"Oh! very well. Then I shall be with him before I go out."
Lord Glenmore, however, had heard his wife's voice; and coming out of his room he called to her, "Georgina, I must speak with you." There was something in the tone in which he spoke unlike its usual sound, which made Lady Glenmore, without waiting to answer, descend immediately to his room. She entered, and was beginning to state the purport of the message she had sent to him by the servant, when he said to her, in the same grave and impressive tone, "Georgina, you cannot leave home to-day."
"What is the matter?" she exclaimed. "My father! is he ill? or my mother? What _has_ happened? Has any thing befallen _them_?--For mercy's sake tell me;"--and she rushed into his arms trembling and in tears. Lord Glenmore bade her compose herself. "They are well, quite well," he said; and gently disengaging himself from her, he gazed at her for a moment in silence, as though he would read her inmost soul; and then said, "Georgina, have you no other cause for apprehension than for the safety of your parents?"
"Oh, yes!" she replied wildly, "for yourself;" and again flung herself into his arms. "Has anything grieved _you_? has any thing befallen you?"
Lord Glenmore was touched by this genuine mark of feeling for himself, which he knew her too well to think was assumed. He sighed deeply; and pressing his hand on his breast, unconsciously gave utterance to the hope which, at the moment, this proof of her affection afforded him, murmuring audibly, "All may yet be well." Lady Glenmore looked at him with inquiring eye; when at length, taking from the table the packet of Leslie Winyard's letters, he opened them before her, asking her if she knew them, and if they had been addressed to herself. She looked at them with an expression of surprise; and then mingled shame and dismay were painted on her countenance, the colour went and came in her cheek, her lip trembled, and covering her face with her hands, she burst into an agony of tears.
"Georgina, I adjure you," said her husband in the most solemn tone, rendered hollow and tremulous by emotion, "I call upon you by all that is sacred; by your vows, plighted to me at the altar; by the love which, if all things are not alike deceptive, you have till lately evinced towards me----."