on Lord Albert and Lady Adeline alternately; and though she dared not propose to move from the spot where they stood, yet to remain there was torture. At last the dance, which had appeared to her interminable, ended; and Lady Adeline passed on with Mr. Foley, without taking any notice of Lord Albert whatever, as though she saw him not.
Lady Hamlet once more felt that she could breathe again, when she no longer beheld the object of her fears before her, and without any mutual recognition of each other having passed between Lord Albert and Lady Adeline. Fresh hopes revived in her breast. She now ventured to address the former in a tone of tremulous gentleness.
"Shall we not walk about in the garden? it is very hot here." He started, looking at her as a man awakening from a dream; and as he suffered himself to be led whither she would, he continued to muse in silence on all that had passed: then suddenly murmured, in a half-broken sentence,
"I _will_ see Adeline; I will see her _to-morrow_." Lady Hamlet knew too well from this what must be the purpose he was revolving, and the fervency of his still remaining attachment for Lady Adeline. An icy chill withered her heart as she thought of the possible result of that interview, which the words that had involuntarily escaped him too surely predicted. But deeply skilled in the human heart, she did not attempt to say any thing to dissuade him at that moment from his purpose, nor did she venture to make any allusion whatever to Lady Adeline; for she was well aware that all interference would not only be fruitless, but might hazard the very object nearest her heart. Besides, Lord Albert had never suffered himself to pronounce Lady Adeline's name, even when, in the many conversations which he had held with Lady Hamlet Vernon, she had been covertly alluded to; neither had Lady Hamlet Vernon dared openly to touch upon his attachment to Lady Adeline, since their first interview after the visit at Restormel, when in the fervency of her feelings, and the plenitude of her despair, she said,